Wednesday 30 March 2011

Within a move



Holding the crux. A good feeling
Right now I’m totally locked on with my highball project in the glen. Progress has been superb and It’s gone from a distant prospect to feeling very possible in a short time, thanks to all that training. It’s really at my limit though, so I have to accept that every good session might be the best before I lose ground. It doesn’t matter - I’m enjoying trying, a lot.
It’s only when really committed in a die hard way to a project that the windows open up to learning new things. It surprises me that the learning doesn’t stop even though I’ve been here before - maximally motivated, maximally stretched and close to both success and failure all at the same time.
It’s good for me to experience this on a hard boulder line for the first time in a few years - the levers of progress are so different from what I’m used to. Over the past two years, I’ve not really been able to train as I’d like due to injury, so most of my climbs have been trad. I missed hard bouldering and hard boulder training intensely, and have relished the last four months of it. The past three sessions on the project have been the culmination of it. Last session, I held the crux sloper. Tonight, I touched the next hold. If I hold that, I’m on terrain where I would only fall If I made an stupid error, which is just as well as it’s getting into soloing territory up there!
On a boulder, so much extreme effort and focus is distilled into millisecond adjustments of movement and timing. There is very little room for finding what’s necessary during the climb itself. This is the land of the intuitive. Recording that you’ve made a movement decision only just keeps up with actually making the movement. Conscious thought is way too slow and clunky. But it’s not intuitive adjustment out of thin air. It’s adjustment of a model of how the move should go, and how the effort should be timed and focused that’s been refined hundreds of times in your mind. At the level where the real enjoyment comes, it’s a heuristic process of visualisation; you don’t always know why something is right, you just feel like it will be.
To illustrate this blog post, I scrolled through the video of the attempt, shot on my compact propped on a stone. Looking through it, frame by frame, it hit me that I have a record of several movement decisions in my mind’s recording of the move, for every frame of video. 30 frames/sec is too slow! How great is it that movement on rock is so subtle, and that the mind is so expertly geared up to analyse and refine it. You can see how it gets addictive eh?
Hopefully I have the program sussed for that final hard move, and weather, and muscles allow me to get back to it in a few days time.

7 comments:

  1. So what kind of grade do you think the project is?

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  2. "How great is it that movement on rock is so subtle, and that the mind is so expertly geared up to analyse and refine it. You can see how it gets addictive eh?"
    So true that feeling of making a move that feels easy & 'natural' after a hundred failed attempts, is awesome at what ever level you boulder. As a 40 something beginner I'm bouldering to exercise the mind more than the body. Focusing everything on moving your body about 6 foot to the exclusion of everything else is so cathartic. It's taken me 10 months to realise why I climb and how to improve. So I can't do mono pull ups so f***ing what! Great blogs, great book.
    Tim

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  3. The route looks awesome dave and all the best for it! I myself have been building up to a fairly difficult headpoint recently. Im one move away from getting through the fist crux and onto good gear and after this evening session came very close to doing the whole thing....its just the middle move!From here should i back away for a while and focus on getting a bit stronger for it, or siege to gain fitness for the route??
    Cheers Jack

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  4. "I would only fall If I made _an_ stupid error"... please tell me that's deliberate :-)
    Crispin

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  5. "This is the land of the intuitive. Recording that you’ve made a movement decision only just keeps up with actually making the movement. Conscious thought is way too slow and clunky. But it’s not intuitive adjustment out of thin air. It’s adjustment of a model of how the move should go, and how the effort should be timed and focused that’s been refined hundreds of times in your mind."

    Well put! What I find interesting is that developing something in the realm of the intuitive often involves walking away and then coming back. Usually I will try something until I feel like I am making little or no additional progress. When I feel like I have gotten to that point I will take a break (have a smoke, take a walk, look at other climbs thinking about how their moves may go). Then, when I return, I reinvent the climb or move in my mind before trying it. I try to raise my arousal levels until it is almost uncomfortable for me to continue not to make an attempt. When I pull on to the wall at this point, I let my intuition carry me where it will and let new discoveries from my attempt bubble into consciousness. If I don't send, I simply repeat the process.

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  6. You just made a strong move up there. What actually the feeling of reaching the top. Standing on top of the world and looking down from where you started is really a great achievement. That's a great life experience.

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