A word on progression

No, I'm not gonna talk about the film by Big Up productions, although it does deserve a good post. I'm gonna talk about one of the things that make rock climbing special:

In some sports, when you get to learn the basics, your learning curve becomes unclear. Imagine for example, that you are learning to play basketball, football or tennis. You will learn to shoot the ball, control it, be more precise, etc. Nevertheless, your progress indicators will usually be fuzzy, you can win another player or another team, you can feel in better or worse shape, but there is no clear way to tell whether you are doing better than 6 months ago.

In order to know whether you are progressing, you need metrics, you need something measurable. Some sports require one or many opponents: In the previous examples, you need to play against a number of opponents. Depending on how many matches you win and on your score, you are able to measure your skills, as an individual or as a team. Nevertheless, this indicator is linked to factors that might vary, e.g. the current shape of the opponent(s).

When running a marathon, doing long jump in athletics, or swimming the 400m, you fight against time or distance. Those are better indicators, cause they are absolute. You don't need any opponents to measure yourself against, you can compete with yourself.

In sport climbing you don't need any opponents either, your metrics are the routes you manage to do. I'm not even talking about the grades. The grades might vary upon the style of climbing, the place or the person that bolted the route. I think the grades are just a reference to know whether a route might be too hard for you or not. But succeeding in a route that you were not able to do last year? That is a very clear indicator.

Last year, during summer, I would have never imagined myself doing a 7a. But in rock climbing the learning curve is quite rewarding. If you put effort into it, you get to improve, and you have metrics to measure that progress. This year, we are starting sending our first 7a routes, and we are already looking forward to bigger challenges!

La grotte du Péril jaune

It would seem that the summer is coming to its end. The rainy season is here, and outdoor climbing is no longer poss... wait, are you sure?

That's no excuse! You just need to find a good crag. One where the rock itself can protect you from the weather. Indeed you need to be a bit brave and take the risk, for the rain might catch you before you get to the rocks.

We spent last weekend in Saint Jeannet, where there's a huge piece of limestone overlooking the village. There are many multi-pitch routes, as well as some sport climbing crags. One of them, called la grotte du Péril jaune, is a small cave which is perfect for rainy days.

View La grotte du Péril jaune (Saint Jeannet) in a larger map

Even though the cave is quite small, there are around 30 routes, ranging from 4 to 7c. You will find different styles of climbing, from vertical routes with small crimps to overhangs with big holds.

We went there with Ignaki and Chris on Saturday, and we liked it so much that we decided to go again on Sunday. Peri, Roca and Núria joined us on Sunday as well. A few pictures of the weekend:

My best performance was Jeu de poulpe, a 6c that I managed to on-sight, yaaay! Also, we did Méli Melo, which is graded 7a+, but it feels more like a 6a+. I guess there's a mistake in the topo. You can check the ascents on the tick list.

One simple rule for climbing better

I found this post quite interesting:

I was out climbing a couple of weekends ago. On the Sunday, cold and with raw tips, creeping hangovers and out-of-condition arms still sore, we caved in for a user-friendly sport cliff. The kind of crag with a five-minute walk in, where you can tick everything in a couple of hours, convince yourself you’ve done something and drive back back to Melbourne for a bowl of pho on Victoria Street before the winter sun slips below the horizon.

Despite being user-friendly, there was much huffing and wheezing and sleazing and poor footwork and general laziness and falling and yelling and bad climbing. Nothing unusual there we often fall off before reaching our limit and our list of projects is only bettered by our list of excuses.

Then the camera came out, and everything changed.

A mate was on a route he’d been flapping around on like a pelican trying to take off, when suddenly he became a graceful swan. The climbing morphed into a thing of beauty; feet placed with precision, technique flawless, head high, eyes intent-yet-composed, breath steady without the slightest hint of stress. He clipped the chains, lowered off. Piece of piss.

"I am ready for my closeup."

Now, this was a route well below what he is capable of cruising, and one which he had ticked so many times that were he actually ticking a piece of paper he would have worn down a H2B pencil. Deservedly, he received a barrage of shit for being a showpony, after so obviously flicking the ‘on switch’ once the threat of posterity appeared. But it did get me to thinking about motivation. Not the chronic ‘train hard for long term gain’ variety. More the acute ‘what will get me to try harder right now’ kind.

The first thing that came to mind was ‘hot climber from my target demographic’. The peacock effect is a well documented though understudied phenomena, Why? Because it’s so obvious. When there is a cute girl up and about, I try harder. (To make yourself the star of the story replace ‘I’ with ‘you’ and ‘cute girl’ with the gender that fires your loins.) I hold on a little longer, squeeze a little more out of burning forearms, try to look composed, unless I think they are into lunatic-Neanderthal-yelling-and-screaming and then I go for that instead, but the salient point is the behaviour is stylised and the better climbing is a symptom.

The camera lens and the peacock effect speak pretty clearly about motivation. We don’t want to look like dickheads. But they also speak about the benefits of having a vehicle to concentrate focus through. Maybe you’re not thinking about your audience all the time, but the knowledge of the audience is making you think more about your climbing, about the moves, about your body and its positioning. Focusing on how you look then can easily translate into better climbing. Ergo better climbing through narcissism.

That Sunday was as good as I have seen my mate climb technically. It wasn’t so much that vanity was forcing him to try harder than he would have otherwise – this was no a muerte thrash for glory. He just climbed better, was aware of his body, the way it was working, he took care with his feet, he thought about what he was doing and not about how his little armsies were tired and his little fingies were all hurty.

(No one has yet postulated that the spread of gadgets to capture photos and video, along with the social networks to share them, have played a role in increasing the level of climbing. But we’ll throw it out there.*)

At a highbrow stretch you could claim the lens effect is a bastard-child version of the Lacanian Gaze. Something borrowed straight from the an Adelaide Uni Cinema Studies class circa 1991. It would go something like, “the knowledge of being looked is accentuated by the threat of posterity and is a spur to try harder.”

Yeah, some will say when you’re at your limit you don’t notice the camera. Probably true but that doesn’t mean that the lens effect is not something worth thinking about if only as a tool to focus. That doesn’t mean that the camera is the reason why we climb but when the paparazzi are in the house it often affects the way that we do.** Result: get your camera out.

Rocklimber Reloaded

Hello all,

The blog has been dead for almost one year. I must admit I had a lack of motivation to write, but I haven't stopped climbing.

Things have changed recently with the discovery of 8a.nu. It's not only a portal with the latest news, but also a big database to record and keep track of one's ascents. I liked the idea, so I created an account, and I added all the ascents I could gather. I have been registering everything during this year.

The portal calculates a score based on your 10 best ascents, depending on their grade and the style of climbing (on-sight, flash, redpoint, etc). This score is a very good indicator of progress, and it's quite engaging. It's interesting how we, as in human beings, feel the need to increase our performance indicators. Whether it's our bank account savings, our school grades, our favorite computer game, 8a.nu... the bigger the number, the better.

From now on the idea is to keep track of my ascents in 8a.nu, and to use the blog recording everything else, e.g. describing crags, narrating adventures, posting pictures etc.