Climb at 80 Percent Effort for Long-Term Growth

“I’m gonna send my hardest route today!” These words are often repeated at the sport crags, the boulders, and even on long trad routes. It’s a bold statement, but a common one. Many of us believe we can operate at our absolute best every time we go climbing. Furthermore, we always want to push ourselves, climbing harder and harder routes all the time. But is this realistic? Can we keep improving indefinitely, just by going out and trying our utmost every time we climb? While this approach will create a steep acceleration early in your career, especially at lower grades, the longer you climb the more this method leads to long plateaus.  

 As I’ve learned through my own experience, days of studying high-end performance climber’s training logs, climbing with elite climbers, and reading dozens of climbing training books, you’ll improve faster and with better results if you regularly aim to climb just below your limit—right around 80 percent of your maximum ability. This will yield faster improvements, as you’ll learn skills faster, you’ll send more often (and gain momentum from that), and you’ll recover more quickly between sessions. It’s a method I’ve found immensely successful. Just as one example, in spring 2015, I deliberately climbed 50 sport routes from 5.12a to 5.12c, at my 80-percent range, and then returned to my four-year project, the Freerider (VI 5.13-) on El Capitan, and climbed it in a day.

Alex Puccio making quick work of Moulin Rogue (V10) at Clear Creek.

Finding Your 80 Percent

Chances are you can recall your hardest few sends, but can you remember the routes that came before, that helped you reach that level? Your goal here is to build a pyramid, with a strong foundation—the base layers—supporting your ultimate goal. A good rule of thumb is to start with problems between one and two V grades below your hardest bouldering send, or with routes one or two letter grades below your hardest redpoint. You’re looking for routes and problems that would be just above your hardest onsight or flash. If you’ve climbed V5, then aim for hard V3s and V4. For routes, if you’ve climbed 5.12a, gun for 5.11d. Aim to have your hardest projects top out at 80 percent of your max ability.

One of the best ways to determine what your “80 Percent” climbs are is to track your ascents by keeping a logbook or by doing so digitally, using 8a.nu, Sendage.com, or other online databases. These are also invaluable places to see how the best climbers achieved their hardest ascents. If you look at the best American sport climber, Jonathan Siegrist’s, scorecard, you’ll notice that he’s done 1 5.15b, 8 5.15a’s, and 27 5.14d’s. Adam Ondra’s scorecard mirrors the same concept, with 1 5.15d, 3 5.15c’s, 19 5.15b’s, and 40 5.15a’s. The majority of their ascents are below their hardest. They’ve built up a wide pyramid of routes in their 80-percent range before pushing their climbing further, focusing the majority of their time on sub-maximal ascents. They also tend to send routes close together, going on a streak. This comes in part from the momentum they build from sending.

Lucho Rivera works on Prince of Thieves (V7) in Tuolumne, Yosemite National Park, California.

Skill Acquisition

Sports like running, rowing, and cycling involve the same movement patterns—they are cyclic and can be trained through specific movement exercises. Climbing, however, is acyclic—the movements change every time you encounter a new route or boulder problem. And even on the same route, you may not do each sequence exactly the same each time. While this variety makes climbing exciting, it also makes it harder to train for.

 Many climbers try to improve through sport-specific training like campusing and hangboarding and while this can help, it also creates habitual motor patterns. There are rarely moves outside that perfectly mimic 1-4-7 on a campus board, or if there are, you likely have to move from campusing into a topout mantel, for example, recruiting new skills. Thus, improvement in climbing should be aimed at helping you learn and retain new motor patterns. The more you climb, the easier climbing becomes, as you can more quickly recall moves from the memories your muscles have built. Grabbing unique holds and doing different moves will add to your repertoire so that when you encounter a similar move again, you’ll be able to execute.

That said, you also want these new moves to be doable, so that you can roll them into your movement database. If a move is too difficult, you’ll be unable to do it often enough to engrain it. Indeed, you may even pattern how not to do the move—how to fail. This can lead to habitually climbing moves incorrectly. By operating at 80 percent, you’ll be able to do larger volumes of quality climbing, acquiring more skills faster. When you have to try semi-hard to figure out a new sequence, you’ll learn new motor patterns.

Adrian Ballinger working a delicate 5.11 at Cold Stream in Truckee, California

Do the math

As you plan out your goals for the year, you should aim to spend the majority of your time—80 to 90 percent—in this 80-percent-effort grade range. Knowing when to ramp up the difficulty to an all-out project can be hard. The longer you climb, the more you’ll need to train in the 80-percent zone to push your levels. A good metric is to complete a base level of three to five climbs of the grade below what you want to do before moving to the next grade, ideally all in the same season. That is, if your next goal is 5.13a after sending 5.12d, then do three to five 5.12d’s in one season before moving on.

