The Cure for Redpoint Jitters? Just Stop Giving a S**t
There’s a particular moment when you’re working on a project, when the moves are finally coming together and you’re linking sequences but aren’t yet ready for redpoint burns. It’s the “sweet spot,” because you get all the kinaesthetic pleasure of doing the moves minus the pressure of trying to redpoint. In other words, it’s a dress rehearsal and you get to just have fun for a while.
Gearing up for the big send is another matter entirely, and I have yet to meet a single climber who doesn’t get some degree of “redpoint jitters”—the pre-redpoint nerves/anxiety we might also label “performance anxiety” or “stage fright”—even when the climber has, at least psychologically, detached themselves from the outcome. Because, let’s face it, on some level we all care. If you’re trying to redpoint a route, you do want to succeed, even as you embrace the process. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t even try in the first place.
On certain magical days for no apparent reason, the redpoint jitters fade into the background. But most of the time I must deal with them, especially (ironically, frustratingly!) on the first two burns of the day, when my body is more keyed up—and hence I’m better poised to send, or would be, in theory, were that same free-floating energy not making me so damned jittery. These jitters are often a mixture of a fear of failure but also success (“Whoa, I might actually do this thing”) and, sometimes, a fear of falling.
When they’re bad, the redpoint jitters can reach such a distracting crescendo that I’m shaky, hesitant, and robotic on the rock; falling becomes almost guaranteed. And so I’ve had to learn to deal, to somehow dampen the jitters down in order to become a functional climber again. Perhaps you can relate…
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Last weekend—this was full, hot mid-July in Colorado—I booked two consecutive days of climbing on the calendar, which is rare for me at age fifty-one and with a houseful of semi-crazed, hyperactive, “Let’s each interrupt Dad every five minutes while he’s working” children. However, the crew was in Wyoming, and I figured a second day at the rocks, even if I might be exhausted, was still better than festering in my basement binge-watching Workaholics and Peaky Blinders. (That’s how old, uncool, and “dad-tired” I am—apparently, I only watch shows years after their peak cultural relevancy.) That Saturday, friends and I climbed in the morning, and I sent a long-term project at a little crag in the high country, which would have been exciting, except it was a pointless linkup between two routes I’d already done; it’s the kind of thing you do in summer when you’re bored and need a local challenge.
We’ve been having an addition put on our house (again, those kids…) and our battered backyard was in dire need of restoration, so I spent that Saturday afternoon and the next morning running back and forth between Home Depot, the local landscaping rock-yard, and our house, shuttling supplies, running wheelbarrow loads of dirt and the landscaping material called “breeze” (it’s not) along the house, and schlepping heavy slabs of sandstone. By the time Sunday afternoon’s climbing session rolled around, it was 90 degrees out, I was about eight gallons low on fluid, and the last thing I wanted was to rock-climb. But my buddies and I had made plans, and so I showed up, heat-stunned, lethargic, and dehydrated…but willing.
At the crag, I mostly snoozed with my head on the ropebag, biding time and hoping temps would cool off. I had a project I’d been trying a little, but today seemed like “not the day.” Not only did I not give a shit about sending; I was so tired, I didn’t give a shit about anything. It was that “sweet spot” of total exhaustion in which your thoughts vanish and you just breathe and exist. In other words, I barely had the energy to climb, much less get anxious about climbing.
Toward the day’s end, wanting to refine beta on this project for a future day, I headed up…and climbed to the last move before falling. Whoa, wait, holy shit! What just happened?! On my next try, after more enervated power-lounging, I sent. No redpoint jitters. No anxiety. No racing mind. No nothing. Just mindless effort, the same sweaty, blue-collar try-hard I’d been using to run 100-pound wheelbarrow-loads from the front yard to the back for the previous two days.
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That day was a fluke: I mean, how often do you flog yourself into total exhaustion, much less before going climbing (if you do, you’re a fucking idiot!)? And how often are you able to pull off a limit redpoint in that state? My deep fatigue had helped me get out of my own mental/emotional way by lowering my expectations to less than zero and killing any redpoint anxiety, but it wasn’t an experiment I’d care to replicate, even if it fostered the nonattachment that made it possible to flow and just climb.
However, there are strategies for approaching that relaxed, unattached state, little tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the years to quell redpoint jitters. Here’s a handful; perhaps you have some of your own—you might leave them in the comments on social, a place usually reserved, I realize, for those who only read the headline and want to trash the “loser author” and “this stupid rag” in a public forum. But, hey, maybe let’s try something different just this once!
This is the order I do these steps in. You might do all or just some of them:
1) Have a small snack: Sometimes the jitters are just straight-up low blood sugar. Take a bite of a bar or nibble on something with quick energy, like pretzels or a banana. (I’ll also sometimes have something high in fat/protein, like a bite of string cheese or pumpkin or sunflower seeds.) You don’t want to eat so much that your energy is going into digestion or your belly feels uncomfortable under your harness—just enough to stabilize your blood sugar and get a quick energy boost.
2) Meditate: Find a quiet place to sit away from the main cragging action, gently close your eyes, and “stare” at the back of your eyelids, letting thoughts come and go without judgment or attachment, even thoughts about the climb at hand. Do this for 5 or 10 minutes, until the gap between thoughts lengthens. Slowly open your eyes and stand up. (You might also visualize beta, though I’ve found that by the time I’m giving redpoint burns, the beta is ingrained and I’m better off not perseverating on it right before an effort.)
3) Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Find a flat rock or patch of ground to lie on and spread your limbs in Savasana (Corpse Pose). Shut your eyes; tense for 10 seconds and then rapidly release each muscle group, starting at your feet and ending at your face. The order goes: feet, calves, quads, buttocks, abs, chest, shoulders (hunch them toward your ears), biceps, forearms, hands, neck, face. Repeat as needed, and you will see your anxiety level go down. Couple this with deep belly breathing if you wish, exhaling for twice as long as you inhale.
4) Tie in and put on your shoes with deliberation: Focus on each moment of prep as if it were of monumental importance, taking the time to do things slowly and correctly, cinching down your shoes, knot, and harness just so, which helps order your mind and gets you ready for battle.
5) Take a final deep breath and give a whooping power exhale before pulling on: With this, you’re “revving the engine,” as the top climbing coach Justen Sjong likes to call it, getting fired up to try your hardest.
6) And finally, take a fall: If you’re still a hot, jittery mess, climb up a few moves or a few bolts—whatever makes the most sense for the route and preserves your energy—let go, and take a fall. That’s right, fall. By getting the damned fall over with, sometimes I’m able to hit reset. Sure, I suppose you’re giving up a “try” by doing so, if you’re the kind of self-important killjoy who counts each burn—so you may not get that coveted, fanboy-pleasing “soft/second go” on 8a.nu. But there can be something freeing about deliberately failing that helps you realize, “Oh, not sending and taking the whip aren’t so bad.” From this place of nonattachment, you can now give a better-quality effort.
Matt Samet is a freelance writer, editor, and “redpoint-jitterbug” based in Boulder, Colorado.
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