Aaron's Status

10:19 am

I did not write out book club posts as I’ve been reading at random times and apparently I made a lot of progress without really reflecting on it, so this is going to be a whirlwind. The chapters here are:

• 4: Fear and Performance
• 5: The Fear of Falling
• 6: Falling and Relaxation Drills and Tactics
• 7: Fear of Failure
• 8: Drills and Tactics to Address Fear of Failure

As you can see, they are all related to fears and how to address or manage them. I think I can summarize what I took away from all four chapters in a holistic way so that’s what I’m going to attempt to do.

The generalized point is that our performance in climbing is hindered by our fears. The fear of falling can be legitimate and helpful (because it may shield us from injury), but it can also be detrimental (when we hold ourselves back because of the fear itself). The fear of failure is a more obvious waste of energy, and when we are in fear of what others think about us it can hold us back from reaching our potential.

Different people react differently to being watched; I think I mostly climb harder when I’m being watched, but I think I also fear what it means to fall or fail on a climb, especially if it is one that others in my group have sent. A thrust of the book is to detach yourself from that thinking and consider only your own goals.

The most interesting things I recall from the falling chapters were related to strategies for evaluating fall risk, which include throwing sandbags to test the strength of a flake, or watch another person take a fall you’re nervous about. Those may come in handy as I begin to lead climb. The latter one, anyway.

There was a lot of space devoted to a risk analysis framework, which to me felt so obvious I didn’t derive a ton of utility from it, but it’s nonetheless useful to consider whether a fall is “worth it.”

Finally there is the chapter entirely about relaxation, which I think mainly is concerned with observing when you need to “amp up” vs. relax, and provides some ideas for how to do that. Before doing a tough dyno, you might want to give a “primal scream,” and if you’re overgripping and getting anxious you might want to do a breathing technique.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly for me personally, is the tactics to manage fear of failure. I don’t necessarily have a strong “fear” of failure, but I think I do fail to frame success in a way that fits my progress goals and gives me the space to climb the way I want to climb. That is, it’s easy to say “failure is not sending,” or “success is sending,” and people may superficially think about climbing that way, but as with any sport, there is more to it than winning and losing.

Moreover, and what I think is the big point here, thinking about success in a more nuanced way (and independent from sending or making the goal or winning the game) is the gateway to making progress in performance. Because if you are only fixated on that end goal, you won’t be able to measure and adapt the real actions you take during the climb (or game or whatever).

Chapter eight offers a bunch of specific scenarios or common ways of thinking about failure and success, and ways to debunk those ideas or re-script them to be more beneficial. I don’t remember much of what I took away from those, it all seemed logical to me.

What is more useful is how I want to apply this in my climbing, and I think there’s definitely something there about how to frame what my goal is, and how I feel about my performance, regardless of whether I send a climb or not. Did I try as hard as I could? Did I learn anything? Did I make any progress on the climb?

We are social creatures and have very deeply hardwired emotions attached to where we think we fall in the social order, or how we think we are accepted by others. This is one of those “lizard brain” self-defense mechanisms because humans who didn’t have others to help them basically died. It makes sense from that perspective, but when it comes to these big-brain industrialized society hobbies like recreational rock climbing, we can be holding ourselves back by ascribing too much to those feelings.

What I need to work on is being happy to fall off a climb that other people completed, because I unlocked something for myself, or because I just had fun. Everyone has good days and bad days on the wall, and there’s no reason to dwell on each send in that way. We’ll all tick our projects eventually, if we keep at it. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

I think that’s enough for these chapters.

10:01 am

I’ve taken to calling this “microblogging,” although the posts haven’t been all that micro, have they? I guess it’s just a blog. I do give myself permission to make them short but I never seem to.

The work week was fine, we basically got everything done that we had to, and next week is going to be a bit of a chaos factory I fear, but probably nothing that I need to lose sleep over.

I’m trying to tear through my TODOs. I have made a custom “Die Hard” ornament for our climbing friends, plotted some name cards for gifts on the pen plotter, and at some point I’ll wire up a “Shelly 1” relay for the lights I installed under the cabinets in my “coffee area” of the kitchen.

I still need to plot the final PTPX postcard and mail them all out. I also need to wrap $wife’s gifts, but I’ll do that during work while she’s not here.

Otherwise, we just have my buddy’s annual Christmas party this evening, which has become less and less of a spectacle each year as we get older. We are bringing $kid this year, which all but ensures that it’s an earlier night, but I guess that’s fine since all of us are climbing in some capacity tomorrow.

$wife and her friend are going to attempt to climb outdoors, which at this time of year I don’t think I even want to attempt, so I’m taking $kid to his climbing class and doing some belay practice with my belay buddy. I don’t think there’s much else going on tomorrow, which is good, I am feeling a tiny bit oversubscribed with how much we’ve committed to this month.

I will return with a #bookclub post soon to fill in what I’ve already read since the last one.