#132 - Climb Harder Through Self-Mastery: 9 Lessons for Better Training & Performance

Here's a question for you, dear listener. What if the biggest thing holding back your climbing isn't finger strength? It's not your power endurance, it's not your body weight, it's not your age, and it's not that you haven't yet found the perfect training program. So what is the biggest limiter? Well, it's simply this. You aren't consistently doing the things that you already know you should be doing. Think about it. You probably already know that sleep matters. You know that protein matters. You know you should warm up thoroughly, train your weaknesses, recover between hard sessions, stop wasting half the evening scrolling on your phone. You probably know that getting outside and climbing real rock is vitally important if outdoor climbing is your goal. And you certainly know that you're not going to send your project by endlessly thinking about it, watching videos of other people climbing, and waiting around for the perfect day when you're psyched, rested, strong, conditions are ideal and somehow the stars align. At some point you simply need to execute. And that brings us to a subject I believe is profoundly important for climbers. Behavior modification. Because information doesn't change your life, it doesn't improve your climbing. Behavior does. Welcome to Eric Hurst's training for climbing podcast. Training for climbing podcast. Training for climbing. Welcome back my friends to the training for climbing podcast. I'm Eric Hurst. Today we're going to dig into nine principles that can help you train more consistently, improve your nutrition, manage your time more effectively, and really become a better all-around athlete and rock climber. Ultimately though, this episode is about something much bigger. It's about self mastery. It's about becoming the type of person who increasingly does what needs to be done, even when you don't necessarily feel like doing it. And if you can develop that ability, well, that's a super power that can lead you to uncommon success in climbing and beyond. So without delay, let's drill down into nine lessons for pursuing self mastery. Lesson number one. Question the story you keep telling yourself. Let's begin with something that happens inside your head long before you ever grab a handhold. The story you tell yourself about yourself. I've heard climbers say things like I'm just not very strong or I'm terrible on slopers or I can't climb steep routes or I'm not a good project climber. I don't have enough time to train. I'm too heavy. I'm too old. I've always had weak fingers. Be careful with statements like these because there's an enormous difference between identifying a current weakness and turning that weakness into your identity. Maybe you aren't very good on slopers. Fine. That is useful information. But to say I'm terrible at slopers can easily become a permission to avoid slopers and never train slopers. And guess what happens? You remain terrible at slopers. The belief creates the behavior and the behavior confirms the belief. That's the nasty little feedback loop that you get stuck in forever. I've certainly experienced versions of this myself over my 50 years as a climber. And one of the things age teaches you if you're paying attention is that what you can do today is not necessarily what you'll be able to do in six months or two years from now. I've had periods where I felt incredibly fit. And I've had periods where I felt decidedly less fit. I've had weaknesses emerge that forced me to change how I train and even how I climb. And now as an older climber I can't simply train exactly the way I did when I was 25 years old. And I certainly can't expect the same outcome from training. But that's very different from deciding, well I'm old now. So there's nothing I can do. That's a terrible way to think. And it's very disempowering. The useful question is given where I am today, what can I improve? That's a radically different mindset. So here's your first actionable item. Identify one belief that may be limiting your behavior. To do this, try to finish this sentence. I've always been bad at dot, dot, dot, fill in the blank. Or I can't dot, dot, dot, fill in the blank. Or I'm too fill in the blank. Whatever the skill or situation that fills in these blanks for you, write that down. Then ask yourself, is this an objective fact or is this a story I've rehearsed in my mind so many times that I've stopped questioning it? Sometimes the limitation could be real, but very often the limitation is self-imposed and untrue. And it's something that's highly trainable. And you need to know which is which. On we go to lesson number two. And that is you don't have to believe everything that you think. Now let's take this one level deeper. One of the most valuable psychological skills you can develop as a climber is learning that a thought is not a command. Picture yourself on your project boulder or route. You've fallen from the crux four times, let's say, your skin is going, your forearms are fatigued. And the internal dialogue begins to set in that I'm too weak. That go was my last best chance. This thing isn't gonna happen today. Or maybe you think I'm just not good enough to send this boulder or rig. