Hamish

It is a bit weird to title this blog post "Hamish", but hopefully it'll all make sense when you get to the end.

So, I am injured. I've stayed injury-free for a couple of years, but climbing is risky and so it is difficult to guarantee no injuries even if you take all possible precautions. It was an unexpected fall from the top hole at Lighthouse due to a hand slip on a JUG. It was slippery and I had run out of chalk right at the top after matching. Landed very awkwardly on my butt, with a lot of acute pain in my lower back. Luckily, a visit to the A&E confirmed that all was well, and the pain was from a lot of swelling and bruising, rather than from broken bones or slipped discs.

The first week - I was pretty doped up with strong painkillers, so I basically felt lethargic and thirsty all the time (painkillers tend to give me that side effect). Pretty much did nothing although I did go for a quick swim.

The second week - no more painkillers, so I have more sensitivity about how my back actually feels. Amazingly the recovery felt pretty fast, but I also knew deep down that I couldn't climb hard for several weeks, possibly months. But, I could still climb. I've had two sessions with the autobelay, and even a board session in the beginning of week 3. And I can still train! I can hang from hangboards and continue improving my finger strength. I really want to give thanks for this aging body of mine. It can still recover, it can still climb, walk, run, jump, swim, do squats, sit in a chair... all the small things we take for granted.

It is still an injury, but at least not a major one.

Hamish comes into the picture here because in the past two weeks I've had many weird and strange and confusing angry thoughts about being injured. I am angry and frustrated at myself, like it was my fault for ruining my own body. I saw his podcast come highly recommended in a climbing magazine and decided to listen to it on my commute. And damn, there was a section in there about his injury before the Olympics, plus there was so much other stuff in there that helped me unpack all of the thoughts I've been having about climbing recently, that I probably listened to it about 6-7 times on repeat now. I want to write this post to articulate my struggles and how this podcast helped to provide some resolutions to those.

Before beginning, I want to preface that this is going to be a long, deep dive. With opinions and ideas and perspectives that will likely piss off some in the local climbing community or whoever reads this. I have no expectations about how this might be received by others, but it is time to honest and authentic about my motivations for climbing, why I think it has shifted to an unhealthy state recently, and how I plan to find acceptance in my present state and build a better motivational foundation for the future.

Climbing for others

When I reflect on all of the times I've gotten injured, they all have some similarities: I fell on routes that other people were trying at the same time, the gym was relatively busy, the routes were commercial sets with an element of risk and showiness. In those moments just before the fall that led to an injury, I climbed the route not for myself, but for others.

You could say that I was "showing off", and maybe that is just what it is, but it seems more subtle to me. It is more like a feeling of, other people are watching and trying hard on this route themselves, so I must not disappoint their expectations and try my best too. In those moments, I am less connected to my body, I am less aware of details and incoming perceptual information, and react just a bit too slowly, because my attention is on what other people think of my climbing.

It is difficult to write this and see the words "I climbed the route for other people" so explicitly on the screen.

But it is the truth. This can be extrapolated not just to the few instances of bad falls, but to most of my climbing in the past year or so.

I don't think of myself as someone who climbs for others, especially when my origin story with climbing was so much more old-school and authentic. More on that later. I think there are two reasons for why this unhealthy motivational state emerged:

Social media

Blame it on social media. Although I initially started out sharing my climbs on Instagram to contribute beta to the climbing community (since I gained so much from watching other climbers' videos), the whole paradigm that social media is build upon subconsciously introduces social comparison, even to the best of us.

Even if I tell myself that it doesn't matter, on some deep level it does bother me to see that other climbers (sometimes those whom I don't think their technique is all that great) climb harder than me, have more likes than me (even on the exact same climb!), look stronger and fitter and leaner than me, get so much more validation and support from the climbing community than me, and so on.

I post my climbs because I am proud of my climbing. I think I have a nice balanced blend of strength and technique and that I move well and confidently on the wall. So, of course it sucks when it seems unappreciated. Everyone else seems so much better at climbing than me, so do I have any reason to be proud of my own climbing and continue posting videos?

