The scientific rationale for staying present while climbing

Have you ever felt like your physical output is just not representing what you’re truly capable of? Or has something that sometimes feels quite easy, just felt terribly hard, awkward, or weak? There are hundreds of reasons we might not perform at our best. Through numerous fascinating research studies, the book “Endure: Mind, Body and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance” by Alex Hutchinson makes the case for the mind’s role in limiting our physical capacity.

“First, the limits we encounter during exercise aren’t a consequence of failing muscles; they’re imposed in advance by the brain to ensure we never reach true failure. And second, the brain imposes these limits by controlling how much muscle is recruited at a given effort level.” (Hutchinson, 2018, p. 45)

Tim Noakes, a South African physician and scientist, calls this concept “anticipatory regulation.” For example, think about climbing on a very hot day. The effort itself feels harder, even if you’re climbing something within your limits. The moves are the same, but your brain is restricting your physical capacity sooner.

Noakes considers the most convincing piece of evidence for this theory to be “the end spurt”. We can look at the Comrades Marathon—a prestigious 56-mile ultramarthon with a strict 12-hour cutoff time. After running for nearly 12 hours over notoriously difficult terrain, runners within striking distance of the finish line near the cutoff time actually speed up.

“Conventional psychology suggests that you get progressively more fatigued over the course of a run, as muscle fibers fail and fuel stores are emptied. But then, when the end is in sight, you speed up. Clearly your muscles were capable of going faster in the preceding miles; so why didn’t they? ‘That shows that our understanding of fatigue is totally wrong,’ Noakes said. It must be the brain that holds you back during long efforts, and then releases the final reserves when you’re nearly finished and the danger is past.” (Hutchinson, 2018, p. 47)

This phenomenon has also been observed in world-record races of distances from the mile to 10,000 meters—runners who had been giving their all for the entirety of the race are somehow able to access additional strength and speed in their final lap.

What does this mean for us as climbers? Anticipatory regulation tells us that an effort can feel harder if your brain knows there’s a lot more terrain to go. That crux that’s midway up the route could actually make you feel more pumped than you expect, if your brain is saving some gas in the tank for the rest of the route.

The thing is, we need that strength for the mid-route crux moves. We don’t want our brains to prematurely throttle our capacity at the most difficult part of the route. Our brains don’t necessarily process that the climbing eases up after this one move—that to us, this is where we want that “end spurt” boost that runners capitalize on in their last lap.

Learning deep presence in climbing can help. Climbing “in the moment” is the feeling of complete focus on only what’s in front of you: how the holds feel, the visual characteristics of the rock, the strength of your body, and your breath. In this state, you can detach from the mental calculation of how much climbing is left to go. But to be effective, this mindset can’t just be a little trick you employ at the crux. Your brain is smarter than that. Cultivating presence in climbing is a practice—one that requires continual effort to truly master.

In the mindset of complete presence on the rock, you can mitigate the effects of prematurely-throttled strength. The move you’re on, not how far you have left to go, becomes your complete goal.

The goal of presence is part of the reason I steer clear of ever using the phrase, “you’re almost there!” to encourage another climber. Let’s consider what this actually means for a minute. Almost where? To those arbitrary chains that someone installed 20 years ago? And once you’re there, you’re just about to be lowered back to the ground. It’s not like there’s a candy bar waiting for you when you get “there.” Single-pitch climbing is not about the destination. Getting to the top means the climbing is over. If we want the climbing to be over, why did we even start in the first place?

Fixating on the chains will not help you climb your best. As we’ve seen, your brain may actually work against you if you’re preoccupied by thinking about how much farther you have to go. Staying present is more than a platitude. Training your mind to focus wholly on the immediate problem in front of you can help you leverage your full strength more often. The point of climbing is not simply to reach the end—it’s to perform our best and enjoy every minute of what happens along the way.

Sources

Hutchinson, A. (2018). The Central Governor. In Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance (pp. 37–53). Custom House.