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Dear listener, well I've been there and I'm sure you have been too. Every climber who spent meaningful time projecting has been there. But here's the important part. The presence of that thought does not make that thought true. Maybe you are too tired. Maybe you're frustrated. Maybe your nervous system is trying to protect you from another uncomfortable failure. Maybe you're embarrassed because your friends are watching. That's kind of normal stuff, I guess. But instead of automatically obeying these thoughts, create a little space. Rather than saying I can't do this, try saying I'm having the thought that I can't do this. Now that sounds like a small, somatic trick, but psychologically it's significant. Now you can examine the thought. You can accurately evaluate where you're truly at. Did you stick the movie yesterday? Are your links improving? Did you discover better beta? Are you arriving at the crux less pumped than previous days? If yes, then evidence may say something very different from what your emotions and how you feel. And this concept applies everywhere. Let's say you're supposed to train after work at 4.30. You think I'm too tired. Well, maybe you are. And if recovery generally requires a rest day, well then take it. But let's investigate. Are you physiologically fatigued or are you mentally reluctant to begin the workout? Those are not the same thing. Likewise with nutrition. You walk into the kitchen and whatever is fastest and most convenient, you grab it. Okay, fine. Well, let's just notice what's happening. Are you making an intentional nutritional decision or are you simply following impulse? Behaviors developed over years. Well, if you want to change that perhaps limiting behavior, it begins with a pause. And that pause is between the stimulus and the response. An intentional pause so that you can ponder and make a value-based decision on what food to grab from the fridge. The more often you practice this sequence of pausing after stimulus and before formulating a response, the less your behavior is dictated by impulse and emotions. Lesson number three, stop chasing goals and build the identity that achieves them. Now we get to what I think may be the most powerful idea of this whole podcast. Climbers, we love goals. We think things like I want to climb V10. I want to climb 513. I want to send my first 512. I want to make finals in this competition. I want to climb Al Cap. Okay, great. Goals, they are useful. They're kind of a north star that you can aim for. But an outcome goal alone tells you very little about what it takes to get there and what you should do today or right now this morning. So what you need to ask is a deeper question. Who do I need to become to achieve that goal? Let's say the goal is to climb 513. Well generally speaking, the climber who succeeds at 513 probably trains consistently. They move efficiently. They have sufficient finger strength they've developed over many years of training. They know how to pace themselves as well as recover on the route. They eat quality food, they consume sufficient protein, they sleep as much as their body needs. They manage stress, they can tolerate failure and they're willing to spend enough time projecting to truly learn the route. So perhaps the real goal isn't simply to climb 513, maybe the real goal is to become a climber capable of consistently doing the things that eventually will result in you climbing 513. That's a very different approach and every behavior becomes a vote for that identity. You complete the plan to work out. That's a vote. You stop the workout when the quality drops instead of doing another 45 minutes of junk training. Well that's a vote. You eat the recovery meal that you really need. That's a vote. You get eight hours of sleep, vote. You spend time training your weaknesses instead of doing the moves that make you feel strong. Another vote. You go back to your project after six days of getting shut down. Another vote. Anyway, you get the idea and the bottom line that is no single decision changes who you are, but you cast the same vote hundreds of times, well eventually that's your identity. And this has become increasingly important in my own climbing. You know after 50 years in this sport, I know enough training theory to make things unnecessarily complicated if I really wanted to. But the fundamentals still win. In disciplined training, focused high quality training over garbage volume adequate rest, good nutrition, outdoors specificity, movement practice and showing up. Sometimes the highest performance decision is remarkably boring or the most effective exercise for you right now is the simplest thing, not the most complex thing, but boring and intelligently repeating behaviors that are effective. That's incredibly powerful lesson number four, small behaviors