“How much better of a climber would you be if you had all of those days back?”

A friend recently asked me this question and it brought me to a halt. We were talking about a poor session she’d had because she hadn’t eaten enough food before training and her energy tanked. I told her that I’ve probably had a hundred sub-par sessions in my sixteen years of climbing because of not having enough food ahead of time.

“How much better of a climber would you be if you had all of those days back?”

Her question got me thinking. How many of my climbing and training days have been less than ideal because of mostly avoidable reasons?

So I made a chart to try and answer this question. On it I included reasons for the poor session as well as the estimated number of days associated to each reason. The number represents days or sessions that were below 70% of the quality that they could have been if it weren’t for the circumstance. 

I don’t consider these days worthless, but if I had to rate their quality I would give them a failing grade.

In my 16 years of climbing, I’ve averaged around 220 climbing or training days a year. This totals to 3,520 total days of climbing or training.

I’ll do the math for you. That’s six years worth of sub-par climbing days. That makes my true climbing age 10 years.

These numbers are sobering. At no point had it felt like I was accumulating years. Sure, a broken collar bone here, and some life obligations there, but I would have told you that consistency has always been one of my strengths. Adding it all up, it’s impossible to ignore nearly six years worth of poor sessions from mostly avoidable reasons. 

Life isn’t perfect. It’s not fair to say that all of these days were avoidable.  It isn’t healthy to have those kinds of expectations. Also, I learned a lot of lessons through those days. I wouldn’t be the climber I am today without them. 

Still, It’s hard to stomach the thought that almost six years of my climbing was spent this way. If I could have cut away even half of those days…

How many days have you given up? 

How much better would you be if you had those days back?

We can’t get those days back though. What we can do is learn how to take control back from these variables moving forward.

Here’s what I suggest:

• Set a 10 minute timer and write out all the reasons that have held you back. You can use my list as a reference, but it’s by no means exhaustive.

• Once you have your list, reflect on each of these reasons. What scenarios typically lead to them? What excuses do you make when you find yourself doing them? I wrote my own reflections at the bottom of this article for you to reference. You don’t have to do this all in one sitting. Write your initial list and then let that marinate for a day or two. Give yourself time to sit with these ideas.

• Keep a training journal. If you don’t already, now’s the best time to start.

• In your journal, after tracking your session, list any of these reasons that held you back. Is this something you can fix moving forward? Be honest with yourself. You can literally save yourself from years of wasted climbing days.

A bad day here or there will happen. That’s life. Just make sure to catch these patterns before they really cost you. I’m not saying you need to calculate your own true climbing age, but you do need to be aware of the factors that contribute to it. If you’re going to put years of your life into this sport, make them count.

If you’re looking for help finding these patterns, check out our Process Journal. Kris and I created this tool to serve as a highlighter for people’s climbing habits. From the layout to the prompts, it’s designed to help you see what patterns are helping you and which are holding you back.

This is something that I wish I would have had earlier on in climbing. I believe that if I would have had and used this book for even one training cycle each year that I would have caught most of these missteps before they did so much damage.

Addendum: My Personal Reflections

While this isn’t an exhaustive list of everything that can ruin a day, these are the things that have affected me personally. Below these explanations is a table showing my estimated number of climbing days lost to each cause.

Injury

Early in my climbing I dealt with a lot of injuries. I climbed too much and kept thinking that 5 days a week of climbing was the only way to improve. I had a huge array of finger, shoulder, wrist, and elbow injuries for the first five years of my climbing.

The belief then was that you needed to rest when you were injured. This meant I spent much of my first five years resting from injuries.

I’ve had far fewer injuries since then, and I’m much better at being honest with myself when they start to happen and understanding ways to work around them However, my track record in the past 10 years still hasn’t been perfect. I also don’t expect it to be.

Food

I’m usually pretty good about eating a lot of food or keeping bars or bananas around to snack on if I start to crash, but I’ve had plenty of days (mostly training sessions) where I don’t realize I haven't eaten enough until it’s too late into the session and I don’t have enough time left to eat and bounce back from it.

Caffeine

I didn’t start regularly drinking coffee until my mid 20’s. If I have more than two cups of coffee on a climbing day then my forearms feel pumped and powered down for the entire session. This starts at the warm up and will continue for the entirety of the session. 

When I was 24 this was happening to me and it took several months to realize what was causing it. I had been bouldering a lot and assumed this had something to do with my level of endurance. It still happens to me now and then when I don’t pay close attention to my caffeine intake, but very rarely.

Sleep

I’m fortunate to be a good sleeper so this one doesn’t come up as often for me as it does for others.

Poor Scheduling

Planning out a long cycle of uninterrupted training is fairly easy. Taking into account all of the things that life throws in takes a lot more work and upkeep.

For me, this box covers all of the times I had other engagements and didn’t plan my climbing or training around them. The phrase “I’m just too busy this week, I’ll make sure to do it next week” is a huge red flag. Next week is never less busy. If I don’t make the time now, it’s never happening.

Weather

I lived in the Southeast for around 10 years. Dealing with the bad weather there is the price you have to pay for climbing on the best stone in the country. 

In the Red River Gorge and West Virginia I had more limited training options to offset the rain, but in Chattanooga, I had the gym as a fallback option.

Sickness

Fortunately, I’ve always been a pretty healthy person. I only get sick once every few years. Because of this, I don’t train through sickness and instead incorporate it as a time for deload regardless of when it happens.

Motivation

In more recent years I’ve learned when to push things hard and when to have more of a blue-collar approach to my training.

Earlier on, my strategy was to always push hard until I either exhausted myself physically or burned out mentally. This cost me a lot of days.

This also includes days of being frustrated from not making progress in training or on a project and letting it get to me enough that it ruined my day.

***The irony of wasting a day on a project by being frustrated about slow progress on the project is not lost on me.

Partners

I’ve had a lot of reliable partners so this one hasn’t been big for me. However, when I lived in the new in 2011 there weren’t many sport climbers around so there were quite a few days where climbing wasn’t an option because no one was going out.

I also love bouldering alone which makes it easy to get high-quality outdoor sessions in a short amount of time.

Life and Work Stress

When stress builds up big enough there are times where focusing on climbing just isn’t going to happen for me.

Lack of Facilities

My first year in college I lived over an hour from the closest gym and 2 hours from climbing. It was normal for me to climb two or maybe three days a week during this time.

Travel for work or life in general has also meant missed days.

Now that I keep a portable hangboard with me, I am able to curb the amount of unwanted time off.

Bad Skin

I used to have terrible skin before I realized the value of tape and skin care products. Personally, I use antihydral, Climb-On creme (not the bar), and either Leukotape or Circuit Tape.

I’ve also learned that if I vary my projects enough between styles and hold types that I don’t need to rest my skin as much as if i’m only climbing on sharp crimps.

However, I still take rest days for skin whenever I’m heavily invested in a project.