How I train the mental side of climbing:

Performance = proficiency + perception

When people talk about performance, they usually mean the send, the win, the result. I think that's a pretty narrow view of it. Performance is how you perform, whether you can execute to the best of your abilities. The send is the outcome, and the outcome depends on a lot of things, some of them in your control and a lot of them not. How you execute is within your control, and it's something we can train.

So this month I want to take a step back and explain how I think about performance, how I work, and the method I've built to train the mental side of it. If you've been following me for a while you'll recognise a lot of these ideas, but I thought it was time for a bit of a recap for everyone who's new here.

Performance = proficiency + perception

The way I explain it is with this equation. Performance = proficiency + perception.

Proficiency is all the training and practice. There's your physical side, so your strength, fitness, mobility and recovery. There's your technical side, so movement skill, tactics and knowing the route. And there's your mental side, the mental skills you've trained in advance, like a pre-performance routine or a way to reset after a mistake.

Perception is how you perceive the situation in the moment. That's what's going on inside you, your thoughts, your feelings and the sensations in your body, and what's going on around you, the conditions, the difficulty of the route or boulder and the people around you. But mostly it's about what all of this means about you.

Most climbers put almost all of their training into proficiency, and that makes sense, because it's the part we're all told about. You can measure your hangs and log your grades. But the golden opportunity is perception, because what we often don't realise is that perception decides how much of that proficiency you can use when it counts. You can be as strong and technical as you want, but if you perceive the route as too hard, or yourself as not good enough or not strong enough, or you feel you've tried it too many times already, you'll find a reason not to try. And you can't perform, or succeed, without trying.

That's where I come in. I help you train your perception so you can access your proficiency.

You can see perception in your behaviour

Perception happens inside your head, so you can't see it directly, but you can see it in what you do. Very simply, it comes down to whether you approach or avoid. Your perception is often answering two questions. Is this possible for me? And what will it mean about me if I fail? If the answer is that it isn't for you, or that failing would prove you're not good enough, you avoid. If the answer is let's find out, you approach.

Here's a simple example. You go to the crag to try a route, and when you get there there's a line of people at the base. Maybe you don't like climbing in front of people. Maybe you look around and decide everyone else is stronger and better than you. Maybe you decide you aren't strong enough. Maybe you don't really deserve to get on it. So you warm up for ages, you try something else, and you go home without trying it. This is avoidance. You've focused on all the problems, your perception is that this route isn't possible for you, and so you don't risk finding out.

Now imagine the same crag and the same line of people. It's the same route and the same body and the same strength, and what's different is the perception. Instead of focusing on all the problems, you go in with a curious mind. Well, let's go and find out what's possible for me today. So you approach. You find yourself a slot in the line, you ask people about the beta, and you tie in to find out what the route involves for you. You communicate clearly how long you'll be so that you don't feel pressured during your try.

This is approaching. Your perception is that you need to go and find out if the route is possible for you.

A big part of how I think about performance is this. To succeed you have to approach. You have to go and do the thing. And most of what I see getting in people's way is that they never try the thing, or don't try it enough times, because their perception stops them from approaching.

Why the tools in the moment aren't enough

A lot of the climbers I work with have already tried the basic mental tools. They've done the positive self-talk and the mantras, things like "I can do this". They've heard about growth mindset. They've tried to focus on the process rather than the outcome. And a lot of the time it hasn't stuck, and they can't work out why.

The way I explain this is with beta. Imagine someone gives you the beta for a route that's way too hard for you. You know where the hands go, where the feet go, where to drop the knee. You know all of it, but you can't climb it, because you don't have the strength and technique underneath to execute it.

The mental side works in exactly the same way. You can know the process. You can know the breathing and the self-talk and the reset. But if you don't have a strong foundation underneath, you simply can't execute them. By foundation I mean an identity and a set of beliefs that allow you to approach and try, and more importantly allow you to fail, reassess and try again. This includes patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that let you perceive the situation as something that might be possible for you, so you approach.

So it doesn't matter if you have the best flow protocol in the world. If failing proves to you that you're not good enough, that protocol alone won't let you execute to the level of your proficiency, because it won't let you approach long enough for it to be effective.

What stops us approaching

Fear of failure. If I had to pick the biggest one, it would be fear of failure. When you look closely, a lot of the other fears come back to it. We fear social judgement because we think that if we fail, other people won't find us worthy. We fear falling because a fall represents failing. Losing control feels like failing too.

Failure has become this huge thing because we've exaggerated what it means in our minds. It proves those thoughts, those beliefs, that identity that says we're not good enough (or insert whatever self-doubt or limiting belief fits for you). I teach you to see failure for what it is, which is learning. Life and climbing are like an experiment. You have a hypothesis, you try the experiment, you see what happened, and you work out what to do differently next time. Failure simply shows you where you need to learn and where to put in effort. It isn't the final piece that nails the coffin shut on your ability to learn or improve.

Limiting beliefs. These are beliefs about what we can and can't do, and most of us don't know we have them. We don't explore them, we don't test them and we don't try to change them.

I see this a lot. Someone believes they're not good enough or not strong enough and that they can only climb a certain grade. So they never go and try something harder, and they never find out what they could do. They spend hours getting stronger, but they never spend time growing the belief of what that strength can do, and so a lot of that strength and that time goes to waste.

