6 Lessons I Learned Sport Climbing in Chulilla
A couple of weeks ago, I headed off on my first climbing trip of the year to Chulilla, Spain, on a working holiday with team Lattice Training! Chulilla is an expansive limestone gorge just 45 minutes west of Valencia, where the rock is orange, sharp and perfectly formed, and the valley is vast and beautiful; where the air feels warm, the sun never seems to stop shining, and spirits are always high. It was the perfect place to enjoy my first sport climbing trip in over a year and to really start developing my skills in this climbing discipline.
Prior to this trip, I’d only been on one sport trip to El Chorro a year before. On that first trip, I was really pleased to climb my first 6a on lead after being pretty terrified of leading and climbing above the bolt. Since then, I just haven’t done very much sport climbing at all… Harvey and I tend to prefer trad in the summer, along with long trips to the Alps where a little sport climbing has been done, but nothing that has really allowed me to get properly into it. For me, I need at least two days at the beginning of a trip to get used to the rock, find some confidence in my foot placements and the strength and endurance I’ve trained prior, and to get used to leading again.
If you don’t know, leading is where you clip your rope into fixed bolts as you climb, meaning you are always protected but you will fall as far as the bolt below. Sometimes this can feel like a long way and is pretty scary when you’re dancing uncomfortably above your bolt, your forearms completely pumped and your toes slipping with every new move…
Despite heading into this trip with quite a lot of anxiety and reservations as to whether I would ever get over my fear of falling, I was so pleased to find a sense of confidence I hadn’t discovered before and to be able to lead my hardest sport climb so far; a lovely 30m sustained 6c+ route called El Chamarilero in the Oasis sector. But for me, it wasn’t about the grade. It was about the fact I had taken some practise falls, I had ‘gone for it’ on a route I thought I wouldn’t be able to lead when I first tried it, and I had surprised myself by succeeding. That process taught me a lot, so I thought I’d share some of those lessons I learned here…
Practice Falling!
I completely talked myself out of doing practise falls indoor before this trip, as I told myself they weren’t reflective of what it was like to fall outside. I thought I was more scared of falling on rock, and therefore falling on plastic was pointless… It turns out, I was more afraid of the way in which I would fall when, for example, sideways of my bolt or over a bulge or with a small ledge below me. I realised that I didn’t have enough experience of falling in different ways to really push myself above a bolt, and I think I could have lessened that by taking some falls indoor. My plan now, is to keep climbing indoor at the gym and take different styles of practise falls until I’m so confident in all ways of falling, that when I then go outside the only new and scary thing is that I’ll now be on rock instead of plastic. I think this will help my head-game a lot.
2. First Route Fear
Something I realised about myself is that I almost never enjoy my first route of the day. It’s always the route I find the most scary, difficult and exposed; if it’s easy, I find it hard, and if it’s hard, I find it impossible! I’m nervous of letting go even on a top-rope, and I hate having to clean the route at the top. It’s only after being lowered down the rope that I get over all that is going on in my head and am able to enjoy climbing for the rest of the day. It’s important for me to recognise this fear on my first route of the day, otherwise I can let it hold me back all day. If I know that my first route isn’t going to be that great, I’ll opt to top-rope something fairly easy to warm up, make sure I sit in the rope a lot to trust the gear, and get used to the feel of the rock under my toes and fingers on a new day. Then, I can carry on my day climbing with confidence!
3. Fuel Well
You probably don’t realise how much energy you are using just by spending all day at the crag. Though we ‘only’ usually climbed 3 routes a day, those routes took half an hour of hard effort usually and that can really take it out of you! I would advise having a big breakfast before setting out (most days we had two breakfasts!), taking plenty of food and water to the crag and eating between every route. Make sure you’re also eating a good dinner filled with protein and carbs to fuel you for the following day. Having a packet of sweets at the crag was also a welcomed treat!
4. Rest Days are Important
On our previous trip to El Chorro, we pretty much climbed every day for 10 days with maybe one rest day thrown in when we really were exhausted. What I learned from climbing with people more experienced was how often to have rest days, and how important those days are. In Chulilla, we climbed two days on one day off, which meant those days ‘on’ we were super fresh and climbing much better than if we’d tried to power through. If we’d been staying any longer, I might even have taken two rest days half way through the trip to really rejuvenate. Those rest days were spent working, reading, relaxing and a little bit of swimming! They made us more psyched to head back out on the rock the next day.
5. Forget the Grade
It can be so easy to get obsessed with the grade you are climbing when sport climbing, and this can lead to you wanting to climb something too hard and feeling disappointed, or not trying something hard enough because you see it as ‘beyond your grade’. What I learned on this trip is not to worry too much about those numbers and letters, and to just have a go on any climb that you like the look of from the ground. I only thought I was capable of climbing around 6b on this trip, and if I’d let that hold me back I wouldn’t have even tried the beautiful 6c+ route that I ended up leading.
6. Find Your Flow
You hear people talking about ‘flow’ a lot in climbing, and up until this trip, it just seemed like this mythical feeling that I didn’t know how to find. When I climbed El Chamarilero, I found myself getting into a rhythm where I wasn’t afraid of falling off, but instead I was just focusing on every hand and foot placement and the sound of my breath on the wall. I think this is what they call ‘flow’, and it was such an incredibly feeling to have while climbing. How did I get there? The key was learning to block that fear of falling from my mind and simply focus on the movement of climbing. It is definitely easier said than done… But I think taking those practise falls was really important for me, as it removed some of the panic and fear I had been feeling about failing from above my bolt. I wouldn’t say the fear was entirely eradicated while climbing, but it certainly lessened allowing me to focus more on the rhythm and flow of the route.
Being able to see my training finally pay off was such a brilliant feeling. It gave me so much for optimism for being able to really push my sport climbing and climb some more amazing routes in the 6s and 7s. I’m dreaming of a summer spent outside on rock, pushing my body and mind and really learning more about and from climbing.