Even though people will say that the social media stuff doesn't affect them, I challenge them to really question this. As a psychologist, I know about behaviorist conditioning paradigms that social media algorithms are build upon, but it still affects me deeply and subconsciously, and then manifests in toxic thoughts and behaviors that are more conscious and observable.

Expectations from training

Those who know me from years ago know that I am a "natural climber". I had never trained explicitly for climbing, I just climb. I get strong from just climbing. No hangboards, campus boards, board climbing, weights, creatine, stretching, no anything.

Well, that changed about a year ago.

I decided that if I wanted to see my true potential in climbing, I needed to get stronger. I already knew I wasn't that strong because of social media: Female climbers in the same category (a high-level Novice or Intermediate) as me can crimp and do pull ups on tiny 10mm edges, or pull ups with some ridiculously large percentage of their body weight added on, etc. On these objective measures of finger and shoulder strength, I knew that I was way below people that I looked up to in the climbing community.

I had also identified weaknesses in wide grips (pinches) and slopers, and wanted to do specific training to make gains there.

So, off to buy a fingerboard, pinch block, weights, wrote myself a training plan, stuck to it even though work was absolutely killing me last year.

Doing all of that led to (I think) reasonable expectations that I should see an improvement in climbing, eventually, at least. But several months in, no perceptible improvement. Still climbing at the same grade on commercial sets and on the Moonboard. It made me question, why train so fucking hard when it doesn't translate to climbing? Why not just fucking climb all the time then?

Or, to put it in a blunter way (to connect it back to why this was an underlying reason leading to "climbing for others"): Why can't I outclimb my peers even after putting in the work to actually get stronger, like them?

Hamish

We finally get to the Hamish podcast. A bit of background: Hamish McArthur is a UK professional climber in the IFSC. He will be recognizable to many as being a really good climber, but not particularly outstanding especially in comparison to other British comp climbers like Toby Roberts and Max The Future Milne. Hamish totally went against all odds and qualified for the Olympics and finished in 5th after climbing amazingly in the finals. He was even competitive for a podium spot for the Olympics even though no one expected it. The podcast host explored what was going on behind the scenes during that period.

It fucking turns out that he had a pulley injury during the preparation stages, and that even though he had the injury, he personally felt that he climbed better because being injured meant he couldn't use his strength in the usual way (read: brute force climbing), and he had to focus on more subtle things like body positioning and technique. During that challenging period, he came to realize that "He didn't need climbing to lead a good and happy life." This sounds so crazy, but during my 2 weeks off, I kinda had a similar feeling (along with angry weird thoughts) too. I did more birding from my flat and took amazing pictures of birds. I read interesting books that I wanted to read. I slept a lot and felt refreshed. I spent more time programming and playing with data and remembered that this was something else that I was moderately good at. I caught up with old friends, went on a fun date with my partner. Life was still good and meaningful, even though it didn't include climbing.

According to Hamish, one reason for the great Olympic performance was that he had basically given up and let go of expectations that came from other people. He came to the full acceptance of the fact that he wasn't the best, which unburdened him from a lot of emotional baggage and expectations and the need for validation, and he was able to figure out how to climb only for himself. In essence, the motivation for climbing becomes a deeply personal, almost spiritual one. When you achieve that, you actually can genuinely feel happy for other people's success, because their success does not take away from your own success. You climb because only you deeply want to, you train because only you deeply want to, and when you are on a challenging problem and need to pull your try hard, the try hard comes from within the depths of your own soul, which is so much deeper and energizing and fulfilling and awe-inspiring than the try hard from wanting to beat other people and be better than them. Climbing becomes simply pleasurable.

Climbing for myself - Origin Story

A huge cognitive dissonance for me to grapple with is that in recent years, I've lost my spiritual pure connection to climbing. I am training, I am looking at social media and feeling bad, I am doing comps, I am watching training videos, I am trying so hard to get better. Back then, I climbed in a cross-fit gym that happened to have a little climbing section. We didn't even have pads!

