Personal Climbing Renascence, must you be born again?

[caribe]

This is most prob a diff subject, one that we have rehashed, but from what you offer above it does not appear that you were misunderstood.

[ahab]

Climbing is definitely an unnecessary resistance of a universal force. We go out of our way to do this. In our resistance we find strength, and courage and we look within. The resistance is the hook. If you turn down the resistance and boil climbing down to cruising, many or us (sorry if I am speaking for you without authority) unhook and go do something challenging...

well put, sir.

...like sudoku.

9 goes here! oh, shit! there's already a 9 in that row dammit!!

[rhunt]

For me it was climbing with people who were and still are better than me and learning how to recover on a route.

[krampus]

I spent years enjoying the same routs but always wondered if I could push a little harder. I lived in Lexington so I never really pushed myself cus I could always push it tomorrow or the next day cus I will be out there anyway. Being outside is mainly s about for me. but once I moved to Louisville I no day trips were just a little more taxing and access was just not like it was in lex so I decided that if I drove all the way out there I was no longer looking to be rope gun, I wanted to be selfish and climb for myself for a change. Well, I at least wanted to be able to push myself as hard as I could.

Ps. Brent, I am never climbing with you again. Mike and Ahab, thanks for making brent's smile a little less vertical.

[Shamis]

strongest I've ever been was when I climbed outside 3 days a week, and made sure to get in 5 routes before I got on something that could potentially shut me down. That way I was always guaranteed to get a lot of mileage in before getting shredded on some project.

[captain static]

Agreed that breakthroughs have to do with the mind game. On the other hand, to me, it is not something you can necessarily think through rationally. It is, as Caribe implies in the title of this thread, more like having an epiphany. Some would call it getting into The Zone.

Where I made a breakthrough was related to a "warrior" practice. I have never read Arno's books or taken one of his classes. I am familiar with "warrior" practices from the works of Castaneda. The practice that happened in this case is known as "breaking routines". I say happened because I did not consciously break the routine in this case. Now for what happened.

My partner and I had been projecting. We had both been training together regularly. So physically we were both at the top of our game. This day at the cliff we had both warmed up, as usual, before getting on our projects. Then, for some reason I felt tired and one of my partners friends belayed them on their project while I took a nap at the base of my project. After a while I woke up and started scoping out my project. A complete stranger walked up and asked me if I wanted a ride. I said sure and proceeded to send. In the weeks after this I made breakthroughs into the next number grade.

What had happened, inadvertently, was that I broke the routine of projecting with my partner and the subliminal pressure that put on me to send. Upon realizing what had happened, that subliminal pressure became conscious, and it no longer was a problem.

[Ascentionist]

I stopped roped climbing and started bouldering all the time (7+ days a week). When I went back to roped climbing everything made more sense. I broke routes down into sections rather than seeing them as singular tall obstacles.

I had increased in power which translated to better endurance (though I have always lacked endurance) and the heady nature of bouldering translated into a better lead head.

I think a trul rebirth necessitates a complete change of outlook. Try a different form of climbing. If you do overhanging sport try focusing on slabs or trad, if you do trad try pumpy sport, boulder if you're a roped climber.

You can be strong as Atlas, but you ain't goin' nowhere your mind won't let you go.

Experience will drive you much further than fitness. Mileage is key and variance will broaden your repertoire.

If you're hitting a wall with your overall fitness focus on technique and increase your efficiency.

Holistic approach is best...wish I could employ this myself right now, but got too much going on. Maybe when the kids are older...

[JB]

Caribe, you need to read some Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, especially his stuff about "Flow":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

I am currently experiencing my second plateau... If I want to climb my current upper limit more than just upon occasion, i'm gonna have to train harder. However, getting from my last plateau to here just required a little more mental focus and technique building and seemed to happen quickly, and after nearly a year off from climbing much at all.

[Lateralus]

caribe + HGH = climbing jesus

[caribe]

The more responses I see the puzzling the big breaks in the numbers become. Apparently as Captain States puts it, there may be no silver bullet that we can all kill the werewolf with.