When picking a project, think about how hard your project will be for you and how much time it will take. A route at your limit will probably take you twice as long as a route at 80 percent. So, if your ultimate goal will take 3 weeks of effort and you want to send it in the fall, with perfect conditions, then work on routes at your 80-percent level for the 12 weeks prior—the summer. Meanwhile, as you work on your project, you should also be sending routes that you can easily do as well. A side project at your 80-percent level, which you can try once or twice a day after putting in a burn or two on your main project, will help prevent burnout. 

While progression through this method is slow, it’s also a surefire way to make yourself a better climber and to climb well along on the way.

Matty Segal works the move on Aquadarius (5.13d) in Lyons, Colorado

Recovering Well

The best way to improve at climbing is to avoid injuries. Quite predictably, we often get injured from pushing too hard, when we’re always trying to climb at 100 percent. There is the risk of an acute injury, from climbing slightly out of control, as well as chronic injury caused by always pushing. Climbing at a sub-maximal level will help avoid these scenarios.

Moreover, trying extremely hard all the time is draining, putting you on a physical and emotional roller coaster. Often, you’ll be unable to climb hard again for a discrete period after you send at your limit, whether it’s due to muscular fatigue, mental burnout, or some combination of both. Climbing just below this level will help you recover faster emotionally and mentally. Additionally, with a strong base built up at the 80-percent level, you’ll have less of a post-send washout. You’ll be able to return to a decent level more quickly. Moreover, on a physical level your body will have more leeway to rest, recover, and repair itself if you climb mostly below your max (see “Do the Math” above).

Sending Is a Skill

Clipping chains on a project, topping out boulder problems, and finishing long trad climbs come partly with experience and partly with good luck and timing, but sending is also a skill you can develop through practice. Often, climbers who spend their time projecting will fall, jump off, or take when things go less than perfectly. When things get tough—when it’s time to battle through a lactic-acid pump, bear down on crimps to top out a boulder, or to keep moving along a steep, sustained crack—they give up. Unfortunately, this can also become an engrained habit.

Because climbing is acyclic, the best opportunity to work on developing the grit you need to push through on projects is on climbs just below your limit—in other words, you engrain sending on sub-maximal routes so that on limit climbs you can more easily recall what needs to happen. Clipping chains on a regular basis helps you build momentum and confidence to continue sending. Just like your body learns how to intuitively drop-knee or gaston, it will also learn how to push itself to succeed.

This article first appeared in Climbing 365

Better Kneebars

Rest and unlock hard sequences with a solid kneebar

One of the most useful moves in climbing, the kneebar is when you wedge your foot, lower leg, and top of your knee between two rock surfaces. It can provide a much-needed rest or set you up for the next tricky sequence without using a lot of energy, and a good kneebar can be found on vertical and horizontal terrain. Below we’ve compiled suggestions for subtle nuances in technique, pressure, and body position from kneebar queen Heather Weidner, who has used these methods to send 5.13s and 5.14s throughout the West.

The blocky crag of Jailhouse in Sonora may be the most kneebar intensive crag in the US. Jordan Cannon works his way up Fugitive (5.13a)

Finding and Setting Up

A successful kneebar relies on the tension created from pressing down on a foothold with your toes, which in turn pushes the top of the knee/bottom of the thigh into another hold. The foothold can be anything from a barely there smear to a big ledge, but the thigh-side hold must have enough surface area to provide substantial grip against the larger, less dexterous knee. Of course, the length of your leg will affect how much effort is required, and if you can simply slot your leg in the space between holds, of if you’ll need to flex your calf and press up into it.

The best kneebar allows the climber to drop both hands and hang upside down, especially if you can get both knees in there. Other times the knee will be barely pressed into the rock, which is more of a knee scum, which will remove some of the weight from the climber’s hands, providing a slight rest or setting the climber up for the next move.

“Kneebars are going to be slightly different for everyone, and it takes a while—just like any skill—to find potential kneebars,” says Weidner. Experimenting with different footholds, knee position, foot angles, hip height, and using the opposite leg can make kneebars transform from seemingly impossible to incredibly solid. To gain more length, you can always point your toes. To shorten the length, try dropping the heel if the foothold is good enough. In extreme situations, you might be able to stack your feet or place your hand between your knee and the rock to make it work, but both situations can make the next move more difficult.

“I look for flat surfaces at a variety of angles. Whether or not a kneebar is possible depends largely if there is a toe that is available to push against this surface. Kneebars can be vertical, horizontal, over your head, and anything in between.” Practice makes perfect, so continue experimenting to figure out what works.

