Challenge Yourself

 

Lately I’ve been trying to work on my weaknesses. One of them is slab climbing. I think the hardest pure slab I’ve climbed is around V6. For my first few years of climbing I got in the habit of avoiding styles that I wasn’t good at. That included slabs and slopers. Horse Pens was my home area for several years and I would usually skip over slopey technical problems because they always felt hard! I would walk right past classics like Millipede and Trick or Treat. It wasn’t that I was incapable of climbing them, I just didn’t want to fail on something well below my physical limit. Thankfully my friend Leslie is always full of psych and he finally pushed me to session Millipede one night four years ago. After a few frustrating attempts I finally sent the classic Horse Pens problem!

It can be frustrating working on slabs because you can’t just try harder, you have to learn how to climb better. I’ve improved a lot since those days but I’m still no where near where I should be.

Living in Squamish has been fantastic for improving the slab skills. Every day I climb I do a small slab circuit at the Black Dyke area. I don’t think I’ve ever fallen on them but I remember when I climbed them for the first time I pulled on holds a lot more than I needed to. Now after climbing them dozens of times I know how to fully trust the feet and how to move without using any strength. Simply climbing V1 or V2 slabs over and over again has been really beneficial.

There’s a V3 friction slab near easy chair that I had to project for a session to send! It’s hard, I swear! After I sent, I climbed it again for good measure but it still didn’t feel easy. A few days later I brought a friend of mine to it and she danced right up it no problem! I had to climb it three more times. It feels easier now but not V3 yet. I’m going to keep climbing it in hopes that it actually feels V3 soon!

One of my goals before I leave is to climb a beautiful highball V7 called Black Slabbath. I felt terrible on it the first time I tried it but much better the second time. I just need healthy fingers before I can give it another proper session.

I haven’t climbed a harder number grade in 2.5 years but I have improved as a climber by leaps and bounds. I’ve improved dramatically on slopers, compression, slabs, any technical climbing, and onsighting. When I was in South Africa last year I spent more than 10 days projecting a V13 compression problem called The Vice. Compression has never been my forte but I got psyched on this one and progressed from not being able to do all the moves in my first session to climbing two overlapping sections and almost sending on my last day in Rocklands. In the end I didn’t send but I was psyched to make so much progress on something that was so hard for me.

Many climbers are in the same boat where they shy away from weaknesses, whether it be slabs, crimps, slopers, highballs, compression, etc. Start challenging yourself to push through them and I bet you’ll improve quicker than you think. Especially if you are just getting into climbing, it will make a huge difference if you can push yourself technically early on in your climbing career. Don’t just focus on getting stronger, focus on being a better rock climber.