compound. Here's something athletes consistently underestimate tiny behaviors become enormous when repeated. Let's take sleep. Maybe you're going to bed 30 minutes later than you should tonight, no big deal. Do that 300 nights per year and well you've sacrificed 150 hours of sleep. That's almost an entire week's worth. How about nutrition? Miss one serving of protein? Who cares? But habitually eat a low protein breakfast, under fuel your training and then try to make everything up with dinner. That's not a good practice and it's not an effective nutritional program or what about climbing? Maybe you skip one outdoor day because conditions aren't absolutely perfect, no problem. But do that repeatedly and suddenly you've sacrificed 10 or 20 or more days of real rock climbing over the course of an entire year. Think about how much movement learning that represents. I experience this very clearly when moving between gym climbing and outdoor climbing. I can be quite fit indoors, feel like I'm as strong as ever on my hangboard, but I still need time on the rock before everything starts to click outside. Why? Because outdoor climbing has route reading, it has subtle footholds and textures, unique body positions, certainly risk factors, rest positions, micro beta pacing, it's actually quite different, radically different oftentimes from what you experience in the gym. And these are all little places where you can either be conserving energy or leaking energy and maybe not a drip of a leak but maybe a fire hose of a leak. Gym fitness is enormously useful, but gym fitness isn't identical to outdoor performance. So if your goal is to climb hard outdoors, well then you must accumulate lots of climbing time outside. There's just no substitute for specificity. This is one reason why much of my own rope climbing indoors isn't about consistently attacking routes at my limit. More valuable and what really benefits me when I do go outdoors is to do a lot of quality sub maximal climbing when I'm route climbing indoors. I'll do doubles where I climb around a sub maximal route, maybe two number grades below my limit. So mid range 5 11 is a pretty good grade for me to do these doubles. But once lower off, untie pull the rope and immediately climb the same route a second time. So I turn a 50 foot route into a 100 feet of mainly aerobic powered sub maximal climbing, which really hits the bulls eye of the target of what I'm after, which is increasing movement efficiency and sealing off energy leaks and increasing the capacity of my aerobic energy system, which is the foundation for a successful route climber. So by training in this way and with intention, it better simulates what I'm going to be doing outdoors, especially when I go to say the red river gorge to climb a over hanging hundred foot route. So accumulating movement and training the physiological system that I'm going to be really using outdoors, which is the aerobic energy system more than the anaerobic systems. That's way more effective than crushing myself in the gym on limit routes, falling a lot and making a heroic effort that doesn't really pay off outdoors. A quick side note, obviously you do need to do some anaerobic training. You need to do some limit bouldering, some max strength and power training and some anaerobic lactic training, but most climbers in the gym do too much of that and too little of this aerobic focus training, which I'm fond of calling zone two climbing, that is climbing you can do it in high volume without pumping out or falling. Anyway, over time, it's the volume of climbing that compounds. The same principle applies to nearly everything, 10 minutes of mobility work, 15 minutes of technique practice, 3 grams of creatin every day, getting sufficient protein at breakfast, turning off your phone 30 minutes earlier in the evening. One additional outdoor climbing day per week. None of these look like a secret, that's because there usually isn't a secret. They are simply behaviors that can compound over time and make a massive difference in your climbing ability. If you're serious about climbing harder, recovering faster and staying healthy for the long haul, then it's time to take your nutrition as seriously as you're training. Our podcast sponsor, Fizzy Vanish Nutrition, is the number one climbing nutrition company trusted by many of the world's top professional climbers, along with thousands of everyday crushers just like you, dear listener. One of their most popular products is Senderex. It's a caffeine-free pre-workout designed specifically for climbers. It's research-backed ingredients help increase blood flow, support power endurance, and accelerate recovery between hard boulders, routes, and training exercises. In all this, without jitters or the crash of a highly caffeinated pre-workout, like the Gymbro's use. Then there's Super Charge College, a research-based doctor-recommended college and formula designed to support college and synthesis in the highly stressed fingers and tendons and ligaments and joints throughout a climber's body. If you train hard