Alex Honnold kneebars in pants on Tommy Lee (5.13b) at Jailhouse.

Resting, Moving, and Exiting

Kneebars provide two different opportunities: resting and moving. To rest, the climber should flex her calf muscle and push hard into the kneebar. While this may create a leg pump and work the core, it will refresh swollen forearms. In some cases, the climber needs only to sag their hips and slot their thigh in the kneebar, similar to how a nut slots into a constriction. Kneebarring can be a game of sacrificing strength in one part of the body for recovery in another part.  “It takes practice to be able to relax in a kneebar, just like it does shaking out on hand holds. Focus on applying just enough force from your toe to your thigh to stay in, just like you would hang on your hands but not release your grip,” says Weidner.

To move, flag your opposite, non-kneebar leg against the wall. This offers counterpressure to the kneebar, so your body weight has somewhere to go when you release the kneebar. Placing the opposite foot on a foothold can help improve a kneebar and can help you reach holds out of reach. While in the kneebar, use the opposite foor to move your hips higher. This will help you reach higher holds.

Whether you’re climbing or resting, you will need to exit the kneebar eventually, which can be hardest part. “Moving out of a KB often involves a lot of core,” says Weidner.  “It depends on the body position, but often coming out of a kneebar rest, I tighten my core and make sure I know exactly where my feet need to go to avoid having my whole body swing out.” Flex the abdominal muscles, toe in hard on whatever footholds are there, and pull hard on your hands. Walking the feet to higher footholds can reduce cutting. This requires significant core tension, and pulling up a little on the hands can help keep your midsection tight and reduce the swing.

Alex Puccio grimaces glides the kneebar on Koyaanisqatsi (V11) in Boulder Canyon

Proper Attire

Because you will be relying on friction between your knee and the rock, what you wear can affect your performance. Different kneebars require different types of equipment.

Bare skin - For basic kneebars, shorts or a bare leg can work but exposed skin can be shredded. For intermediate kneebars, use thicker denim pants to save the leg. Unfortunately, bare skin and pants lack the friction necessary for harder kneebarring. For advanced kneebars wear a kneepad on bare skin. Wearing a pad over pants makes the pad slide so wear shorts or pants you can fold above the kneepad. “I recommend wearing stretchy capris that you can pull up your thighs or shorts. If it’s cold, leg-warmers work well with this method and you look like a rock star,” said professional climber and kneebar master Heather Weidner.

Kneepad – The developers of the blocky terrain at California’s Jailhouse Rock are credited with first using sticky rubber kneepads in the early 1990s. These sticky rubber-covered kneepads actually go over the lower thigh (slightly above the knee), and they come in two basic varieties: strap-ons and sleeves. Strap-on pads have adjustable buckles and easy on-easy off, so they’re great for bouldering. Sleeves, often made of neoprene, are lighter and offer more sensitivity because of the thinner design; these feel more like a second skin and are excellent for highly technical knee trickery. However, it is harder to customize fit with a sleeve, so it is helpful to duct-tape or use spray adhesive to keep them in place.

“If you want to attempt a technical kneebar—meaning one that is not super obvious or engulfs your entire leg—you need to think of the pad as being a part of your leg. It can’t move at all,” says Weidner.  “As soon as it slips a few millimeters, it is not going to work for the tricky bars and scums.” To keep the pad from moving, pull on the kneepad so the bottom edge sits just above the top of the knee. Make at least two continuous wraps of duct tape around the pad and then around the leg. When it’s hot and you’re sweaty, duct tape might not be enough. In that case, try spray adhesive (like Tuf Skin) directly on the skin on the pad, and then use duct-tape. Taking the pad off can be quite painful, especially if you have hairy legs, so consider shaving your leg in the area.

This article first appeared in Climbing 350

Moonboard Your Way to Max Power

Alex Puccio gives Joslyn Peterson the beta on the Moonboard

Nothing helps your climbing more than hard moves—pulling up on tiny crimps and grabbing heinous slopers, all while moving your feet to set up for the next move. Pushing your limits this way combines finger and core strength: It’s like fingerboarding, campusing, and crunches rolled into one. Meanwhile, doing a few of these moves in a row—aka limit bouldering—will translate your strength into power: strength plus speed. If you’re serious about improving, then you need to limit-boulder. It’s important to remember that increasing power means less actual climbing and more of a focused effort on improvement. Concentrated effort can be difficult, with the gains not immediately visible. Fortunately, there are a few ways to make limit bouldering fun and easy.

