Confessions of a Weak Bastard

Climbing Origins

Soccer was my favorite sport growing up. I wasn't particularly tall or stocky, but I was fast and my legs were strong. I played each position at some point, but I loved the technical challenges of playing midfield. I learned when to preserve energy and when to make a fast break. I learned to recover on the field, outlast bigger defenders, and strike late game.

In many ways, climbing brought similar challenges. There was a time to pace yourself on a climb and a time to blow through a hard sequence. I learned to recover on the wall and how to keep something in the tank for a top crux. And while I did get a bit stronger from climbing, I never made a conscious effort to strengthen my body. I saw climbing as a puzzle that could be solved using intelligence, skill, and tactics.

While my friends were spending time on the campus board, I worked on traversing, footwork drills, route reading, and endurance training. I figured out how to position my hips to take the most amount of weight off my upper body. I learned to heel hook, toe hook, stem, and drop knee to find no-hands rests—anything that could help me recover and stay on the wall.

When I wasn't climbing, I was watching climbing footage, and one climber in particular captivated my special attention: Dave Graham, the self-proclaimed "skinny bastard" who could send V15. I idolized his cerebral approach to climbing, and I was compelled by his arguments against the need for strength training. It seemed to me that he had discovered how to push the limits of climbing through his mind alone. This was the kind of climber I wanted to be.

Transition to Bouldering

I plateaued fairly early as a climber, and I had trouble understanding why. For nearly eight years I continued to climb at the same grade. I could onsight climbs just below my highest redpoint grade, but I still hadn't discovered how to push my limits any further. With some reflection, I recognized that I tended to excel on routes that required lots of endurance, but I would get shut down on powerful cruxes.

I remember leading one particular route above my redpoint grade when I came to a distinct crux involving some very bad slopers. I failed several times to do the crux in isolation. I called down to my belayer and asked him how hard he thought the crux was. He estimated it to be a V5 boulder problem. The only trouble was that I had never actually done a V5 in this style.

The next day, I showed up to the gym in a brand new beanie ready to boulder. I managed to send a few slopey V5s over the course of a few weeks, after which I decided to switch back to my lead project. I jumped on a top rope to try the upper crux sequence in isolation, but to my utter disbelief, none of the moves felt any more possible than they did before.

Eventually it dawned on me that the crux of this route involved roughly three hand moves on bad slopers. All of the boulders I'd done recently were sloper problems, but each was around 10–15 hand moves. The relative difficulty of each move was so much easier than any of the moves on my lead project. I didn't need to do hard boulders; I needed to do hard moves.

Pushing the Limit

For years I had shied away from "shorter" boulder problems. I knew that the difficulty of these climbs would be much more concentrated, and these problems demanded much more exertion on any single move than I was used to putting out. I stepped the difficulty down and tried easier, short boulders. My goal was not to get stronger but to develop the skill of trying hard.

Along the way, I got psyched on outdoor bouldering and discovered in myself a greater capacity to try hard and execute difficult moves. I sacrificed skin, muscle, and bone—anything to get up the boulder in front of me. I learned to power scream without fear of judgment. I pushed through old chronic injuries and wore new ones as badges of honor. I raged when I felt stuck and cried when I lost hope. If I was falling on something "easy", I would remind myself: "Try hard!"

Over the next year, I climbed over 500 outdoor boulder problems and tried hard on damn near every one. I pushed my outdoor climbing level by five V grades and learned to push my mental and physical limits to a degree I'd not previously thought possible. I took this as irrefutable evidence that breaking through mental barriers was the surest way for me to keep improving. After all these years, I was finally starting to "catch up" to the strong climbers around me.

What Did It Cost?

After topping out my hardest boulder project to date, I squatted down—exhausted—in the quiet cold. Everything hurt, from split fingers to frozen toes. What I mostly felt though was shock, and I began to doubt what had just happened.

Just before my send attempt, some part of me believed that I could do this boulder—that I was physically, technically, and mentally capable—but only in a nebulous kind of way. That I would likely do this boulder at some point, but not necessarily right now.

I was deep into the session. The rock was gritty. The holds were sharp and painful. The moves were tweaky and uncomfortable. Doing any single move was asking my body to suffer again, just a little bit more. The top out was scary, and I was alone. Linking the whole thing felt improbable. I knew this was too much to ask of myself in that moment, yet I pulled on anyway. At the top of the boulder, I wondered: Was it worth it?

It felt like a stupid question. Of course it was worth it! But I teased out the nuance: Was it worth it enough that I'd push myself this hard again? And that didn't feel like a stupid question. I wasn't having as much fun as I'd hoped for. I felt more pressured than relaxed, more melancholy than joyful, more defeated than victorious.

I reflected upon the physical, mental, and emotional costs I incurred for the sake of performance. I improved not through strengthening my body or refining my technical skills, but by expending an increasingly tremendous amount of physical and mental energy. And while struggle may be an integral part of the process, I couldn't help but wonder if I was reaching the point of diminishing returns.

Reflections on Strength

Too often I found myself frustrated watching really strong climbers who could employ a wide range of techniques in positions I couldn't even hold isometrically. Surplus strength offered more options and wider margins for error. Sends were hard-won but—importantly—did not seem to be detrimental to their physical and emotional well-being. The harder they climbed, the more confident and motivated they seemed. In contrast, my achievements left me feeling broken and demotivated.

There were no two ways about it: these were technical and strong climbers. For my part, I was a weak bastard with good technique and a willingness to push myself too far. I'd once been proud of this, seeing it as my own kind of "strength" that enabled me to keep up with my friends. But clinging to this identity was hurting me. Not just as a climber, but as a human being with practical limits.

I definitely had strong fingers. But perhaps it would be better to say I had appropriately strong fingers. I also had appropriately good technique. What I felt I was lacking was appropriate full-body strength. Candidly, I found myself conflicted about this idea—that I needed to get stronger—because I felt I could still continue to progress without any form of strength training. But that path no longer felt sustainable.

A Way Forward

At the time of writing, I am two months into a full-body strength-training program. I am learning to challenge myself in uncomfortable and unfamiliar ways. Many of the exercises still feel awkward, and there are days I don't want to show up because it bruises my fragile ego. But I feel a sense of accomplishment every time I make it through a workout.

I still have some ambitious future goals (like The Beekeeper), but it's more important for me to build a strong foundation, to rethink my current limits, and to reassess what is an acceptable level to be pushing myself. In the short-term, climbing harder grades may or may not be a part of that equation. But in the long-term, I expect to perform far better with less cost to my body and mind.

Since I started training, I feel stronger on the wall and have had fewer injuries. I've started telling people (only half-jokingly) that I want to be stronger than I am good. I'm willing to be patient in the pursuit of appropriate full-body strength—even if it takes years to develop—because I've neglected my body for so long. I no longer see strength training as a crutch but as a necessity that will help me develop into the healthier, happier climber I deserve to be.

Like every climber, I still have weaknesses to work on. But I've learned a lot about climbing over the last ten years from both failures and successes alike. I wrote this essay to help myself better understand my previous limitations as well as how I am actively working to overcome them. I hope that some piece of this, no matter how small, might resonate for you, the reader. And if you are interested in working one-on-one with me as a climbing coach, please consider checking out my website. Thanks for reading!