and climb frequently, well, then connective tissue nutrition really matters. And don't overlook your daily protein needs, Fizzy Vanish's weapons-grade way complex, and their plant-based powerplex provide convenient, high-quality, and great-tasting protein to supplement a well-rounded whole-food diet and to help support muscle recovery, adaptation and performance. Visit FizzyVanish.com to learn more and to find products that best fit your training and climbing goals. North American customers can use Checkout Code Podcast 15 to get 15% off full price nutrition at FizzyVanish.com. Select Fizzy Vanish products are now available in Europe from the Epic TV Shop and AllYouNeed.com. Mexican climbers, please visit FizzyVanish.mx to get your Fizzy Vantage. OK, on we go to lesson number five, and that is to learn to love invisible progress. Climbing has an unusual ability to make you feel like you've accomplished absolutely nothing right before everything comes together. And projecting is perhaps the best example of this. For early projecting sessions, really aren't about sending their information-gathering sessions. Your learning sequences, your deciding which footholds are ideal for your body size and your sequence, you're figuring out where you can move quickly and you're discovering where you can slow down and relax and recover. You're learning where to chalk up and when to climb fast, you're determining whether you need to change your breathing patterns. You're figuring out whether a move that initially feels like it's 100% effort can eventually become an 85% effort move through better execution. That my friends is progress. You're putting the puzzle together and yet climbers often judge the entire day with one question. Did I send? And I think that's a big mistake. When I'm working an outdoor route, I increasingly view the early process like I'm solving a puzzle. Maybe I didn't send, but did I eliminate an inefficient sequence? Did I find a better rest? Did I connect two sections? Did I execute one move with less tension? Did I arrive at the crux with more gas left in the tank? If so, then I moved the project forward. This is important to recognize because progress isn't always visible, but there is still learning taking place even on your worst failed attempts. And when it comes to your physiology, training adaptations are taking place even if you don't feel like you're yet reaping the rewards of your training. Finger strength develops gradually, aerobic adaptations accumulate over months. Technique improves quietly. Confidence emerges from repeated exposure. Connective tissues respond much more slowly than your enthusiasm would prefer, and the result is achy fingers. And this is where athletes get themselves into trouble. The mistake slow progress for no progress. Then they jump to another program. Another protocol, another hangboard routine, another diet, another project. Don't be that athlete. If the program is sound, if it's expertly designed, then give it a chance and trust the process. Track inputs, track intermediate progress. Then make thoughtful adjustments. Patience is not passivity. Patience is disciplined persistence combined with intelligent course correction. Lesson number six. Use your past as data, not identity. Let's talk about failure because climbing gives you plenty of it. You fail on the route. You blow the onsite. You don't make finals in the competition. You get injured. You train poorly. You mismanaged a peak. You have a terrible road trip. You gained weight, you lose fitness. Okay. Now what? Here's the mistake. I failed. Becomes I'm a failure. My training has become inconsistent, becomes I'm an inconsistent person. I got injured, becomes my body is fragile. No. Those are completely different statements. One describes an event, the other creates an identity. Over a 50 year climbing life, I've experienced plenty of ups and downs. That's the nature of a long athletic career. There are going to be periods when you're improving rapidly and there's going to be plateaus. There are going to be injuries. There are going to be years when life circumstances mean climbing temporarily receives less attention, but it takes a backseat for a period of time. But one chapter does not need to become the title of the entire book. And for masters climbers like me, I think this is especially important. Maybe you aren't as good today as you were say five years ago. Okay. Well, that doesn't tell me where you're going to be two years from now. Your job is to examine the present honestly and not extrapolate the past. For example, what has changed? Your training, your body composition, your sleep, your stress, your climbing volume, your number of days climbing outdoors per year, your strength, your health, your motivation, which of those is present and affecting you? Then ask, what can I improve from here? Your past should provide information, but it should not issue the commands. What's up to you? Use your free will. On we go to lesson number seven, and that is discipline means keeping promises to yourself. Let's clarify