THE LOCATION

Finding the ideal venue can be tricky. Most commercial gyms have lengthy boulder problems that emphasize power-endurance instead of power. While it’s possible in commercial settings to work short sections of hard boulder problems, you’re often limited both by the setting (weird, tweaky holds and tall setters not considering shorter climbers) and accessibility (crux moves high off the deck). With its easily accessed 8-by-12-foot grid of 198 holds (on the 2017 MoonBoard Masters setup), the MoonBoard makes an ideal tool for training power. The short falls, ability to feel most holds without pulling on, and visible footholds (hey, they’re lit up!) will allow you to better visualize and execute the sequences. Meanwhile, the permanent set style also allows you to return to moves over your training cycle, as well as to have benchmarks for power gains from season to season.

WARM-UP

Climbing at your limit requires a solid warm-up—at least an hour.

Stage 1

Climb one to four boulder problems at each V grade from V0 up to your typical fl ash level. Avoid trying any problem more than twice—you want to be fresh, limber, and ready to tear the holds off the wall. If you’re climbing solely on a MoonBoard, hang on the holds, do a few of the easiest moves possible, and then climb up to six problems in the V3–V4 range. This stage takes 20 to 30 minutes.

Stage 2

Now try 20–30 minutes of hard bouldering, putting three to four attempts on three to four commercially set problems (or MoonBoard V3–V5s). Work these problems for 5 to 10 minutes each, and add at least one problem that addresses your weaknesses. If your limit is V8, then try a V7 once or twice. You want to be warmed up to avoid injury on the MoonBoard, with its jumpy moves and crimpy holds.

Andrea Szekely works hard to nail that pocket

Power—->Power Endurance—-> Endurance

“If you can’t do the moves, you have nothing to endure,” famously said Tony Yaniro, one of the pioneers of modern free climbing. In climbing, each style—power, power-endurance, and endurance—informs the next. Power is the ability to apply strength over time, to take the steel-crushing fingers you’ve gained on a hangboard or MoonBoard and latch a hold dynamically. Doing two to three limit moves in a row is an example of power, as is 1-4-7 or the more difficult 1-5-9 on the campus board. Power-endurance is the application of power over a longer period, as with a sustained, 7-to 10-move boulder problem or traverse. Endurance is climbing a number of less difficult moves for a long time, as with a 30-move boulder problem or 80-foot route.

As Yaniro implied, the greater your power, the easier the moves become. So if you can increase your power such that a formerly 85-percent-max-ability move now only takes 70 percent effort, you’ll be able to climb longer above the move, having expended less energy on it. Thus, increasing your power also increases your potential power-endurance and endurance.

For route climbing, the MoonBoard can be an amazing power-endurance builder. Try 4x4s, in which you select four different problems and climb each four times in succession, resting 4 minutes between each problem/set. Doing 16 MoonBoard problems in under 40 minutes adds up to an intense session, especially given the problems’ powerful nature. The app’s list feature allows you to create a 4x4 list, and then to easily switch between climbs—this means little downtime. Similar to how power increases power-endurance, this type of training will also increase your endurance. If you can sprint through a series of powerful boulder problems, you’ll increase your ability to jog through longer endurance routes as well.

Matty Segal fights the winter storms on the Moonboard

LIMIT BOULDERING ON THE MOONBOARD

Picking the problem

Pick two to three problems that are right at your limit, powerful, and contain moves that initially feel difficult but feasible—a good limit problem should take you two or three days. The Moon Climbing app features a Benchmark filter that presents the standards for the grades; benchmarks are a great option for limit bouldering, featuring sustained movement and hard crux moves—and notoriously difficult grades. So worry less about the rating and more about the moves’ difficulty— there are “easy” benchmark problems that feel near impossible. If you’ve bouldered V8, then try a V6–V8 benchmark. Focus on the problem’s hardest three to five moves, giving your absolute max on each attempt—remember, you’re trying to tear the holds off the wall. Don’t worry about easier intro or exit moves. You’re not working on sending the problem; you’re working on sending moves. Exhale sharply as you hit each hold, reeling it in and then firing the next move. Spend 15 to 20 minutes on each problem, putting in four to five solid attempts and resting 3 to 5 minutes between attempts. Finally, rest 5 to 10 minutes between each problem. Your total limit session should last 60 to 90 minutes.

Learning the movement

As you recover between burns, take off your shoes, brush the holds, and reflect on how you can refine the movement. Where should your hips be in space? How are your fingers aligned on the holds and where—and should your hand position change as you move up? To help you rehearse elusive moves, you may want a power spot, having a partner push against your lower back to reduce the difficulty. Another option is to work into the move by swapping in a better, adjacent hold; when you’ve stuck the move, go back to the original hold. A third option is to change (reduce) the wall angle, as you can with a Grasshopper frame; some commercial gyms have this feature as well. A move at 30 degrees will feel significantly easier than at 40 degrees. As you master the move, you can incrementally tilt the wall.

