Thoughts on Trying Hard — Hazel Findlay

In this video you can see (and hear) me trying really hard on a route called Mission Impossible. Sometimes I manage to get up things because I access a kind of laser focus known to some as flow state. This time, my send really wasn’t due to some amazing performance. In the send footage you can hear me telling myself that I was ‘doing it wrong’, this is not the behaviour of someone in flow. So what got me to the top? To put it simply I tried really hard. The purpose of the post is to share some of my thoughts as a professional climber and a coach on the magical power of trying really f*cking hard. What you read below is through the lens of my own personal climbing and coaching, not that of sport psychology.

Coaching ‘try-hard’

Helping people to ‘try harder’ whilst climbing is the hardest thing for me to do as a coach. I think there are many factors contributing to someone’s capacity to try hard (some of which I talk about below) but although it may come more naturally to some versus others, it’s my belief that it is a practiced skill that you can get better at. Every time you try hard you push the limits of mind and body, you become more familiar with that space and can therefore access it more readily. Throughout my climbing career my physical fitness has fluctuated, but I’ve become progressively more skilled at pushing my limits by nearly always taking the opportunity to try hard.

Really wanting to send doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll try hard

Ironically really wanting to do a route doesn’t mean you’ll be able to try hard when the time comes. In fact the opposite can happen. If we really want to do something this often translates into a fear of not doing it, which means that we’re over-thinking the result of our efforts. Every move of a climb makes up the process of getting from the ground to the top, if we are thinking about the top of the route half way up then we can’t be focused on the task at hand. Carrying fear of failure up a route is like carrying a rucksack full of rocks. If you are very afraid to fail then you will be distracted in the moment and you’ll climb like crap. Addressing your relationship with failure can help mitigate this. Equally, practicing focusing tools can shift your attention to the task at hand when you need to.

Practicing try-hard

In order to practice trying hard you need to be able to try hard on routes that don’t matter or on routes that you are unlikely to get to the top of. Those big sends only come around so often, so if you are only trying hard on the last move of your one big project a year then that’s really not that much practice. You want to be trying hard on routes or boulders that you know you are unlikely to get to the top of. Some people laugh at me when I start up an 8b+ like I am in it for the onsight but the first few clips might be an 8a or a 7c+ (grades I am capable of onsighting) so why not practice that try hard? Of course sometimes it makes sense to save your energy, however the point is that if you can’t try hard when it doesn’t matter what makes you think you can when it does? On the route you see above I tried really hard on the onsight, although I was not close at all I managed to get through this big move and that was great fun and great training.

Presence

Presence is necessary for trying hard but it’s not sufficient. We can be perfectly present with our own laziness. However, supreme effort means that all our resources - mental and physical - are being directed towards the task at hand. You can’t do this if you are distracted with other thoughts or worried about the past or future.

Try to cultivate an intrinsic motivation for effort.

Intrinsic motivation refers to behaviour driven by internal rewards. This is in contrast to extrinsic motivation which refers to behaviours driven by external rewards. So for example an intrinsically driven climber could be motivated to climb just because they love it, whereas an extrinsically driven climber might be motivated to climb for social validation. You’ll find it much easier to try hard if you enjoy the effort for what it is without any outcomes attached. You might be saying ‘How can I enjoy it? That effort is hard and painful’, but neuroscience tells us that we receive a dopamine hit after intense physical challenge. I find that the first few moves of a route can feel uncomfortable but as soon as I get invested in the challenge I become accepting with the physical discomfort of trying hard. If you are struggling to get to that place try to create a situation where you find it easiest to try hard, for some this might be on a boulder, a route you’ve already done, or on a top rope (if you’re scared to fall) and see how you feel afterwards. Another fun exercise is to try to speed climb or at least climb continuously (preferably on a top rope so you don’t need to clip) adding this challenge to a relatively easy route can help you get to that state of ‘try hard’.

The best climbers are also the best exemplars of try-hard

All the best climbers I know can try hard. If you need any further evidence of why it’s good to try hard, find some videos of the best climbers in the world (thinking Adam Ondra and Chris Sharma on La Dura Dura) climbing and you’ll notice that they all try hard. As a 5 ft 2, not very light or strong person I feel like I probably wouldn’t be a pro climber if it wasn’t for this try-hard. Most of my best sends involved a lot of try-hard, if not on the actual send then on many of the previous attempts.

How do you know you’ve tried hard?

Now this is a difficult question. Not all try-hard moments involve power screams or grunts. It’s irritating when someone tells you to try harder when you know you were already trying really hard. I think that experience of trying hard and being at your limit is the only way to know. If you fell off with every part of your being trying to stay on the wall then you were probably trying hard. Usually if I fall off having tried my hardest then I will be happy with myself and not concerned about not sending. In addition I think surprising yourself is a good indication that you’re trying hard. If you can barely believe you’re still on the wall this indicates a strong effort.

Falling

It’s extremely difficult to try hard if you are scared to fall. Similar to the distraction of fear of failure, fear of falling is also a distraction that makes it impossible to commit to climbing higher. When we are scared to fall we don’t want to move higher above the bolt and we have an urge to say ‘take’, this is not conducive to trying hard or being focused on the moves. I believe that many people don’t learn how to try hard because they rarely operate at their limits as they are scared to fall. We can practice trying hard in a training environment such as on a board however outdoor climbing or even just being on a rope is very different to trying hard above a big mat. Therefore we need to do fall practice to mitigate this hurdle to try hard.

Trying hard as a form of: ‘letting go’.

Now this is a tricky concept to get your head round but give me a chance. We think of trying hard as pure determination and not giving up, however forcing something to happen is not want we want either. If your body knows how to climb and it knows how to try hard then sometimes it’s almost like we need to ‘let go’ into the effort. For example, you’re on an onsight and you’re trying really hard not to fall so you’re going up and down trying to find the best holds, you’re trying to make sure you’ve found the best sequence. In this instance trying hard could mean more of a surrendering into the moves and letting your body climb rather than over thinking and forcing your body to stay on the wall. It’s about never giving up but also about climbing intuitively rather than forcing the outcome you want.

Those try-hard moments are the most memorable

Last but not least, moments of pure effort, especially when coupled with pure focus, are the most memorable in climbing. I can remember random routes if they are routes I had an all-out fight on. A true effort on a route can leave me psyched (and tired) for days and it’s these moments of being intensely connected to what we’re doing that make climbing what it is to the passionate climber.

In summary…

I’ll finish up by describing a route I onsighted recently, Donkey Kong extension at Nifada, Leonidio. I scraped up Donkey Kong Junior and was making a meal out of resting without a knee pad and I thought “I’m super tired but I’ll try anyway”. I did not really believe that I would be able to do the extension since I was tired and in the guidebook the route is given 8b/+ which is not a grade I have onsighted before. But since I am in the habit of trying hard I fully committed to the climbing anyway. I had no idea how to do the moves and although I tried really hard (power screaming, fingers opening, you name it) there was also a sense that I was ‘giving in’ to the moves, I was allowing my body to intuitively read the rock without overthinking and being too attached to the outcome. I did the route and it turns out the guidebook is wrong and it would be better graded at 8a+. So it was worth the effort from an achievement perspective as this is still probably my hardest onsight. However even if I had fallen it would have been worth it from a training and enjoyment perspective. Thanks for reading and happy try-hard climbing!