No fancy holes, no colored routes. Routes were marked with colored tapes. Pads had to be manually moved around to your fall zone. More people did cross fit except for the few dirt bag climbers that showed up sometimes.

In those early days (2014-ish), I really climbed for myself. There was no one in the gym usually. I spent hours trying moves, figuring sequences out, daydreaming, making up my own routes, experimenting. I climbed because I loved problem solving with movement. I loved the feeling of figuring out a sequence that worked for me, and executing it well. I loved the strong but still flowy feeling of my body navigating plastic holes on a steep board. I still love these things.

Climbing for myself?

It is 2025. I have an injured lower back. I have many thoughts. What if I never climb as hard as I used to after the injury? What if this is the best I could ever be at climbing? Should I still train hard? Should I quit social media and not post climbs ever? Should I just do autobelay and board climbing and forget about comp style climbing since the risky climbs are the ones that give me injuries and tweaks? *Why do I need to climb hard to enjoy climbing? Is there any point to climbing if you only can do V4s?***

Reflecting on my recent climbing, my sense is that when I am doing commercial sets, I am climbing for others. When I am Moonboarding, I am climbing for myself. I have come to this conclusion because the questions that I ask myself when projecting are very different for these two types of climbing. (Shout out to Dave MacLeod's excellent writing and YouTube videos that provided me with the high-level framework for making sense of my motivations and the questions below.)

Commercial sets: Can I do this move?

Moonboard: How does this move work?

Can I do this move? is egocentric. Sending becomes the only outcome that would be considered successful. This also necessarily leads one to only try routes if you have a feeling that you can (eventually) send it.

How does this move work? is driven by curiosity. Whether you can do the move or not is not important, as it is about wanting to understand a truth about climbing movement.

I tend to ask the first question with commercial sets. A commercial set session is only a successful one if I can send hard things at my limit.

Board sessions are driven by the second question. I feel very satisfied even if I don't send anything during board sessions. Really. This is because I am so invested in learning the movement and uncovering layers and layers of nuance hidden in plain sight. Security that the problem always exists removes a lot of anxiety and stress and gives me a lot of freedom and space to try all sorts of problems and moves, even those way outside my limit.

Intuitively, I think I have known for several months now that something in my climbing is wrong. This might be why I've gravitated to the Moonboard recently--because it gave me so much more pure pleasure than commercial sets which just stress me out.

I am not sure why the questions are so different for different kinds of climbs that I do. But it means my motivation for climbing commercial sets is tainted and impure and just bad and I probably don't want to spend too much time in that space until I've sorted my own psychology out and start to find deep joy in commercial sets again.

I am also not sure about what to do next. But I want to try to let go of expectations and of the need to be good: Why should I expect myself to be a good successful climber and and why should I expect others to validate my climbing? Letting go of the need to be the best is the first step towards a healthier climbing psychology. I want to not try so fucking hard. Climb for the deep reasons that within me and intrinsic to who I am. Maybe it means switching to a gym whose setting philosophy I agree with more, or simply committing to the subculture of becoming a "board bro" and retire from commercial sets. I want to slow down and figure out what made climbing so pleasurable all those years ago. Lean into my deep personal motivation to train specifically for the Moonboard, and not care about trying to do pistol squats to become good at slab (because I don't care about comp slabs anyway! It is what others think a good climber should be able to do, but it is not my goal, so who cares?). Do what I actually want for myself and not what I think others want.

Massive gratitude to my parents for giving me this body of mine, to climb in, to get hurt in, to experience this beautiful life of mine. I think I love climbing too much to ever stop and I will keep climbing even if I cannot climb at my limit. But if there is a day when I have to never climb again in my life, I know that it is OK.

Hamish McArthur Testpiece Climbing Podcast: https://podcast.testpiececlimbing.com/122-hamish-mcarthur/

Dave MacLeod "You don't need self-belief" YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSyLSxug1xI