The importance of being Wolfgang

Dan overruled Ned and the original board session was back on again. I arrived and Dylan was waiting outside for me. I’ve only previously been on their board twice before, and both times I have had plausible excuses, not so last night. The gloves were off. No splits, no previous day training – it should all be on tonight. But it wasn’t. It’s a humbling experience climbing on that board. Yes there is an element of it being a new board, but really the meat of the matter is that it’s just hard. The base level is higher than anywhere I have been and so I find it difficult to get going and there are no ego cosseting soft touches to build confidence.

You don’t get strong by doing moves, you get strong by not doing them. The problem is that I like to climb - to do a bit, to feel the flow and movement in my limbs, whereas flailing doesn’t give me that satisfaction it will lead to greater strength. Back to the question of comfort zones. It’s nice to operate within one because you get to feel good about yourself, but this is a hollow victory, you’ll feel good in the short term, but longer term you’ll plateau. You need to push it if you’re going to get better.

What makes this board so hard then? Without question it’s the slick wooden holds and slick wooden foot jibs. But the emphasis is on the foot jibs. The problem with grippy resin foot holds and screw ons is that they are grippy. Place your foot, forget about it and move. That’s not right, and it encourages sloppy ploppin’. Clifford and Birch used to swear by the rubbish wooden foot jib wisdom and it did them no harm, so I become more and more convinced that it is the way. I think the symmetry idea is a strong concept too. You do any problem and before you can take the tick you must repeat its opposite which turns this board into a laboratory of movement - excellent to study your specific individual weaknesses.

So, I leave this most excellent of boards feeling a bit crestfallen. I don’t feel like I’ve done more than a couple of consecutive moves but as I have tried to explain above, this is actually a good thing. Accept ego death and get stronger as a result. As I head towards home my mind starts to wonder about my motivation, to get stronger I need to fail on problems rather than do them, but I like doing problems, I like the movement, and this makes me wonder what it’s all for?

I realise that if you stick to the public climbing walls you’ll pretty much always be able to do almost all the problems and people will tell you you’re good, and in that pool of skill you are - the biggest cog in a small wheel. It’s important to realise that the world is not just that small wheel. This is a syndrome seen often in climbers who get to be the best climber at their local wall, and so they think they are the best climber in the world and then they come to Sheffield.

Everyone likes an ego boost. Surrounding yourself with climbers who aren’t as good as you is a strategy for achieving just that. You get to feel the big dog, but once again we are back in the big cog, small wheel thing. For the person consistently operating at the top of their group of chums, the danger is of stagnation, and of falling in love with their self image created by these fawning acolytes. Once they’ve created this false idol so you have to live up to it. I imagine it’s no giant leap of faith to get from here to having to embellish actual deeds in order to live up to their expectations. Within a group of friends what does it matter if someone is generous with the truth? Well, it doesn’t really. Its only them thats cheated themselves. But when embellishment encroaches upon history then it matters. And it matters to me because I have to accept my limitations and move on – why shouldn’t they?

Ultimately climbing is about much more than being the best. It’s about experience and adventure, look further than the end of the board and who knows what you might find!