How to Harness the Power of Self-Talk in Climbing

Although touted for its welcoming community, rock climbing is more individualistic than meets the eye. While you may need a spotter when bouldering and require a belayer for roped routes, getting to the top of the wall depends entirely on yourself. Your friends, coaches, and belay partners can shout words of encouragement from the floor, but up on the wall, you choose to keep climbing or let go. To try or to fall, you control the narrative.

Once you realize the individualistic nature of rock climbing, you will recognize the power of self-talk in the sport. When you are the sole creator of your rock climbing journey, you are in charge of whether you speak to yourself with kindness, believe in yourself, or let yourself try at your limit. Over and over again, climbers will say that half the battle of sending is the mental challenge. If you can master the ability to wield your inner dialogue precisely, you can elevate your climbing to the next level.

But how do you reach the point where you deploy your self-talk to help rather than hinder you? Harnessing the power of self-talk in climbing takes practice and repetition, but it isn’t inherently challenging. There are three simple yet powerful ways to start. None of them will require you to be overly peppy, bubbly, or optimistic every time you go to the rock gym or climb outside. That’s not realistic. Instead, they will guide you through recognizing where negative self-talk can creep into your session and how to silence and replace it with empowering dialogue.

3 Ways to Use Self-Talk in Climbing

1. Silence the fear by reminding yourself that you are in control.  

Self-talk helps you get past the fear of falling or a scary move. When you let your fear build, especially while actively climbing, you may find breathing harder, your forearms pump out faster, and you may feel shaky. To combat these outcomes, as soon as you register fear, remind yourself that you’re in control. Make a mental list of everything you know to be true about the situation. Is it dangerous, or are you in a controlled environment with adequate safety precautions (properly placed bouldering pads, a spotter, correctly tied knot, trusted belayer)? Assuming the situation is safe, tell yourself that you are stronger than your fears and that it is safe to try the scary move. If you can calm down and regain control of your breath and thoughts, odds are you’ll stick the move and send the climb. 

2. Stop thinking about falling. Tell yourself you can stick the move.

At some point, you’ve stood on the ground, read a climb, and decided you’ll reach a specific move and fall. Whether you believe in the power of manifestation or not, nine times out of 10, when you allow yourself to think that you will fall before you even start the climb, you will fall at x move. The cause of the fall will not be because you physically can’t execute the move but because your mind convinced you not to try because you’d inevitably fail.

Moral of the story: If you think you’ll fall, you’ll fall. But, you can rewire your inner dialogue in these moments and choose to tell yourself that you are capable of sticking all the moves on a boulder problem or sport route. Tell yourself that you are strong enough and that if you try hard, you could send the climb. Note: changing your pre-climb conversation with yourself from thoughts of falling to thoughts of success doesn’t guarantee a send. But, it does give you a chance to try that you denied yourself by saying you will fall before you even hop on the climb.

3. Don’t sell yourself short. Try the challenging climbs you think you can’t do.

Ultimately, if you tell yourself you can’t do something before you make an effort, you’re selling yourself short. The best example of this in rock climbing is when climbers deny themselves the opportunity to try boulders or routes above what they perceive as their maximum limit. This self-denial often leads to a climber not realizing their true potential because they are not allowing themselves to try at 100% effort. But the only way to get better and climb harder is to push that limit and test what you can do. So, instead of going into the rock gym and telling yourself that you can only hop on climbs of a specific grade range/tag color, tell yourself that you can climb anything that looks interesting. You can attempt a climb that seems too hard. Even if you fall on the first move, you will have broken through an immense mental barrier in believing in yourself enough to give that climb a whirl.

Learning to harness the power of self-talk in climbing is a skill to train and perfect, just like a dyno, pogo, or back-flag. The more conscious you are about your inner dialogue, the easier it is to implement these three self-talk strategies. Remember that you are in control; how you think can impact the outcome, and how you choose to limit yourself can hold you back from realizing your true potential. With those three reminders in your back pocket or on repeat in your head, you are well-equipped to shut down detrimental self-talk and engage in empowering thought processes. You’ve got this! Comment below with any questions, thoughts, comments, or other ideas related to self-talk in rock climbing!