When it comes to mental training for climbing, Arno Ilgner is one of the climbers who best understands how to impliment effective mental training and how important having a strong mind can be for performance. While we strongly suggest any climber struggling with the mental side of the sport read his book The Rock Warrior’s Way, here’s a short article from Rock and Ice in which Ilgner describes how thought can interfere with performance and discusses strategies for combating these negative effects.
“Your mind will do anything it can to keep from being fully present for the stress that is inherent in a climbing challenge. It will create thoughts to escape the stress, such as what happened to me on Whitesides. Another common escape thought is: ‘I’m too pumped to continue.'”
This tendency to escape is your mind’s natural inclination. What you can do about it is simply identify—or notice—these thoughts when they happen. You can’t “fix” the mind from the perspective of the mind. Mental fitness training has to be done from a perspective that is removed from the mind itself. You need a different access point.” – Arno Ilgner
Ilgner’s main suggestion for combating the negative effects thinking with a wandering mind can have on performance is to shift you perspective to that of the “witness” where you can “observe and notice” when your mind is generating thoughts. By creating this third person perspective, you will be able to actively acknowledge any negative thoughts your mind is creating and disregard them.
“Perhaps the most critical shift you can make in developing mental fitness is learning to operate from the perspective of the Witness. Your mental fitness will improve to the same degree that you can make this shift. Once you begin to operate from the Witness’s perspective, you separate your true self from the limiting effects of thinking.” – Arno Ilgner
This is a complex topic and is covered in more detail in the complete article which you can read by clicking through bellow. Also, remember that while mental gains are often less tangible that physical ones they are just as important if you are really looking to improve as a climber. It is just as important to strive to become a better climber as is it is train to be a stronger climber.
Click Here: Set Thought Aside to Improve Performance with Arno Ilgner
(photo courtesy of Savannah Cummins / @sav.cummins)
Other Articles You Might Like:
- TBP 023 :: Arno Ilgner on Overcoming Fear and Ego in Climbing
- Dave MacLeod and The Fear of Falling
- TBP 034 :: Justen Sjong on Improving Your Mental Game
- Mental Training, 3 Simple Mantras
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