There is no better time to start a training regime or even simply a healthier lifestyle than a New Year. However we are all guilty to one extent or another at making ourselves empty promises. There are a few ideas about goal setting elsewhere on the blog. However here I’d like to concentrate on developing you new years climbing resolutions, so that you get the most out of it.
With this in mind get a piece of paper and write in the middle of it what your main climbing ambition is for the coming year. For me I’d like to get back to last years fitness level and climb Rainbow of Recalcitrance and Conan The Librarian. For me these routes are possible, if I was going as well as I possibly could and everything went right. It is important to keep them realistic and but still challenging. An analogy would be to imagine yourself at the climbing wall and you try three boulder problems, one too easy, the other impossible and a third that you see yourself being able to do with a bit of work.
The easy problem will have little effect on you, the likelihood of you disengaging from trying the what seems like ‘impossible’ route are high, however if you percieve the boulder problem or ‘short term goal’ to be possible, often you’ll find your behaviour changing to a semi-obsessive state. As such trying to find the right target to have as your goal for the year is very important, as it will affect your behaviour towards attaining it.
So having written your target in the middle of the page, write in a circle around it 5 or more things that might stop you reaching that goal (lack of stamina, inability to find rests, lack of confidence, lack of power endurance), anything that might be a barrier to your success. Circle each statement and link it back to the central goal.
Now for each one of those possible barriers to your goal, write a few things you can do to stop them being a barrier to your goals (Climb lots of easy routes, climb easy routes concentrating on finding and developing rests, practice placing gear). Again sometimes there might be another layer to this as something like practicing placing gear could be split into whilst walking along the base of a crag, whilst top roping a hard route and placing as much gear as possible on an easy route.
Eventually you have a mind map of several routes you can take towards you dream goal for the year, as well as activities to help get you there in the form of mini stepping stones.
There are a series of useful articles already on this blog, including subjects from:
Developing Confidence to Improve your performance
Developing Self Belief
How you learn technique
Goal Setting Skills
How to Apply Overload for the best Improvements
Developing focus and pre-climb routine for success
How to deal with Stress and Anxiety when climbing
Relaxation Techniques to reduce Anxiety
Using Planning as a Tactic for Success
If you’d like to be coach either face to face if you live in and around North Wales, or via online resources like skype, then you can contact Mark Reeves at his main website.