Robbies Beasting Sessions

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These sort of moves are a lot
easier to perform when you
are not thinking about falling!
Robbies Beasting Sessions
Part 4: That’s Pure Mental Man!
Ex-British Team Member and Scottish Teams Coach Robbie Phillips thinks about...
All photos: Will Carroll (http://io-photography.co.uk)
T
he world of climbing is vast, with
many different disciplines and
styles of climbing - from bold trad
climbers and boulderers to adventurous
alpine climbers and psyched-up sport
climbers. Every discipline has its
differences; however, they all have one
thing in common: they all require strong
minds as well as bodies!
It’s not just about overcoming fear,
but also about dealing with failure,
facing your demons and learning to use
your mind to push beyond what your
body demands. These four main areas
are all centered in the mind, things that
with practice can be overcome and will
certainly make a massive difference to
your everyday performance both at the
wall and the crag.
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In this month’s issue I will look at each
of these areas and see in what ways
we can train our minds to improve our
climbing performance.
Every day I am faced with new
challenges both mental and physical,
however it is always the mental barriers
that hold me back the most. It’s easy
to train and get stronger, but fighting
something that you can’t see or measure
sometimes feels like an uphill battle
that can’t be won. The truth is, the only
weapon we can use to defeat our mental
barriers is experience.
The more we face our weaknesses the
better equipped we become at dealing
with them, but it takes a lot of courage
to continually throw ourselves at them.
It took me a long time to overcome my
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Checking your gear helps
banish those simple fears
fear of falling; however with the help
of my friends and the realisation that
overcoming the fear was the only way I
could continue my upward progression,
I eventually became confident at falling
and it no longer stood in my way.
The Falling Fear
In all the years I have climbed and
coached, the most common mental
barrier in a climber’s performance
seems to be the fear of falling. This is
an obvious one and certainly rational
to understand, it’s only human nature
to fear the likelihood of injury or death
if it’s on our minds, but is it something
that should hold us back or should we
welcome the fear as a safeguard in case
we do something stupid?
It impresses me so much when I hear
of climbers like Alex Honnold who can
focus their minds so much that soloing
a 1000m 8a doesn’t phase them. I will
always remember a conversation I had
with Neil Gresham about his adventure
on Indian Face (E10). He got to just
before the crux and was standing on a
good ledge, his options were either to
press on into the crux by mantling the
ledge and thereby committing himself to
the route and potentially taking a death
ground fall from 30m, or to back off and
relieve any pressure to climb the route at
that moment.
Time and time again he would get
there and back away. However, one time
was different, he felt right that second
and instead of backing off he stepped
up to the challenge, assessed the risks
and pushed on. He became one of only
a few people to have climbed this route,
too bold for the vast majority of top class
trad climbers who have attempted it.
Neil’s case is a good one because it
clearly shows the process of assessing
his situation and mind set each time
he was on the route. He backed off
numerous times and at the moment he
felt right, he went for it. This is a process
that every climber goes through, but it’s
particularly interesting when we look at
the typical indoor or sport climber who
is also afraid of falling. I mean, what are
the risks here?
Unless you are taking an unreasonably
big run-out for a sport climb or if you are
at a crag with rusted pegs for bolts, then
why would you fear falling off a sport
climb? Indoor walls are safe as houses,
in fact, I would even go so far as to say
that I feel safer leading at an indoor wall
than I do walking down the street (I’m a
bit scared of the neighbour’s dog to be
honest).
My belief is that when it comes to
fear, it is due to a lack of experience and
an abundance of negative self-doubt.
Everyone I have ever coached falling
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has overcome it eventually, but only
by facing his or her fear head-on with
regular practice in order to experience
the feeling more times and convert what
was once a negative emotion into a
positive one.
When I am dealing with someone who
is scared of falling, they are often unsure
of why they are scared. So the first
thing I do is remove any possible fears
they may have about their equipment
by asking them to check all their gear
before climbing (i.e. harness, knots,
belay device, rope and even shoe laces
and whether or not they have enough
chalk).
