Learn This: Mental Training for Climbers

Spending a little bit of time focusing on mental training can go a long way in improving your climbing. If you don’t have a strong mind to back up your physical strength, you may be holding yourself back…

“Years of personal climbing experience, countless climber surveys, and psychological research all point to mental strength as the most influential factor in whether a climber succeeds or not. Your body might be strong and willing, but if you don’t have an equally strong and willing mind, your body has nothing to guide it. The good news is that you can train your brain just like you train your body.” -Don McGrath and Jeff Elison

From climbing.com, this article is an excerpt from the book Vertical Mind: Psychological Approaches for Optimal Rock Climbing by Don McGrath, Ph.D., and Jeff Elison, Ph.D. It’s an overview of a mental training plan that has been developed to outline the skills you’ll need to improve your head game and thus improve how well you climb.

This excerpt talks about how we learn, visualization and beta maps, the importance of scripts (sequences of perceptions/thoughts/feelings/actions are what cognitive psychologists call scripts), and how to rewrite your scripts to improve climbing (as in: think, play, send!). 

Mental training for climbing isn’t easy. But it’s worth it. Learn more here….

CLICK HERE: Learn This: Mental Training for Climbers

(photo courtesy of climbing.com)