Knowing when to quit

During your session, work toward—but not past—failure. When you’re unable to execute the move as well as on previous attempts, and/or when you’re climbing at 85 percent or less of your ability, stop. You won’t feel like you’ve done much climbing, but it’s much better to undertrain power than to overtrain—quality over quantity. Keep your limit-bouldering sessions to two days a week max, with at least one rest day and/or regular climbing day in between. (First published in Climbing Issue 369)

Justen Sjong doesn’t let the Moonboard or his beard, weigh him down.

The Skin Doctor

HEAL SPLITS, GOBIES, AND WORN TIPS FASTER

In 1978, a young dermatologist made an early ascent of Mescalito on El Capitan (VI 5.9 A4), then went on to establish hard crack routes like Sphinx Crack (5.13b/c) in Colorado’s South Platte, and Tricks are for Kids (5.13) in Indian Creek. Steve Hong also made the first ascents of hard sport routes like Planet X (5.14b) and Homonculus (5.14a), both in Rifle, Colorado. Between hard sport climbing, a history of comp climbing, his experience on cracks and big walls, and a career as a dermatologist, Hong knows a thing or two about how to take care of your skin. He offers some sage advice on protecting one of your most valuable assets.

Nina Williams showsoff her split from Crimping Matters (V10) at Guanella Pass

HEALING GOBIES

Miles of sandstone or just a couple feet of hard granite offwidth can leave climbers bruised, bleeding, and covered in abrasion wounds, what climbers affectionately call gobies. Tape gloves on hand cracks, finger tape on thinner cracks, and good technique where hands don’t thrutch inside the crack can help prevent gobies. These little wounds occur from excessive scraping between the skin and the rock, but the coarseness of the rock also increases the chance of injury.

Places like Joshua Tree with its sharp crystals tend to cause gobies faster than the smoother sandstone of Indian Creek. These abrasions take time to repair, and the body’s healing method is to seal the wound initially with coagulated blood (aka a scab). Underneath this shield, the healing process can then begin. Serum containing all sorts of growth factors is secreted, stimulating a host of cells to start reproducing and heal the wound. White blood cells and antibodies go after invading organisms, fibroblasts in the dermis start producing new collagen, and epidermal cells (the outer layer) grow in from around the wound edges and from deeper hair follicles to form a scab, and slowly the epidermis (outermost layer of skin) heals back to normal. Numerous studies have shown that in conjunction with daily cleansing with soap and water, an artificial “scab,” consisting of an ointment and Band-Aid or wrap that shields the wound from air, results in quicker re-epithelialization (healing of a wound). This translates to: Clean the wound, apply ointment, and cover the wound.

According to some studies, bandaging gobies increases the healing speed by 50 to 80 percent. Refrain from using peroxide or alcohol; instead clean the wound gently with standard hand soap and water. Afterward, apply a bland ointment such as Aquaphor or Vaniply. If properly cleaned, antibiotic ointments like Neosporin are unnecessary. Keeping the wound moist prevents a thick scab from forming, which can actually delay healing. Prescription ointments that stimulate healing exist, but they are generally unnecessary. “Usually I only bother with the treatment for a couple of days, then I lose motivation and let a scab form,” Hong says.

Robin O’leary tapes up his mangled fingers at Movement Climbing and Fitness

SPLITS

A thin cut across the sensitive fingertip can be one of the most painful climbing injuries, and dry air, chalk, and excessive climbing all contribute to split tips. Ultimately dryness, trauma, and sometimes irritant contact dermatitis—a skin disorder that occurs when the skin is injured by friction or environmental factors such as cold, overexposure to water, or chemicals—are the root causes of splits. Keeping the hands moisturized can help prevent splits, and there are prescription hydrating hand creams, like hyaluronic, salicylic, or lactic acid creams that are excellent. One good over-the-counter lactic acid cream is AmLactin. Inspect thin skin and stop climbing before splitting occurs. A bit of prudence can go a long way toward preventing splits.

To treat a split, take a straight-edge razor or a scalpel, then use a magnifying glass or magnifying reading glasses and carefully shave the keratotic edges (the dead excess layer) of the fissure. This is critical because those thickened dead edges delay the epithelium (new skin) from growing over the wound, and the rough edges can catch on things, further traumatizing the fissure.

Apply a bland ointment as mentioned previously, similar to what you would use to treat a gobie, and cover the wound. Some climbers use Band-Aids while others prefer paper tape.

Noah Kaufman, an emergency room doctor and climber, suggests bandaging the split as suggested and then splinting the digit in a straight position overnight. Healing the wound in a straight position prevents the split from healing bent then tearing the next day when extended. Finger splints, popsicle sticks, or any small, straight piece of material taped to the back of the finger can be used as a splint.