All of these things are important so
make sure you have them right before
you leave the ground, because if any one
of them were unsatisfactory, it could
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Falling on
request is
less scary
There can be a lot of rope out
whilst clipping gear – this is
often the scariest moment
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lead to self-doubt and negative thoughts
during the climb.
By doing this routine, you are
removing any possible distractions from
the ascent – by checking your knot you
know you are secure, by checking the
rope you know you are safe, by checking
your partners belay device you learn to
trust him/her and by checking your shoe
laces you won’t fall flat on your face
before you reach the first hold!
We have all heard of fall practice,
but how many of you actually do this?
Maybe you’ve done it once or twice at
the end of a session, but in order to get
full benefit from it, you have to do it
lots and lots, especially at the beginning
when you are first trying to overcome
your fear.
Start off on a top-rope by taking small
falls with the rope fairly tight. Work up
from calling to your partner when you
are going to fall, to actually falling on
your own without telling them anything
about it. By doing this you will build the
trust in his/her belaying and be far more
likely to trust them with lead falls.
Begin to take bigger and bigger falls
(still on top-rope and not too close to
the ground) until you feel that you are
confident enough with your falling that
you can move onto lead. In my opinion,
this moment will be realised when you
can confidently climb a top-rope taking
large falls onto your partner without
telling them when it’s going to happen.
When you finally move onto lead
climbing, do so gently and certainly
don’t jump straight into the deep end. I
suggest a gradual start; perhaps taking
falls below the clip as if on top-rope (but
still on lead) and moving upwards until
you can take falls at the clip.
All the initial falls should be activated
by the climber and with the belayer
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aware of how and when the climber is
going to fall. Keep on building on your
fall pyramid by upping the ante every
time, perhaps by taking a fall from the
side level with the clip or in front of the
clip until you are comfortable doing it
above the clip.
When you can fall above the clip,
continue to progress by building on
how far above the clip you go (making
sure not to go past the next clip for wall
regulations and safety). When you can
comfortably take lead falls whilst at the
next clip, you can now take the next step
and practice taking falls whilst clipping!
This is really important, as that is when
the biggest falls are taken. If you can do
this comfortably, you should more or less
be a confident lead climber. However
there is still one more step to be taken.
The final stage of the lead fall practice
is taking lead falls without telling your
belayer when or how you will do it! It
takes a lot of confidence and trust to get
to this stage, but you can be fully certain
that once you have completed this, you
should have no worries pushing it on any
hard leads from then on.
I find that the checks before you set
off are an important habit to get into
as they remove any side thoughts that
might be on your mind whilst up on the
wall. Another good habit to get into is
simply weighting the rope before you
start to climb. By doing this you are
physically proving to yourself that the
rope holds your weight and that nothing
can possibly go wrong.
Dealing with Failure
A big part of climbing is dealing with
failure. What happens to you when
things don’t go the way you had
planned? This could mean you have just
failed on a hard redpoint attempt; what
does this mean to you and what does it
bode for your future climbing?
Excuses begin to come out, you begin
pouring negative self-doubt into your
mind, driving yourself into a downward
spiral of negative emotion.
Why does this have to be? Instead of
feeling bad about yourself, you need
to feel challenged by your unsuccessful
attempt and see it more as a way of
developing yourself as a climber. Anyone
who reads my blog will know just how
much I fail on a day-to-day basis, and it’s
the best way to succeed in my opinion!
The biggest failures of my climbing
career to date have instigated the
biggest changes and improvements of
my climbing. In 2007 I went to Ceuse,
France and got totally schooled. A year
later I returned after a season of training
hard, focusing mainly on what I was
weak on from the previous trip, and I
had an amazing trip, climbing some of
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James finds that nothing feels
worse than stripping an unfinished
project at the end of a trip!
Natalie Berry already learning
from her performance whilst being
lowered from a competition route
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A couple of hours after
this failure I got back on
and did it!
the hardest routes in my climbing career
to that date!
In 2009 I met my nemesis, Rollito
Sharma (8b+), Santa Linya Cave, Spain.
