Purpose:
To encourage you to find which tips are reliable and which aren’t as useful, to critically appraise advice you receive and to stress test ideas to find improvements in your climbing.
Where: wherever you like
This drill can be done in any environment on any hold types.
When: during the Learning Window
Climbs should be easy enough to allow thought process but not so easy as the drill feels contrived.
The Drill:
I’ve named this drill after one of my long term clients. That is not to be a sleight on her, she’s brilliant but has a habit of trying not to listen to the exercises. But we can use that to our advantage.
In order to complete this drill, you will EITHER need access to the internet OR will need to complete Stage 1 before arriving at the climbing wall
- Stage 1: go online, to your preferred search engine (or Chat GPT) and search for: “tips for good climbing”
- Stage 2: break the advice. Climb and see if you can break the advice. Find places is DOESN’T work. Find reasons you don’t agree.
- IMPORTANT NOTE: DO NOT COMPLETE THIS DRILL WITH ANY ADVICE REGARDING WARM UPS OR PHYSICAL TRAINING. THIS WILL RISK INJURY
- Tip: you could consider using the ‘Must, Mustn’t, Maybe‘ drill to test out your tips
The tips you are able to break easily may still be useful in some circumstances (see if you can find which ones they work well on) and more nuance may be required to make them work. Meanwhile, the tips you can’t break may well be good, solid principles that you can refer back to time and again.
The Outcome: How do you know when it’s working?
Over time, you should find that you develop an array of good climbing tips, possibly even becoming good principles.
You should also become more careful about which advice is worth listening to straight away and become more critical when researching for climbing tips.