Climbing on split tips is possible, but like with any injury, it can worsen the condition. Supergluing a split may allow you to continue climbing through the day, but the glue dries the wound more and delays healing. There are different taping methods, but these treatments should only be used temporarily.

WORN TIPS

A long day of climbing on El Capitan, an extra burn on the sport project, or a huge day of bouldering can all cause the skin on the fingertips to become pink and “thin.” The underlying living epidermis is not really thin; in fact, under the microscope it looks thicker in newly healed wounds. A thin epidermis actually occurs from sunlight damage and old age. However, the dead outer epidermis can get rubbed off, which results in raw, pink skin. Holding on to rock becomes more painful and much harder because the skin, though not cut, tends to weep, releasing plasma. Switching to smoother rock or a different style of handholds can keep you climbing.

Ultimately, to heal worn, pink tips after long days of climbing on sharp rock, simply take the day off. Skin, like muscle, needs time to recover. Little can be done to promote faster skin growth other than keeping the area clean and providing time to heal.

TOUGHEN SKIN

Having thick skin helps climbing significantly, as hardened skin allows climbers to hold onto rock a little longer and dig their tips in deeper without pain. A thickened epidermis, including the dead top layer (a callus), occurs in response to rubbing. Calluses form from the friction between rock and skin and are necessary protection to climb on rough stone. Smooth calluses are beneficial, but they can become rough or too thick, which makes them more susceptible to ripping off in huge chunks and turning into flappers. Maintaining useful calluses means using sandpaper or an emery board to keep the skin on your hands smooth and not too thick. Sand off excess skin until the digit becomes smooth.Some climbers use Antihydral cream on their fingertips for harder, drier skin the next day. This is gluteraldehyde, which blocks the eccrine sweat ducts and fixes dead tissue (like embalming fluid). However, using this cream requires careful application. Applying Antihydral too often can result in splits, so monitor skin condition the more you use it.

Steve Hong, a climber of 40 years, works as a dermatologist at the Boulder Medical Center in Colorado. He has been practicing dermatology and climbing longer than most climbers have been alive.

This article first appeared in Climbing Issue 344

Big Wall Strategy

Hanging in space high above the Yosemite Valley floor on the West Face of the Leaning Tower, I was terrified, but in learning the true meaning of exposure, I got addicted to big walls. Over the next 15 years, I traveled around the world for those soaring faces, nabbing about 50 big wall routes and learning the ins and outs of the planning, ability, and equipment required. The biggest lesson I learned was how to choose a strategy that best suited the situation, which depends on the goals of the climb, the weather, time constraints, and the motivation of the parties involved. Undertaking a 1,000-foot wall in Zion, the half-mile-high monoliths in Yosemite, or the enormous cliffs of Baffin Island requires a serious plan of attack, and the right approach will significantly improve your chance of success.

Corey Rich hangs out during the big wall junkshow of the Dawn Wall

Siege Style

Hundreds of feet of rope often hang on the hardest big wall routes for days, weeks, and sometimes months. On the first ascent of the Nose of El Capitan, Warren Harding and his revolving team climbed sections of the wall, hung ropes, and then retreated to the ground. They would then return, ascend to their high point, and push the ropes a bit higher, adding more rope as they moved up the wall. In 38 days of climbing, spread out over a year and a half, they pushed their ropes two-thirds of the way up the 3,000-foot wall. In late November 1958, they prusiked up 1,900 feet of fixed ropes and cast off to climb the last 1,000-plus feet over the course of nine days.

The style of using massive amounts of fixed ropes and slowly ascending a wall is referred to as sieging. This style is more common in the Himalaya and rare in places where big walls are more well-traveled, except in the cases of difficult climbs. Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson employed this method on the Dawn Wall, fixing all of El Capitan at different points in their seven-year battle to free climb the wall. This allowed them to focus on working the crux pitches, ferrying supplies up the wall with less effort, and having a few cameramen on point. Caldwell removed ropes from the wall seasonally, rapping El Capitan and replacing the ropes when they wanted to work the route again. At the time of their free ascent, nearly 5,000 feet of rope hung from the cliff.

This is a great approach for climbers who enjoy just being on a wall. Think hauling a grill halfway up Washington Column for some wall steaks. Bring a pirate flag, a few bottles of wine, and a laid-back attitude. Even though you’ll be able to wall party, this style gets a significant amount of heckling. Royal Robbins gave Harding endless flack for his prolonged attempts. Sieging walls will have other climbers asking you what’s taking so long and bumming a few of your 50 cans of malt liquor.

