Letting go and life lessons from climbing

Life lessons from climbing - Trust, belief and commitment

This post was inspired by enforced bed rest from a run down immune system and accompanying Staph infection, which isn't ideal two weeks before my next Figure bodybuilding competition, but on a positive slant it is an opportunity to practice lessons I learnt the hard way; one of which is mother nature always wins. If the body needs to rest, it will let you know very clearly and I've found pushing against this creates nothing but absolute chaos, breakdown and worsening of a condition. It's a really tough lesson for athletes to learn because coping with discomfort, pain and fatigue is a necessary part of training and adaptation, but being able to distinguish between a genuine need for rest is a skill worth knowing. I personally like to take an intuitive approach to rest days; imposed when needed or bypassed when not needed, but I have no fixed rule about this. As part of rest or recovery, being able to focus on the positives, in place of the negatives is a huge part of mental relaxation. Instead of fixating on a growing infection I opted for watching outdoor rock climbing videos! It's a hobby I love and watching the world's best climbers is extremely relaxing because it's a beautiful contradiction of effort and ease. I've observed that the best climbers all seem remarkably good at balancing that intense desire for a goal with the ability to mentally "let go" when things are going wrong. I wonder if perhaps this is something more observable in extreme sports (where the life/death stakes are high) because it simply isn't possible to achieve these physical feats without that combination. I also think this mind set is beneficial, necessary and transferrable to other sports. When things seem impossible, sometimes the best thing to do is just try less hard.

Life lessons from climbing

Enforced rest is actually a lovely chance to reminisce over past climbing trips and revisit things that have really helped me today. Technically I'm not a good climber, I'm strong but I have the interesting ability to make easy things look really hard. I don't have that beautiful ease and grace that you see in the best climbers. I'm more like an oversized feline that has got stuck up a tree and refuses to come down; claws deeply embedded into whatever it can find, so again I will not be talking about technicalities of climbing and movement but more about the profound lessons I learnt as a beginner which have served me so well in life and competition.

Surrendering

There is this beautiful moment that comes when you surrender to a difficult situation and just accept "it is what it is". It allows you to take action from a place of calm. This situation may face you multiple times on a challenging climbing route and this is where those things such as: trust in yourself and your belay partner, belief and 100% commitment to a move really matter. There will be moments where a full-on integration of mind and body needs to happen in order to make the impossible possible.

Having to repeatedly face these moments where I was climbing continuously above my comfort level, a rather interesting thing happened - I learnt to relax in terror, because it simply would not have been possible to do what I wanted to do from that place of fear and tension. Believe you me there were many moments of tantrums, blame, tears and despair, all of which were not going to do anything to help the situation except expend energy I didn't have and infuriate my climbing partner!

Learning to stay calm and focused amongst fear (perceived and real) is possibly one of the biggest and best lessons I have learnt in dealing with challenging situations. It also gives you confidence to try harder things because facing fear diminishes it and therefore enjoyment comes with that. Having just taken up grappling (and of course now competition!) as part of bodybuilding training, I'm really trying to apply this to a situation where you have another opponent to factor in. It requires a lot of focus to override my modus operandi of just chaotic fight but there have been fleeting moments of clarity under pressure and what a difference it makes. Infinite possibilities become visible and the game becomes truly enjoyable; which to me is the whole point of all this.
I am a jack of all trades of sport and competition but there are interesting lessons in being a generalist to a reasonably high level. I love that all sports teach us something. I love that these lessons are universal and can be applied to anything - but more than anything I love being a beginner and being curious because you can find something in anything.