what discipline actually is. Discipline is not punishment, it's not cold plunges, it's not starving yourself, it's not getting up at 4 a.m., it's not training until your fingers are destroyed, and it's certainly not refusing to enjoy your life. For an athlete, discipline means doing what the situation requires. Sometimes discipline means training hard, yes, sometimes it means ending a session early. Sometimes it means resting, sometimes it means eating more, sometimes it means skipping the beer and going to bed early, sometimes it means doing rehab when you'd much rather go bouldering, sometimes it means getting outside when you'd rather stay home. And here's an important idea. Every promise you keep to yourself builds self trust. Every promise you repeatedly break weakens it. Think about all the things athletes say, I'll start on Monday, I'll go and get serious about my diet, I'm going to train three times every week, I'm going to work on my weaknesses, I'm going to start getting eight hours of sleep, and then nothing changes, eventually your brain stops believing you. So here's my coaching advice, make fewer promises, but make better promises, then keep them. Instead of saying I'm completely changing my nutrition, say I'm going to get 30 grams of high quality protein at breakfast every day this week. Instead of saying, I'm going to train six days this week, I'm going to say Tuesday and Thursday are my two priority training sessions and I'm going to protect them no matter what. Instead of proclaiming that you're going to climb outside more of this autumn season, put the weekends on the calendar, lock in the plans, and pack your car on Fridays and start driving. Reduce the friction between intention and action. This comes from evidence, and one of the best forms of evidence is proving repeatedly, when I say I'm going to do something, I do it. Lesson number eight, let principles make decisions before emotions arrive. Now, imagine you're designing your training entirely based on how you feel. On Monday, you say, I'm psyched, and then you do way too much. On Wednesday, you feel I'm tired, and then you skip everything. And on Friday, you watch a climbing video and you get psyched again, and then you go to the gym and destroy yourself. That's not training. That's emotional improvisation. Good training is governed by principles, and so is good nutrition, and good projecting, and good time management. One of the smartest things you can do is to decide some behaviors before the emotional moment arrives. For example, I don't add another hard fingerboard set when quality is clearly declining, or I don't abandon a training cycle because of one lousy workout, or I don't make a big project decision immediately after a terrible go on the route, or I fuel before hard training, or I protect sleep during performance periods, or I take enough rest between quality red point attempts. These my friends are principles, and I use this consistently when projecting. You've probably experienced this. You just had a terrible attempt, and you fell somewhere you never fall. Now you're angry, and you want to get back on the route immediately to prove that it was a fluke. You can say go, principle says sit down, rest, recover, review what happened, then make another quality attempt. That's maturity. Your feelings are real. Yes, don't suppress them, but they don't get to run the training sessions. They don't run the show. They shouldn't run the show. Think of your emotions as weather, and your principles as a compass. The weather changes, the clouds come and go, the showers move in and out. That's your emotions, but your direction doesn't need to. The compass in this performance setting are your principles. This brings us to our final principle, or lesson number nine, and that is control the controllables. This may be the most useful mental framework in climbing, control the controllables. Think about everything that you can't completely control. The weather, humidity, temperature, the crowds, partners, traffic, travel, a hold breaking, the route being wet, whether somebody else sends, competition judging, other people's opinions, and ultimately you can't completely control whether or not you will send. You can do everything correct. correctly and of course still fall. So what can you control? Your preparation, your training, your warmup, nutrition, hydration, sleep, your beta, your breathing, how much rest you take, how carefully you observe the route, whether you learn from each attempt or ignore the feedback the route is giving you, how you speak to yourself after failed attempts, your effort, your attitude, your response, those things belong to you, own them, and personally I find this mindset increasingly valuable. When you've climbed for decades you understand just how much is outside of your control. The body changes, life changes, conditions change, but you still have enormous influence over your preparation and your response to different situations. So rather than walking to the cliff asking, am I going to send today? Ask yourself, what