When my two children were in primary school, I had one rule: No Fun Allowed! And yet, whenever I barked this at them, one hard word at a time, they would giggle like crazy. It was one of our most treasured games for a long time.
It was, to all intents and purposes, us having fun. By outlawing fun. It worked, it made everyone smile and laugh, it brought us all together. Because the idea of ‘fun’ is actually quite complex. If we apply this to our climbing, it’s all tied in to our own personal motivation.
A Quick Note Before We Begin
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Defining Fun as Motivation
Now, they often say ‘the best climber is the one having the most fun’ but what that fun is when it comes to climbing can be incredibly complicated. There is a preconception of ‘fun’ from many, especially when it comes to children: running around, ticking off lots of climbs, being with friends. But that’s not always the case.
Stephen Fry apparently hates the word. In his 2008 documentary Stephen Fry in America, he stands among the frivolity of Mardi Gras in New Orleans and tells us “if there’s a word that makes me shiver with revulsion it’s the word ‘fun'” and one cannot help but know where he’s coming from among the colourful scenes of people letting their hair down in an unusally socially acceptable way. Yet, perhaps Fry is being too stereotypical in his definition.
My own sense of enjoyment in climbing comes from working hard to complete a challenge. Another contemporary quote from television comes from Hannah Fry’s Secret Genuis of Modern Life where Peter Hart references Woody Bledsow saying:
he was competitive… He liked to say that he only played for fun. And what was fun was winning
Perhaps we are all actually driven to have ‘fun’? But perhaps it’s is our own personal perception of fun that becomes so important.
Three World’s of Fun
‘Fun’ is really a synonym for ‘enjoyment’. If we’re having fun, we’re enjoying ourselves. And we like to enjoy ourselves when we’re participating in an activity (mostly anyway) by looking at research such as Self Determination Theory. In essence, we can link fun to motivation to participate.
A 2012 paper (Collins et al) stated three distinct motivations for participation:
- Elite Referenced Excellence (ERE): the desire to be better than one’s peers
- Personally Referenced Excellence (PRE): the desire to be the best one can be
- Participation for Personal Wellbeing (PPW): participating for reasons other than excellence
As soon as I read it, this theory resonated with me hard. All of a sudden, my revulsion – for I share much the same feelings as Stephen Fry on this one – to “just have fun” as I’d been told many times makes complete sense. “Just have fun” conjures images of PPW and that simply doesn’t drive me.
My personal motivation is typically (though not wholy, see below) through PRE; I love a good challenge. I love to fight; not literally but to work hard and achieve something. Put me on a bike and I attack the hills. Take me for a run and I want to be pushing my pace all the time. Give me a choice of climbs and I’ll generally pick the one that I have to fight my way up.
Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily but it does come with some challenges. So let’s have a closer look at each of these, in the context of climbing and climbing coaching.
ERE: better than your mates
Can you picture the climber who has ‘fun’ by burning off their mates at the wall? Yeah, that’s one version of Elite Referenced Excellence for you.
This category also includes those driven to win competitions or to achieve first ascents. In essence, the motivation here is all driven by social comparison; a topic covered by Madeleine Crane of Climbing Psychology here.
PRE: hitting your top grade
On the other hand, trying to better oneself irrespective of anyone else, is known as Personally Referenced Excellence. The classic example here is trying to climb your next top grade.
Crucially, PRE doesn’t require you to be alone; it’s all about what drives you. It needn’t all be about metrics either, it could be the way that you climb among many other options. Crucially, though, PRE is all about excellence and trying to be the best one can be.
PPW: just chilling
Of course, there’s more to life than excellence and this is where that stereotypical definition of ‘fun’ that upset Steven Fry so much comes in. In the Three World’s Model, it’s classed as ‘Personal Wellbeing’ and really, it’s anything that drives motivation that isn’t anything to do with being really good.
The classic example is to be sociable but there are countless examples of Participation for Personal Wellbeing. It’s a huge category that basically includes anything we can’t class as excellence.
