grades and ego

Grades are extremely difficult to disentangle from our egos.

Our brains like numbers and achieving higher numbers feels good. Sometimes this leads us to associate our value as a climber with how hard we are sending. So when we aren’t climbing as well as we think we “should” be, it can be easy to spiral.

I’ve gone through this multiple times in my climbing career and I’m sure I’ll go through it again. It’s REALLY hard to not care about grades.

I was struggling quite a bit with my mindset this winter and this is one of the reasons I decided to work with Coach Jeremy Fein . I needed to untangle my thoughts around my performance and move more productively through my sessions.

One of things Coach Jeremy said to me in our discussions that really stuck out to me was,

“it’s not a benchmark if you’ve never done it before.”

Let me give you some context to the conversation.

I was talking about an experience I had at the gym when I was climbing on a new set. I was struggling with some problems that were at a level that I felt I “should” do easily and I quickly got frustrated.

I thought, “I’m usually able to comfortably flash this grade, why does this grade feel so challenging today?! It isn't feeling like it should.”

So Coach Jeremy reminded me that “it’s not a benchmark if you’ve never done it before.” In other words, there’s absolutely no way to know how a climb "should" feel if you’ve never been on it.

My expectations around how I thought it should feel that gave me a negative experience with the climb.

Even though I've encountered climbs of the same grade and had them feel vastly different in difficulty, I still had it in my head that I "should" be able to complete this grade with a certain amount of ease.

Example: pictured on the left is a V7, Tennessee Thong, that is notoriously difficult if you are a shorter climber. I have yet to send this climb. On the right is Jerry's Kids, another V7 that I'm able to consistently repeat.

We are not entitled to any grade feeling any sort of way. Yes the grade is a rough guide for how it may feel but hardly a guarantee.

Now that I've let go of my expectations of how grades "should" feel on a new set, I’ve been able to enjoy my sessions more and focus on what's important: my goal for the session. In other words, what I actually want to get out of my session.

The focus should be on what a climb offers like trying to flash interesting movement, trying a move that feels challenging, or refining my beta on a climb I’ve done before. In this way, grades don’t have much to do with training at all.