What is the worst reason you have for not getting better at climbing? We all have these things. We know it’s what we should be doing, but we can’t be bothered to follow through on them. These opportunities for growth are so easy and simple that they feel embarrassing to say out loud. A bar set so low we trip over it.

How many things are you avoiding, not because they are hard, but because they aren’t exciting? Is that really a good reason to not be getting better — because it’s not the most fun thing you could be doing with your time? 

When I work with climbers to help them find ways to improve, I’ll often bring up the hard things that they are avoiding. 

When I bring up one of these — like not trying hard enough projects or needing to spend more time working on their onsighting — they pause, accept this with full seriousness, agree that this is something they need to do, and then resolve themselves to working on it from this point forward.

On the other hand, when I bring up one of these embarrassing things that’s easy to resolve, but up to this point the climber just couldn’t be bothered to do anything about, they will look at me with a bit of a guilty grin, shrug, and say, “I’ll see what I can do.” Nothing is ever done about this.

Why is it that we can look at something truly challenging or intimidating and steel ourselves to go for it, but when an easy win isn’t fun we throw up our hands as if to ask, “What can be done?”

Some of the common occurrences of this include:

• Not stopping to thoroughly read boulder problems or routes before you pull onto the wall for the first time. You miss holds and sequences, and end up having to give extra go’s to correct what an extra 15 seconds of observation would have prevented.

• Not doing any mobility work even though you know it’s a weakness. You have the time for it, but it’s not as fun as other things.

• Avoiding slopers because you enjoy crimp climbing more.

• Skipping the warm up because you don’t feel like doing it, even though you know you climb better when you warm up well.

• Getting less sleep because you spend an hour every night doom-scrolling through social media.

Rock climbing is a lot of fun. It’s one of the reasons so many of us get hooked by it the first time we try. With how much fun we have every day that we climb, how hard is it to add in a few menial tasks that will ensure we continue to improve? What easy wins are you missing out on?

If you’re looking for an easy way to find these low-hanging fruits in your climbing practice, try out our Process Journal. It was designed to help you bring more intention to your training and practice, as well as spot patterns that are both helping and hurting your climbing.