Leaving fixed ropes on routes for prolonged periods can also present a serious hazard. Exposed to the elements, the ropes can become damaged very quickly, so it’s important to pay attention to what they might have undergone while hanging, including abrasion. Also be aware of leaving knots tied, as having bends in the rope can accelerate wear in that area.

Pros

• High success rate as the team can wait for a good weather window and make slow and steady progress.

• The style is popular on difficult free climbs as it allows first ascensionists to rebolt sections, work sections on rope-solo, and generally prep a route to be free climbed.

• There is less work on any individual day.

• Having an umbilical cord to the ground aids a quick retreat in the case of injury, incoming weather, or a desperate need for a wobbly pop at the bar.

Cons

• On popular routes, fixing lines can be a serious faux pas. Climbing around and through fixed ropes can be extremely difficult.

• Cords left hanging on the wall for extended periods of time can wear against the rock and get seriously damaged by the weather.

• This style requires a lot of rope. Climbers often gather old lead lines and static lines and might use in excess of 1,000 feet of rope.

• The total amount of work over the course of the ascent is significantly more but spread out over a longer time period.

• Consistent partners can be difficult to find for this style of climbing.

Tom Evans took this photo of me downclimbing into the Monster offwidth during one of my attempts to free the Freerider in a day.

Fix and Blast

In September 1964, El Capitan saw its second ascent when Chuck Pratt, Tom Frost, and Royal Robbins climbed the Salathe Wall. “Although the first ascent of the Nose had required a prolonged siege with thousands of feet of fixed ropes, we wished to avoid such methods if possible so as to keep the element of adventure high with at least a moderate amount of uncertainty,” wrote Robbins in the 1974 book Vertical World of Yosemite. Robbins climbed 900 feet up to Lung Ledge, just above Heart Ledge. He fixed ropes and a few days later committed to the wall, jumaring back up and then tossing his lines to the ground. The team topped out after six days on El Capitan.

Many climbers use this method for wall routes. Climbers attempting the Nose will climb the first four pitches to Sickle Ledge and fix 400 feet of rope to the ground. After hauling to the ledge, parties sometimes rest a day and then blast up the wall. On the Salathe, a highway of six ropes leads to Heart Ledge. Climbers often climb to this high point, haul their bags up the fixed ropes, rest, and then blast up the wall. This allows for teams to get a handle on the climbing, the weather, and a jump-start on the wall without fully committing or needing miles of rope.

Pros

• This style allows climbers to bring haulbags and supplies high on the wall before committing, meaning they can stage everything in preparation for a push to the summit.

• There is only a moderate amount of daily work the first few days, giving the climbers a sense of their objective and more rest days on the ground.

• Having a few pitches fixed provides a psychological benefit, as there is less climbing from the top of the ropes to the summit.

• Climbers can wait for good weather before committing.

Cons

• While this doesn’t require as many ropes as climbing a route siege style, most climbers fix their haul line, lead line, and sometimes additional ropes, dropping the extra ropes when they blast, retrieving them later. The added cords can be a hassle.

• Rescues become more difficult once committed to the wall. There’s no good way to retreat other than rappelling.

• On popular routes, climbers use fixed ropes to jump in front of other parties, which can lead to traffic jams.

El Cap covered in the stars of climbers

Alpine Style

The gold standard of big wall climbing, alpine style means leaving the ground and climbing to the summit without fixing ropes in advance. Over the course of nine days in October 1964, Royal Robbins, with Tom Frost, Chuck Pratt, and Yvon Chouinard, climbed the North American Wall on the southeast face of El Capitan. They shunned the use of fixed lines. “Well, we wanted an adventure, and climbing the southeast face of El Capitan without umbilical cords would be one sure way to have one,” wrote Royal Robbins years later. The team climbed without knowing if they could reach the top.

While topos and modern information have toned down the unknown adventure of most big walls, committing to the wall can still be a daunting experience; it forces a climber to learn the systems and be confident. It improves competency by teaching climbers when to move fast and when to bail. Alpine style ascents takes a sink or swim approach to the mountains. The advantage of the style is that alpine ascents it translates to faster ascents and less time on the wall, and being on the wall for less time tends to be safer because there’s a smaller chance of encountering bad weather or missing out on happy hour at the Mountain Room Bar.

Pros

• High adventure. Being committed to a wall can be very exciting.

• There’s far less work involved. The ascents tend to be much faster because less gear is brought, with less time fixing ropes, deciding how high to fix, tossing ropes, and collecting them.

• Parties climbing routes in a day will have significantly less gear because they do not need bivy equipment, extra food, and tend to climb with lighter racks. This makes climbing easier and faster.

• Royal Robbins gives congratulatory nods for alpine-style ascents.

