Progress moves us forward, even if it’s tiny. It may sound self-helpy, but even reputable academic sources such as Harvard Business Review recognize the key role that progress plays in feeling good:

Consider, for example, how progress relates to one component of inner work life: overall mood ratings. Steps forward occurred on 76% of people’s best-mood days. By contrast, setbacks occurred on only 13% of those days.

–The Power of Small Wins, HBR

Rock climbing is like that. We’ve often felt happiest in our climbing when we are making progress (whether it’s sending harder routes, leveraging better technique, or getting stronger). Recently, we’ve overcome a decade-long plateau and are climbing harder, faster, stronger, and better than before, and have felt more connected and joyous with climbing than ever. It’s all upside, baby.

Photo by Eric McCoy

Now the burning question: How?

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Rock climbing isn’t exactly the most intuitive sport or hobby that one picks up. That’s probably because there’s a whole host of fears (falling, heights, exposure, and injury) we need to conquer first before most of us can even fathom climbing.

Our onsight of Sixish (5.6) variation in the Gunks yesterday – a short, steep, and sweet climb (with some headiness thrown in for good measure)

Or not.  I’m always inspired and impressed by people who haven’t yet conquered their fears and take up the sport anyway; this is badassery.

Part of what makes climbing so challenging (and addictive!) is how it constantly pushes our physical and psychological limits. In climbing,  we’re confronted with our insecurities,  frustrations, and ego. Up close and personal with the voices inside our head that tell us ‘you can’t do this’ or ‘what the heck are you thinking doing this?’

I call this our climbing head, and getting out of our head is key to conquering our climbing-related fears.

Easier said than done, right? Case in point, I returned to the Gunks (a popular trad climbing destination near NYC) after taking nearly 2 years off of trad climbing due to various injuries.  I hopped on a route well below my climbing ability, and even though I have all the technical skills, eight years’ worth of outdoor climbing experience,  and a full leader’s rack, my climbing head started to kick in, and hard.

Trad is rad.

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Getting over overhangs might seem scary at first. After all, no one likes hanging upside down (unless you’re a bat), and falling off an overhanging roof while bouldering or on lead can be pretty precarious, and downright frightening. World-class climber Steph Davis once said,

“The hardest thing for new female climbers (especially those of us over age 12) is building upper body strength in proportion to overall strength/weight ratio.”

There’s a common misconception that climbing overhangs is all about upper body strength. Steph is definitely on point about overhanging climbs being more difficult for women due to our needing to build more strength/weight ratio, but the secret to rocking overhanging roofs is employing a total-body strategy:

• Avoid an arms-only strategy.Don’t campus it up, as tempting as it looks to pull your entire body weight up the entire wall. You will pump yourself out doing so.

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