"Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident."
To acquire the skills involved in climbing, we all undergo a process of motor learning. Motor learning is the process of acquiring the know-how on executing individual moves or a series of moves (movement).
This process never stops no matter how long we've been climbing or how good we get. I think, this is one of the most compelling reason as to why people love climbing and how it can get addictive to a certain extent. There is a perpetual novelty to climbing because of this, if you ask me.
At the heart of climbing, we are always learning new things and then re-inventing what we've just learned because the climbs demand from us a nuanced answer. All. The. Time.
As a coach, I've been asked by new climbers quite a number of times what they should do to improve faster. I always say "Climb more. Build your movement vocabulary. Increase your climbing mileage."
Then, they look at me and say "Okay. But really what do I need to do to improve faster? Should I do hangs or core exercises?" And I still say the same "Those are good to have, but as a new climber, with limited time and energy, you really should focus most of that on climbing more. Build a vocabulary of movements."
Believe me when I say that over the course of your climbing journey, you will put more time into learning moves more than anything else.
Personally, as a seasoned climber, I still get stumped when I go to the gym. I sometimes get annoyed when I can't even "see" the move. I end up looking at the climb and asking, "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?"
To a certain extent, I can tolerate bad holds or cranking hard to make a move, but what frustrates me most is when I can't even process information in the best possible way which leads to ineffective climbing.
I strongly believe that if the mind's eye can see it, you will eventually be able to execute it. It starts with the mind. This is because information processing precedes motor learning. Information processing is the cognitive activity that our brains go through as it receives stimulation/data from our 5 senses.
While we are climbing, our brain is bombarded with information from both outside and inside our body.
The size/shape/orientation/texture of the hold, how high we are from the ground, how far is the next move, the temperature/cleanliness of the gym, if the gym is crowded or not - these are external information that can influence our climbing at varying extent.
Internal information that may affect our climb can include our sense of balance on the wall, how cramped/spanned we feel, how fast we are moving to make the move, our level of fatigue, how raw our fingers are, our emotional well-being etc.
Information processing can be broken in 3 stages:
Imagine the information sent from your fingers to your brain is that "Fingers are very tender." Due to that stimulus, you select a response of decreasing the power you input in your throw to lessen the impact on your skin. Hence, you execute a dynamic movement that may fall short from reaching the next hold.
We process a huge amount of information when climbing and our brain is working very hard to sort it all out. Then our brain prioritises which information is most beneficial for the execution of our movements. If we fail to prioritise the correct information, this may lead to ineffective climbing.
Hence, by understanding how we process information when we climb, we can train ourselves to be stimulated in a way that can help us prioritise a better response, which eventually can lead to a more effective movement execution. And that is what we are going to delve on the next few weeks!