As climbers, we have all projected a route or a boulder (and we all generally want to increase your climbing grade). Maybe it was a long-term goal of yours, a dream climb, maybe it was an unexpected endeavor you’ve been sucked into. Regardless of how you find a project the end goal is the same, to climb it. Seems easy right? Keep throwing yourself at the climb and eventually, it will go, right?
Oftentimes this isn’t enough or if you do manage to send it it has taken far longer than anticipated and your season flies before your eyes. Persistence is great, you need it to project at and beyond your limit, but it isn’t enough. To maximize your projecting you will need more than raw determination. How to increase your climbing grade is an art. An art we call projecting. Here is how you go about just that. Here is how to increase your climbing grade.
Defining Success
The first thing you need is to redefine what success is. Projecting at your limit is a slow and incremental game. There will be sessions where we will feel like nothing was gained and the climb left unsent. For many success is sending the project and anything less is failure. Failure is not something to be feared, in fact there is so much success to be found within each failure.
The key to this is smaller goals within each attempt. This time your foot stayed on slightly longer. You unlocked a new move. These are all small successes that give something to be gained from each attempt. Small successes are now things to include in each subsequent attempt. You will analyze them to determine the WHY behind the win, this is the key to continued progress.
Resting
Rest is another crucial component of hard projecting. You can’t expect to fire off four solid attempts in the span of 5 minutes on something that is truly limited for you. You put yourself at risk of injury, and you don’t give yourself quality attempts. On top of that, you sap your strength for the rest of the session.
Proper rest can be 3 to 10 minutes for a boulder (maybe longer) and could be anywhere from 10-30+ minutes for a route depending on the length! Rest allows you to have more quality attempts. Mental fatigue also comes into play, if you sit there worrying about the next attempt staring at the project you might completely punt off due to the tense atmosphere created in your head. Sometimes a short walk away from the boulder with some water is exactly what you need to give your body and mind the rest it needs to come back to the boulder at 100%.
Try new things
The last part of projecting I want to discuss is experimentation. It’s easy to find a beta that has some success, maybe it allows you to do a move but sets you up poorly for the next. But it lets you do that first move so you hammer that method over and over to the same results. Don’t be afraid to try something completely different. Treat each attempt as a fresh start.
Movement changes and perfection can absolutely be the key to climbing your projects, it’s rare you find the perfect beta the first time around, but the more you analyze your options you will soon find new ways that could yield success. Allow yourself to try a beta that feels uncomfortable or out of your usual movement patterns. This experimentation will help you find the best beta for you quickly and allow you to make better progress.
I hope you all find success on your current projects using these tips. Projecting is an art, and the only way to improve art is through practice. So now you at least have a foundation to build from to increase your climbing grade.
If you need some guidance on your project or how to better approach training indoors this winter for the spring project, let us know HERE.
Eamon Burke