by Steve Bechtel
The Important “Dessert” of an Attempt
When we are climbing at a hard or limit level, most of us find it the most enjoyable part of the sport. We sometimes define ourselves by the grades we can do, and build whole seasons around changing that number. Many climbers have no issue putting in the work to train their fingers and arms and skin to a high level, But they lack the simple skill of figuring out what went wrong in an attempt on a boulder or route and how to fix it next time.
A simple skill for sending more quickly is post-performance feedback. It’s a simple, and often overlooked, part of the training process. It’s not high fives after a send, and self-loathing after, but an intentional analysis for future improvement. In fact, we can learn very little from a send because often we don’t feel that need for reflection—after all, we succeeded. On the flip side, we can gain so much from a struggle, especially if we dive deep into what needs to be changed.
The real work of post-performance feedback begins after you’ve lowered off an attempt. Sometimes it’s in those first moments back on the ground. Sometimes when you’re chatting with your partner. And sometimes when you’re back home and thinking through what happened that day. Let’s look at self-reflection, and then we’ll talk about the added layer of external feedback. Following this, we can dive into what parts to really pay attention to, and why these matter.
The Art of Self-Reflection
The first skill in reflection is doing it at all. Strangely enough, there are climbers who do very little thinking about what went wrong in their efforts, and instead go right to blaming conditions, other people, shoes, guidebook authors, or the climb itself. Since we can’t change any of those things, a student of climbing needs to learn to focus mental effort not on blame, but on change.
Step one is an immediate analysis after a boulder or sequence, especially one that felt particularly hard or awkward. This mental review should take just a few seconds, and feature questions like:
- “What felt good / better on that try?”
- “Where did I hesitate or choke?”
- “Was my position solid or did I rely too much on pure strength?”
- “Next time ________ might work better.”
We all do this naturally to some degree, but getting better at holding a few minutes for it is a strong area for growth.
Once we are done with the climbing day and back chillin’ in our $100,000 “dirtbag” van, it’s helpful to get writing. I know athletes that do video blogs or audio notes, but writing in a notebook allows a different kind of reflection, and helps you keep your notes all in one place.
If you’ve not kept any kind of log before, start simple. Note the date, the climbing area or gym, the duration of the session, and then list out the problems or climbs that you did. Each of these should include grade, type of movement, how you did (flash, 4 attempts, couldn’t start, etc.), and any insights like “wow, those crimps are smaller than I’d expected.” Line out where you failed on a problem and why you think that might be. You can also note mental state, physical sensations, and things to try next time. My favorite thing to reflect on: how hard did I try? Was I locked in or just half-heartedly climbing up the thing?
The Mental Game
As you delve into your log, pay special attention to emotional and psychological things that come up. Specifics about beta, soreness, or tactics are useful, but frequently the brain side of things is where the big issues exist. Was I calm? Afraid? Was I overthinking and not just letting myself climb? Did I have a success or positive mindset, or did I sabotage the effort?
If you start to see patterns of sabotage, of negativity, or of fear, it is important to turn and face these directly. I’ve told the story many times of how one of my fearful athletes was convinced that just a little more physical strength and endurance would be the key to being less afraid…and ten years later, I can tell you that was decidedly not true. Stronger now than ever, still scared to death.
Each of these limiters must be seen and addressed directly and without judgement. The only way past a big issue like this is the same way we’d address a physical limit; by “poking the bear.” We’ll look at some tactics for doing this in the next section.
Leveraging External Feedback
Coach or Partner Feedback
Many of us are really bad at “feeling” movement. We forget sequences. We can’t repeat subtle position changes. We can’t, for the life of us, remember crux beta until days into trying a climb. This is where external feedback from a climbing partner or coach can be really powerful. Even an untrained eye can start to see movement inefficiencies, positioning differences, and sequences. A simple exchange of a couple of sentences can really start to make a difference.
“You did this, but last time it seemed like this worked.”