A Mixing Bowl of Motivation
As I mentioned above, in practice, these three motivations aren’t entirely distinct and do operate as a bit of a spectrum. It’s hard to conceptualise with three points but we can put it in the form of a triangle and it works nicely:
You can see on each ‘blunted point’ we have each of the three motivations. In the middle is OUR motivation which swims around inside, depending on the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Even in a single session, we may wish to try our project, get distracted with a climb someone else is doing (especially if we want to beat them to it) or simply hang about with mates. Last night, I had a climbing session which involved some friendly competition among the group before they called it a day and played some board games while I continued working on projects. All three motivations happening simultaneously within the space of three hours; merely the focus in the moment changed.
Throughout the whole session, I was having a great time – I was, indeed, having great fun! And given my successes on each of the three, returned home in a fantastic mood.
Playing the Model to Our Advantage
Now that we have knowledge of this model, we have a better understanding of how our mind is working. This deeper knowledge can then help us to continue with less surprise over what is happening in our mind.
The next level is to manipulate our motivation to our own advantage. Notice that at no point have I said any of these motivations are any better or worse than the others; what’s called a ‘non-versus approach’. If it drives you on, run with it!
- So if you’ve got someone at the wall that you compete with well? Use that ERE, try and outdo them! [Caveat: make sure they’re up for this, we don’t want to upset others for us to achieve, that’s harsh].
- Has somebody just come along and blasted through the moves on your project? Time to go full PRE. Make a conscious effort not to compare yourself to them but to your last attempt, meaning now they are there to offer valuable insight and beta, not to compete with you
- Too fatigued to perform now? No problem, find some joy in something else. Spend a bit of time exploring the feeling of movement on the wall, chat to some friends, create some fun games (elimantes or add-a-move for example)
That’s the important thing with these models: they descibe the real world. So once we have seen how they work for real, we can use them to inform how we behave moving forward.
A Note for Coaches
So far, we’ve been talking about our own personal motivations but for the coaches reading, there are further challenges.
If we consider a 1:1 session to begin with, there is an assessment of sorts to be completed to better understand our climber’s primary motivation. Yes, it remains a spectrum but once the climbs become more difficult, we’ll often be able to see which one is the most common for that person.
Often, changing their world can be quite difficult as these motivations can be heavily embedded; often to the point of being part of their identity. It is worth stressing that we are not qualified psychologists, so interventions should be taken carefully, but we are able to create tasks that are directed in different ways to broaden the climber’s experience of each world.
Group sessions can be a bit harder in terms of assessment – remember each individual will have their own motivation – but manipulating said world can be a little easier. Again, it is all about setting the right task for the group to allow them to experience all three Worlds and enable them to find the right one when the time is right.
Summary
We’re all climbing to have a good time (hopefully) but what we find enjoyable can be complex. Thankfully, we can consider motivation happening in a combination of three ‘World’s’: better than those around us; better than we were; or reasons other than being better.
These Three World’s provide a framework for us to not only understand our own motivation but to manipulate it to suit any situation we find ourselves in. Indeed, as the situation changes, we may even be able to switch tact and live in a different World.
Fun can simply be enjoying ourselves. Changing what we think of as fun can be the difference between leaving our sessions with a smile or not.
If You Enjoyed That…
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 Coffee, with whatever donation you wish by clicking the button here.
References/Further Reading
Depending on the topic at hand, this might be a good idea or not
Collins et al. (2012). The interest–enjoyment distinction in intrinsic motivation. Motivation and Emotion, 13(2), 83–103. doi:10.1007/BF00992956
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum
Crane (2025). Winning, motivation and the training climate you create as a coach. https://www.climbingpsychology.com/blog/winning-motivation-and-the-training-climate-you-create-as-a-coach?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_campaign_id=68f5093a6afcdf1fe7088f58&ss_email_id=68fe53a42fa115466c784076&ss_campaign_name=%F0%9F%A4%A9+How+Your+Mindset+Shapes+Your+Climbers%E2%80%99+Motivation&ss_campaign_sent_date=2025-10-26T17%3A00%3A32Z
Crane (2025) How comparison shapes teenage climbers. https://www.climbingpsychology.com/blog/how-comparison-shapes-teenage-climbers?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_campaign_id=6926c9c71568876c65fa948b&ss_email_id=69313f8ddba64c0e7f8bee46&ss_campaign_name=%F0%9F%AB%A3+Comparison+Can+Shake+Young+Climbers&ss_campaign_sent_date=2025-12-04T08%3A00%3A42Z