Take a look at this genuine review from a client from the summer of 2025:
I’m always drinking tea when I’m working. Armed with one of my two flasks, or sometimes both, drinking tea at the wall has become part of the Prowess image. At face value, it may seem like a quirk; one of those unique things that stands me out from the crowd of other coaches working in the industry.
In reality, it’s a tactical trick to ensure you get the best of your time on our sessions. Here, I’ll explain some of the reasons behind it and how you as a coach can use this to your own benefit.
A Quick Note Before We Begin
All of these resources are provided to you completely free of charge. I’m a big believer of helping people however I can. Sadly, they are not free to create, often taking a substantial amount of time and research to create. If you would like to help support me, you can Buy Me A Brew, with whatever donation you wish by clicking the button here.
The Big Tip
Okay so this article is written for other coaches and I’m basically going to bundled you all into one of three categories: junior coaches; experienced coaches; and expert coaches. Now let’s phrase it in the form of an incredibly poor joke:
A junior coach, experienced coach and expert coach walk into a wall. They all stand on the floor looking at a climber on the wall, looking at their performance. When the climber lowers back down, he walks over and asks the assembled group what he needs to work on.
The junior coach’s eyes grow, looking like a rabbit headlights, only able to utter the word “Erm…” so the climber moves on.
He asks the experienced coach, who suddenly lists countless different things, one after the other, with no breaks for a breath. ‘Wo!’ thinks the climber, ‘that’s way too much to think about!’ and the climber moves on.
He looks at the expert coach who smiles and says “have you tried not letting go…?”
Yeah, I know, it’s barely a joke but yes, that is genuine advice I’ve given to climbers and that sentence gave them just what they needed in that moment on that climb. Much as the experienced coach, of course I could see all of the issues the climber was having but unlike the experienced coach, there’s no way I’d give them all at once.
Part of the skill in coaching is knowing just when to say just the right thing.
This is where my trusty cup of tea comes in.
The Drill: Sipping the Tea
Watch your climber but every time you go to speak to them, take a sip of your tea.
While drinking, ask yourself: do you NEED to say that? Or can you let them reach that conclusion on their own? And is there anything more important to focus on?
- For junior coaches, this buys you a little time. It takes experience to be able to observe someone climbing and quickly identify what you’re going to work on and it’s not easy at the start. If you can’t decide by the time you’ve finished sipping, ask them to try it again
- For experienced coaches, it prevents that massive brain dump of information for clients that can be overwhelming. Once we’ve got some experience, it is common to see a multitude of things we can enhance and the temptation is to try and do them all at the same time; with the unwanted consequence that the client cannot think of any of them
- For expert coaches, you get to drink tea before it goes cold…
Are You Serious That This Will Help Me as a Coach?!
Erm, yeah. Dead serious. But I can see why some might be sceptical so let’s investigate the why of all of this.
Let’s begin with something called cognitive load theory. If we made this really simple, it’s thinking of mental capacity; we can only think of a few things at once. Present too much information at the same time and the brain cannot process everything and doesn’t quite shut down but our ‘working memory’ gets overloaded, thus hindering learning.
The tea sipping allows us to fight that natural urge to provide new information whenever there’s a pause. These pauses are really important: they provide time for people to process information, think about what’s happened and make sense of their lived experience. They can allow people to learn to learn, to problem solve rather than be constantly directed, to guide people towards their own discoveries and to develop a bit of autonomy.
Autonomy is one of the key components of something called Self-Determination Theory; a key component to achieving ‘Intrinsic Motivation’ or doing something for the pure joy of it. It’s less a case of things happening without thought (that’s automatic), think of it as having choice over what happens.
When we’ve got someone stood over us, we lose a bit of that autonomy; often feeling pressure to perform. Creating space can give someone the feeling of choice, even if only on the pace of the task they’re attempting. There are drawbacks here, though, which we’ll come to in a minute.
Finally, for me, and on Prowess sessions, I often use the phrase ‘professionally unprofessional’. It’s a deliberate term, carefully used to suggest we can’t take ourselves too seriously. At the end of the day, save for the occasional very niche crisis, going climbing is not critical to anybody’s survival. No, this is a hobby, a pastime and while that is not to belittle climbing – something that would be a little daft on this website – it is to suggest we don’t want to put too much pressure on ourselves.
There are so many benefits to our quality of life from going climbing but increasing stress levels to extreme levels are certainly not one of them; certainly not accidentally. If nothing else, higher stress levels lead to a dip in performance. The trick is to get the ‘arousal level’ just right (all related to the Yerkes-Dodson curve).
Another favourite phrase is ‘if you’re laughing, you’re learning’ and again, teaching with a brew in hand is a good way for me to make the environment more relaxed. After all, there’s only so much I can really try and hammer home a point with steam emanating from my brew.
Some Limitations of the Tea Drinking Approach
There are clearly some times when it is not appropriate; please don’t misunderstand me to think I’m suggesting we need to have tea in hand all the time!
‘Professionally Unprofessional’ and ‘laughing is learning’ are fine when the time is right but when you’re discussing with someone hanging their life from their fingertips above poor runners on a cliff face, perhaps it’s time to make things a bit more serious. There are times and places, although if I do discard the flask, you can be sure that I’ve got something more important to talk about.
Likewise with giving people autonomy by stepping away and giving them space. Early on during people’s learning, or indeed with some people in general, having someone experienced nearby can be a reassuring presence. Having a perception that said experienced person has your undivided attention can certainly be important too.
There is a balance to be struck but the original point still stands.
Using some sort of prompt to prevent overloading the client with information can be crucial to affording them the best opportunity to learn.
Oh and the final question: does it have to be tea? Erm, no, any drink would work the same but I can’t see what else you’d want to drink…
Summary
There can be a tendency, once we have developed our skills with coaching, to pepper people with every improvement we can find; often, all at once. While it may feel helpful to give lots of information, this can lead to overload, the client’s working memory to become overwhelmed and for none of it to go in.
Sipping tea can often help us to cyphen out the essential bits, leaving people more time to process their thoughts and allowing them to reach their own discoveries; something much stronger than being given answers directly.
Stepping away from the group/individual for a brief moment can give them a perceived level of autonomy and responsibility too. While doing this explicitly might come across strangley, or add pressure, doing so under the guise of ‘I’m just going to get my tea’ can often hide any of these extra stresses (with the caveat that the climber MUST be kept safe at all times).
Reducing stress and pressure can also be important for learning. Having a tea-drinking coach can be a bit more relaxed and laid back than someone intently staring at their charges constantly. Creating the right environment for learning can be key and having a brew can often be a good option to do just that.
However, this all stems from the overriding tip, which I will use to finish once more:
Watch your climber but every time you go to speak to them, take a sip of your tea.
While drinking, ask yourself: do you NEED to say that? Or can you let them reach that conclusion on their own? And is there anything more important to focus on?
References
Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257–285.
https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4
Mosston, Muska, and Sara Ashworth. The Spectrum of Teaching Styles: From Command to Discovery. Longman, 1990
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. New York: Plenum.
Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459–482. https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.920180503