After weeks of hard work, I failed and
had to leave the country. A year and
a half later I returned after training - I
knew what I had to do to get stronger
from my experiences on Rollito Sharma
and didn’t fail a second time. This
confidence boost then sent me into a
positive spiral of hard ticks resulting in
the best climbing trip I have ever had.
My point is that failure is an important
part of the process of improving as
a climber, so don’t shy away from it,
instead embrace it and look for the
challenges that will cause you to fail, and
in the long run, improve.
Facing your Demons
Looking back at our last topic, ‘dealing
with failure’, climbers often avoid
trying things that are likely going to
cause them to fail. Instead, you need to
challenge yourself with climbing that you
aren’t used to, climbing that you find
hard and training that pushes both your
mental and physical barriers.
If you are strong on crimps, it makes
sense that you avoid spending all session
trying crimpy problems and instead
look for styles of routes or problems
that don’t suit you e.g. pockets, dynos,
slopers, arêtes?
My major weakness for most of my
climbing career is that I am basically
a weakling sport climber! I am really
very weak compared with my good
endurance levels and so strength and
power was an obvious area for me to
improve. It took a lot of mental effort
and discipline to change the direction
of my training because it meant that
I would have to try harder and I’d be
failing a lot more than usual. It’s all in
the name of progression though.
Everybody has the ability and the will
power to do this, it’s all about finding
the correct stimulus. I bet that you
can think of a time somewhere in your
past when you have truly worked hard,
faced your demons and reaped the
benefits from it. When you did this, it
was most likely because you had a goal
set for yourself and you were striving to
achieve it.
Goals are an excellent way of gaining
the motivation to push harder and work
your weaknesses, because knowing
that you have something you are
working towards in the future is exciting
and gives you newfound power and
determination.
Beyond the Call of Duty!
If you want to get better, there is no
other way; you have to be prepared to
give a little extra. Pushing that extra
bit doesn’t necessarily mean increasing
volume or trying harder stuff, all it means
is changing your routine, challenging
You need to push your
limits for routes like this
that demand multiple
climbing style to succeed
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Give yourself
something to aim
for – like this super
route on Kalymnos
yourself in a new way whether it be on
new routes, new styles or at new walls
or crags.
My belief is that if you climb once a
week, you are unlikely to see good gains.
If you climb two or three times a week it
will go a long way towards making you a
better climber as you will be getting a lot
more volume of movement and physical
training on the wall and if you climb four
days a week, that is the optimum volume
and intensity of climbing you need in
order to see very good progression.
If you already do the volume (two to
four days a week climbing), then you
need to play about with the types of
sessions you have and the intensity of
them.
Session Types (Examples)
1) Hard Bouldering Session (Focus on
Power Problems)
2) Hard Route Session (Focus on
Sustained 30 move routes)
3) Stamina Session (4x4’s @ Level 2/3
Pump)
4) Circuit Session (9 x Circuits @ Level 5)
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5) Boulder Mileage (Complete 30
Problems between VB – V3)
6) Fingerboard Session (Repeaters)
These are just six examples of sessions you
could have, you could even do different
ones every week, but it’s probably a
good idea to cycle between four weeks
of doing route based sessions and four
weeks of boulder based sessions. If you
climb two to four days a week then you
can always have one session of the other
you aren’t focusing on e.g. during route
phase have a boulder day included.
By mixing it up like this, your body
won’t know what is coming next and will
have to adapt quickly to the changing
training structure – a healthy way of
making big improvements!
Robbie is sponsored by:
Summary
So, what am I saying?
• Learn to be confident – Challenge
your fears by gaining more experience
in the face of them.
• Don’t worry, ‘bout a ting – Failing
is just another part of our paths to
climbing perfection, so embrace the
failure!
• Mix it up! – Change how you climb
everyday to get the best gains from
your sessions.
• GOAL!!! – Make yourself some
goals so you have something to
motivate yourself towards.
• Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger – If
you’re going to go for it, you may as
well give it your all! Always give it
110%, strive for excellence and push
that extra bit more to see the end
results you really want!
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