It works in both directions too. Say you're a 7a climber and you try a 7b, and you can't do it in the small amount of time you've given it. You label it as "I can't do it, I'm not a 7b climber". But what you might not realise is that you might also not try the 6c, because if you don't get up it, what does that say about your 7a identity? Does it prove you aren't a 7a climber?

Not being able to tolerate uncertainty. Another big one is being uncomfortable. That can be physical, like tolerating being pumped or trying really hard, and it can be mental, like tolerating not knowing how it will turn out. Not knowing whether you'll send, whether it will be worth it, whether you'll get stronger.

If I told you that you'd send your project in three days, you'd give it three days. If I told you it would take two years, a lot of people would still commit, as long as they knew the outcome was guaranteed. What people struggle with is the not knowing. Our brains are pretty black and white about this. We either did it or we failed, and there's nothing in between. So people don't always realise that uncertainty is what they're struggling with. They say it's taking too long, or I need to send this trip, and for a lot of people calling it quits feels easier than staying with not knowing, because at least then they can label it, which makes their brain happy.

Most of the struggle we have comes from that uncertainty and from trying to control the outcome. If you perceive a project as something you have to get done, not knowing feels unbearable. If you perceive it as an experiment you're finding out about, you can stay with not knowing. The more you can accept the uncertainty, the more you can access your proficiency.

Avoiding in both directions. Avoiding isn't always obvious. Sometimes it's the climber who trains and trains but never goes and tries the project, because what would it mean about them if they weren't good enough? And sometimes it's the climber who never takes a rest day, because resting is for lazy people, and if they rest that must mean they're lazy. So they dig themselves into a deeper physical hole, and they can't access the proficiency they've worked so hard for. Don't confuse this latter example for approaching. It isn't.

What about growth mindset? Isn't that the quick hack?

Since it comes up a lot, having a growth mindset doesn't guarantee you'll succeed. Nothing does, there's too much involved. What a growth mindset does is give you the belief that you're adaptable and that you can change. If you believe that, you're more likely to approach, more likely to take on a challenge and more likely to bounce back from failing. With a fixed mindset, every mistake becomes proof that you can't do it, and you stop approaching. So a growth mindset makes you more likely to go and try, and you can't succeed without trying.

The method: the 4Ps

Physically, you wouldn't go and try 9c without any physical preparation. You'd build a base and then the technique. The mental side is no different. It's training, and it needs a base and techniques too. That's how I've built the method, around four Ps.

Person is the foundation. It's who you believe you are, so your identity, how much your self-worth depends on results, your beliefs about yourself and what's possible for you, what you value and what you're aiming for. Person goes beyond climbing, because the aim is a strong sense of you, not only you as a climber.

Pattern is what you do over and over again. It's your habits of thinking, feeling and behaving, including how you perceive hard situations and whether you approach or avoid them, and retraining the ones that hold you back. Our behaviours are usually a result of our thoughts and emotions, and a lot of the time we haven't learned how to deal with those, so we react rather than respond.

Performance is the tools you use in the moment. Things like a pre-performance routine, a way to deal with feelings as they come up, and a reset after a mistake.

Purpose is what keeps you coming back. It's why you climb beyond the results. You're going to get injured, you're going to get older, and the grades aren't always going to keep going up. So when you're injured, the question becomes what can I do? Maybe I can practise my heel hooks. When you're getting older, maybe it's going out with friends and top roping. Purpose is about broadening how you engage with climbing so you're in it for the long game. And the closer you get to your limit, the smaller the signs of improvement get, so you have to choose to keep seeing them.

The 4Ps aren't a sequence, and we move between them depending on what you need. But Person and Pattern are the foundation, and if your patterns lead to avoiding, it doesn't matter what tools you add in the moment.

The core skills

Running through all four Ps are seven core psychological skills that every climber I work with learns, whatever they come to me for. These are drawn from ACT, CBT and DBT, three well-researched therapy approaches.

Awareness: noticing your thoughts, feelings, body sensations and urges as they happen, so you can respond rather than react.

Acceptance and validation: letting difficult thoughts and feelings be there, and recognising that they make sense, so you aren't spending energy fighting them.

Defusion: stepping back from your thoughts, feelings and how you're appraising a situation, so they don't derail you and you have space to choose.

Reappraisal: choosing a more useful meaning for what's happening, so you approach rather than avoid.

Presence: choosing where your attention goes, and bringing it back to now and the task in front of you.

Committed action: acting on what matters to you, whatever thoughts and feelings are there.

Holding lightly: letting your goals, identity and beliefs drive you while staying open to updating them.

These seem simple, and they are. What takes the work is practising them until they're there when it counts. Imagine standing under your project, nervous as hell and full of doubt (because sometimes those things still come up), and still tying in and trying your hardest. That's what these skills build.

Who this is for

I work with climbers who've been in the sport a while, who have a high training age, who've tried the basic mental tools and want to go deeper to perform at a higher level. It's less about grade and more about how committed you are.

The 3 month programme is six 75 minute sessions. We start with an intake session so I can understand you and what's going on, then a session on the method itself. From there we work on the core skills plus two or three key skills chosen for you, and between sessions you put it all into practice, in your daily life, in your training and on the wall.

If this sounds like you, book a free 30 minute discovery call. We talk about your climbing history and what you're coming to me for, I explain how I work, and we work out whether we're a good fit. You'll usually walk away with at least one thing to go and play with.

Book your free discovery call

See you in the next Lab,

Kerrin