grades at your limit

Last month, I had multiple coaching calls with clients where they described feeling anxious about climbs in their limit grade range.

They felt fine on climbs well below their limit because they were confident in their abilities.

They also didn’t mind getting on climbs above their limit because they had no expectation of performance.

But right in the middle is a grade range that induces quite a bit of anxiety. The grade range that feels achievable but difficult.

I opened up the conversation on Instagram and asked about the feelings that come up around that range. Here are a few of the answers I got:

The trend that came up in these conversations is that anxiety is induced from expectations. 

What’s interesting about this is a couple of months ago I also asked on IG “thinking about your best climbing day.. Was it a surprise or had you been preparing?” and 80% of you said it was a surprise.

When I had further conversations with you all about it, most of you said it was a surprise because you had no expectations!

There's clearly a mismatch going on here. Here is what I think is happening: 

Expectations are an attempt to predict the future and often frame the prediction as a certainty. This isn't so much of a problem on climbs outside of your limit grade range.

On climbs well below your limit your expectation is, “I will send this”. And more often than not, you do send. Your expectation is met and the prediction is proven correct.

On climbs well above your limit, your expectation is, “I will not send this”. When you struggle on the moves, you’re not taken aback because this is what you predicted. Again, your expectation is met.

But on climbs within your limit grade range, you begin to feel anxiety because you're not sure what's going to happen.

If you say “I expect I will send this” and then you do not send it, you will feel like you failed to do something you “should have” done.

The thought,  "I should have sent this" creates feelings of disappointment, anger, and frustration.

Or maybe you try to adjust your expectations to avoid these negative feelings. Instead you say, “I expect I won’t send this climb”. At least this way, if you don’t send then you’re just meeting your expectations… right?

But this discounts any possibility that you could send. You may think, “well if I’m not going to send, what’s the point of trying at all? I’d rather try and fail on something of a higher grade.”

The truth is at your limit grade range you cannot say with 100% certainty that you will or will not do a climb. You cannot predict the future.

What you can do is look at the facts.

You can say, “I have done all of the moves on this climb and have started making good links. I believe I can do this climb. I have put a lot of work into it and I feel very close to finishing it.

I’m confident that I have a good chance of sending, but there’s no way to know if it will happen today or not. I’m going to try my hardest and accept the outcome, whatever it is.”

I believe this is ultimately what it means to have “no expectations”.

What do you think of this reframe? Do you think you'll give it a try? Let me know by replying to this email!