My favorite concept that I have pulled from Gallwey’s book relates to how we learn. Gallwey teaches that the overly cognitive way we approach changing our behaviors or movement patterns can be extremely stifling to the learning process.

“If we let ourselves lose touch with our ability to feel our actions, by relying too heavily on instructions, we can seriously compromise our access to our natural learning processes.”

The Inner Game of Tennis, Gallwey p. 5

Another example from the book that I found both helpful, and charming, is about baby hippos.

On Hippos and Learning New Skills

Gallwey writes about a day he spent at the San Diego Zoo where he observed some interesting hippo behavior. If you watch a hippo in the water, you will see that they sink to the bottom, walk around a bit, and resurface minutes later to breathe.

“I watched a mother hippo... Get up and push [her baby] toward the pond with its snout. When the baby toppled in, it sank like a rock to the bottom and stayed there. Mother sauntered casually to the shallow end of the pool and waded in. About twenty seconds later she reached the baby and began to lift it upward with her nose, sending it toward the surface. There the young student gasped a breath and sank again. Once again the mother repeated the process… After some time, it pushed itself toward the surface with its own hind legs. Then the new skill was repeated again and again. It seemed that the mother knew how much it needed to ‘show,’ when to encourage, and when encouragement was no longer needed.”

The Inner Game of Tennis, Gallwey p. 51

Although our ability to know when to use a back-step isn’t quite necessary to our survival, feeling our way through learning a new skill is much more productive than yelling at ourselves while we break down a crux sequence.

Don’t Judge Yourself

I was recently working on a route in the Red River Gorge that required me to toss in a very tight heel-toe cam in order to make a clip and then use it as a rest. But for the life of me, I could not quickly and efficiently execute the cam! My internal dialogue was not productive: “Why can’t you just place your foot? Why is this taking so long? You’re wasting your whole rest on something that should be easy!” and on and on. If I would have just felt that it was easier to insert the heel-toe cam by pulling up a little before placing it, learning that bit of beta would have gone more smoothly. But instead, I judged myself and tried to tell my body what to do, instead of letting it climb.

Our bodies know how to climb, so let them. Hazel reflects on climbing in her post, Let the Body Climb, saying:

“It’s likely that your body contains all the knowledge that is needed to climb a piece of rock. If it doesn’t, it soon will. Not only does your body climb better without too much conscious direction, it also learns better. This is why it’s very important to “fail” or “struggle.” When you can’t do a move, it’s likely because your body hasn’t done a move like it before. From attempting different methods, your body can absorb knowledge and build the muscle memory of what works and what doesn’t. This is also why it is important to watch others. You can see how they move and when your body gets on the rock it can try to replicate that movement. This subconscious learning process is much faster than any conscious learning you’ll ever do.”

If the core of learning more effectively is noticing and feeling what we are doing, then the next step in increasing one’s mental faculties as a climber should also be to strengthen our “noticing” abilities. A great way to do this is by being present with our surroundings and aware of how we are breathing.