Cons

• There’s a large amount of danger. Like fixing and blasting, once on the wall, an accident spells trouble. Climbers need to be competent enough to self-rescue.

• The increased level of commitment usually means that the route is less difficult than what someone’s maximum might be.

• If another team has fixed on the route, they can jump ahead of alpine-style climbers by jugging past them on fixed lines, which can add unexpected wait times.

• Finding partners willing to “just go for it” can be difficult.

This article first appeared in Climbing Issue 344

The Head Game

USE THESE MENTAL TECHNIQUES FOR BETTER PERFORMANCE

Ignoring a slightly misplaced foot, pushing past a nagging fear of gear failure, or ramping up the intensity to latch a small hold all require mental awareness. Arousal regulation and mental toughness are crucial for success on climbs at your limit. Knowing when to activate your mind and how to control it takes practice, and here, Justen “The Climbing Sensei” Sjong shares his insights into the mental training he does with some of our sport’s top athletes. Follow these guidelines to maximize your own performance.

Justen demonstrating a bit of intensity regulation while climbing.

Arousal Regulation 

Think about having an internal dimmer switch to adjust your level of intensity throughout a climb. Any given route has a variety of difficulty, and climbers need to adjust for the changes by consciously adjusting their arousal level, or level of excitement. Dial up the intensity for hard sections, and dial it down for easier parts. This allows you to conserve both physical and mental energy, as well as focus it in the correct way.

“When you’re climbing, you want to be present-oriented,” Sjong says. On a single boulder problem or climb, there are sections where the climber needs to change his arousal level. The first moves of a boulder problem could be the crux, so the climber needs to be crushing from the start. The last pitch of a long trad climb may contain loose rock, so the climber needs low arousal levels to perform the complicated task of moving safely. Being present and in the moment helps identify the proper level of intensity required, which is crucial to success.

“A climber who’s too excited about what they’re doing too soon, about winning the World Cup or sending their project, can drop the ball,” says Sjong. Climbers often refer to this as punting, meaning failing after the hard climbing is over. “More often, climbers hold back their emotions. They won’t fight to send their project,” Sjong says. “Most people don’t want to fall and think, ‘I actually did try my hardest and I still failed.’ They don’t fail, but they’re scared of that possibility. Climbers fear applying themselves to that level. In cases like this, the beta is just to try hard.”

Arousal Regulation Practice

• Adjusting arousal levels is just like flexing a muscle. “Training to me,” says Sjong, “is to train that muscle.” When you enter the gym, you should make this mental approach just as much a priority as physical strength.

• Jump rope and then try a hard boulder problem to identify how you can adjust your arousal levels.

• Visualize the appropriate state of arousal just like you visualize the holds and the moves themselves. Before pulling a hard move, imagine getting angry, trying hard, and climbing aggressively. For a runout or scary section, visualize staying calm, flowing through the moves, and being tranquil. Execute these strategies while climbing.

Justen working on calming down to execute the move.

Mental Toughness

Fumbling a clip or grabbing the wrong piece of gear can be distracting. These little errors can break you down during a climb. Suddenly you’re falling or back on the ground because of a simple mistake. The errors can snowball into larger problems like anxiety, holding your breath, and subpar performance. How you deal mentally with these situations matters. They can be chances to fail or opportunities to develop as a climber.

Climbers often have unrealistic expectations of their climbing performance. They believe that to climb their hardest they need to perform with flawless technical skill, mental strength, and maximum physical effort. “They think they have to be perfect,” says Sjong, “which is impossible.” What actually happens is that you make minor technical errors, your mental strength diminishes, and thus you don’t reach your physical maximum. Realizing that you won’t be completely perfect all the time will help you start to climb with high intensity even when everything isn’t going smoothly. According to Sjong, “Perfection is not the goal. You can still reach a high level of effort without it being perfect.”

Mental Toughness Practice

• “If you misplace your foot, don’t pretend it didn’t happen,” Sjong says. “An error creates doubt. If you don’t own it, you lose confidence, and then you fall apart. Now you’re holding your breath. Now your eyes are darting everywhere. It’s like watching a trainwreck happen.”

• Realize a mistake immediately and work hard to focus your energy on calming down before you let it take you down a spiral of failure. Don’t focus on the mistake itself, instead focus on moving past it.

• Practicing mental toughness means making mistakes and then correcting for them. Onsight climbing or even intentionally climbing a sequence incorrectly can provide opportunities for calm correction. After misplacing a foot or making a mistake, breathe deeply, relax, and attempt the move again.

Justen Sjong, a climber of 20 years, has put up both 5.13+ El Cap routes and 5.14c sport.

This article first appeared in Climbing 344