We don’t need the partner to go too deep, just a simple reflection of how it looked like from the outside. When giving movement feedback, it’s really helpful to remain neutral, positive, and inquiry-driven. A good rule, give feedback the way you’d like to receive it. Instead of "Your footwork was bad," try "Did you feel like your feet were slipping? Maybe try driving with your toe more."
A good climbing coach will have this mastered. This coach should not “give beta,” or show you how they did the move, but help you work through the process of what you did, and how it felt while you were doing it. A coach can help with comparing your progress try-to-try and session-to-session, and should help you keep a long-term vision. The coach should also be available for a discourse on the specific type of problem you’re having, and allow for your own impression.
Most importantly, the coach will have more than one solution to the problem.
Video Analysis
Another level entirely, video feedback has potential to supercharge our performance. Never in the history of sport has it been so easy to get video feedback, and we’re fools not to take advantage of the camera in our pocket.
Although video use can get out of control (i.e. climbing for the video rather than videoing to climb better), we want to remember that it is a simple objective tool for feedback. Climb Strong coach Eric Krumland has seen huge gains in his climbing (and in the climbing of his athletes) with an intensive use of video analysis (video and article coming soon from Eric).
We can use video in a few ways, but the most immediately effective way is to review footage of boulders or exercises immediately after doing the movement. This provides us with an accelerated learning process that is second only to (maybe equal to?) having a coach standing there for the session.
When watching video, don’t just look at the whole of the climbing, but rather the parts of it. What were the hips doing? Where was my body in each axis of positioning? Were the feet being used optimally? If we watch just the bouldering, there is too much to see.
You can practice this by watching video of other climbers. It doesn’t have quite the same feedback effect (doing the movement + watching it is magic), but you start to learn to parse movement down and understand it quite well.
The Metrics That Matter
Measuring Progress Beyond the Grade
When it comes to understanding performance, we have to accept that simply sending harder is not the only marker of progress. Yes, it’s the overall goal, but if we only accept harder grades as our “steps of improvement,” the feeling of progress might be nearly impossible to find. We need to accept that learning pieces of movement, improving tactics, and improving specific facets of fitness should be seen as essential parts of the puzzle, too.
Tracking things like training consistency, faster sends, success on anti-style movements, or better movement patterning should be a regular part of post-performance.
The 'Why' Behind the 'What'
Intentional feedback is simply supercharging progress. The key here is that for most of us, progress stalls out from time to time. The more experienced we get, the less we “feel” inefficient or poor movement, and we start to just think of some parts of bad movement as our “style.”
We break down feedback into pieces, because if we look at the whole of a problem or route, there is simply too much going on. A critical component of this idea is to not only figure out where your performance was not clean, but to then build a plan to improve it.
The final part of the puzzle is figuring out how to implement feedback in a way that helps us climb better.
Feedback into Performance
I used to hate feedback. It might stem from my childhood or may just have been a quirk of my personality. Whatever it was, it took a while before I realized it was a tool I could leverage rather than a criticism or an attack just to hurt me (usually).
There are several methods for moving from collecting feedback as we’ve discussed above to moving it into application or performance. All of these methods basically follow the same structure, which looks like this:
Practice --> Look at / Listen to Feedback --> Reflect --> Practice Again
An essential component is the reflection piece, and it should not be hurried. If you do a boulder, then sit down and watch the video, you absolutely have to stop and think before you try again, even if you imagine you know what to do right away. Too often, we fall off and are pretty sure it was because our foot slipped, or the hold was greasy, or momentum was wrong. But what about climbing where we don’t fail? Or what about climbing where, try as we might, we can’t even start the move?
These instances are where we can best leverage a deeper look at feedback. When we are able to complete a boulder or route, the purpose of reviewing feedback is to streamline technique, look for errors, and to get more efficient and effective at submaximal activity. This is an overlooked part of preparation, and it’s relatively simple to take care of. On super-maximal efforts, looking closely at positioning, at set-up, and at all of the pieces of physical strength are key. It’s not always weak fingers that stop us.
Remember that feedback is always happening, and every time we move, some level of feedback comes to us. The most challenging part is to find actionable, useful feedback, and then to listen to it. If you’re not ative in gathering it, you sure won’t get all you can from it.