can I do today that maximizes my probability of sending? Now you've created a useful problem, warm up correctly, eat, hydrate, observe conditions, review beta, rest, execute, visualize, learn, and repeat over and over. Outcome Thinking Creates Anxiety, whereas process-oriented thinking creates action. Okay, dear listener, to wrap up this podcast, I want you to ask yourself three questions. You can do this right now or you can kind of pause and wait until let's say tomorrow to think about this and decide how you're going to answer each of these three questions. Number one is, who am I trying to become? A disciplined climber, a technically better climber, a patient project climber, a healthier 60-year-old athlete, a future 513 climber, a future world cup champion climber, whatever it is, write it down. Question number two, what is one behavior I can perform today that proves it? Maybe that's the workout, maybe it's the recovery, maybe it's eating better, maybe it's turning off your phone and repurposing some of that wasted time, maybe it's doing your rehab, if you're nursing an injury, maybe it's finally driving to the rocks and trying your project bolder or route. And number three, what can I control today? Identify what thing is in your control, what action you need to take, and then narrow your focus on that and get busy. As a climber of 50 years, there is something I increasingly have come to believe. Long-term success in this sport isn't about being perfectly motivated. Nobody is. It's not about never making mistakes. You will, I will, we all do. And it's certainly not about discovering the one perfect training plan that somehow makes improvement effortless. The climbers who keep progressing over decades tend to do something much simpler. They stay engaged. They keep learning. They adjust and, of course, correct. They protect their health. They manage their training. They fuel themselves properly. They recover well. They tolerate bad days. They survive plateaus. They learn from failure. They show up. And critically, they gradually become better at separating what they feel like doing from what they need to do. That, my friends, is what self-mastery is all about. In self-mastery, maybe one of the greatest performance advantages that's available to you. So don't finish this podcast, just feeling inspired and decide you're going to completely reinvent your life tomorrow. That probably won't work. A better approach is to choose one principle, to choose one promise, to choose one behavior, to take one uncomfortable step in the direction of the athlete you want to become. Maybe it's to quit drinking or maybe it's to stop doing that. One exercise or climbing activity that always results in injury. Then repeat this process tomorrow, next week. Next month. Because the climber will become one year, or five years, or ten years from now, isn't going to be created by one heroic workout, or one perfect diet, or one incredible climbing day, or dare I say one training for climbing podcast. The future version of you is being created right now through hundreds and thousands of seemingly insignificant decisions, so make those decisions deliberately. Control the controllables, keep your promises, and become the person capable of achieving the goal. That's the real training. Now, if you really like this podcast and you want a deeper study into behavior modification and the pursuit of becoming the best you can be at anything, we'll then go back and listen to my training for climbing podcast from January of this year. It's number 124, and the title is 15 concepts that changed my life. You'll find it link in the show notes. Please go back and listen to that podcast if you haven't already. One quick favor before you go. If you enjoyed this training for climbing podcast, well then please share it with a friend or your training partner, and consider leaving a five star review on Apple podcasts and on Spotify. If you'd like to continue learning about training for climbing, then join my training for climbing email list. Go to my website trainingforcliming.com. There'll be a pop-up window, and you can enter your name and email address, and you'll get one or two content rich emails from me each month and zero spam, I promise. And if you'd like to connect on social media, you can find me on Instagram at Eric_Hirst. That's dot h-o-r-s-t, and also at training the number four climbing. A final shout out to the sponsors of the training for climbing podcast they are, Lost Portiva Shoes, DMM Climbing, Blue Water Ropes, and Fizzy Vantage Nutrition. Check out the show notes for links to these outstanding brands, along with special discount codes to save 10% on a new blue water rope, and 15% off any full-priced Fizzy Vantage Nutrition. Well, my friends, that's a wrap for this episode of the training for climbing podcast. I hope you found it thought-provoking, and more importantly, I hope you put at least one of these ideas into action beginning today. Until next time, be safe, train smart, climb strong, and live with intention. Hurst out. [BLANK_AUDIO]