Ryan2theV

con·fi·dence

Without a doubt, people know that rock climbing is pretty physically demanding - but one thing non-climbers often don’t see is how mentally demanding the sport is. Now I’m not talking about the mental fatigue you get when you do too many sudoku puzzles. You do a couple sudokus and you stop because you don’t want to think anymore - that’s not what I’m referring to. I’m simply talking about a little thing called confidence.

It’s what we lacked when we were younger being introduced to new things. Learning new sports, what do little kids says when they inevitably fail? ‘I can’t do it.’ The pouting starts. They get all sad and crap. Their whole day is ruined. Sounds pathetic, right? But it still happens when we are all grown up and is one major reason for lack of progression.

I’m sure we have all had our “super psyched” days where we finish something awesome and for the rest of the day, we bask in the “confidence domino effect” : ‘Holy crap I did that? Dang I finished that too? Man, today is the best day ever!’ Ok, it doesn’t sound as cheesy as that, but that is exactly what occurs upon boosted confidence typically following the completion of one route. But sadly, the opposite occurs just as easily.

This is when you don’t complete a problem and think about how much of a better climber you were __ days ago. This is when the pouty, whiny kid in all of us comes out and says ‘I can’t do it.’ This leads to failure upon failure. Why? Having failed already, we doubt our capabilities and don’t put forth that 100%. Instead we think - ‘That move is pretty hard, I don’t think I can do it.’ That negative thought automatically puts you so much closer to failure than you realize.

When you climb, you need to climb with a positive mindset and having 100% confidence that you can finish the problem. That means committing every move and trusting in your capabilities that you will stay there once you touch the next hold. If you keep thinking about how you might not make the next move - you don’t commit yourself, you lose energy, you won’t get anywhere near as far in the longer reaches, or you don’t exert nearly as much strength to hold on to the next hold (which all leads to falling).

Why is it that when you complete a hard route you have been projecting for a while, you can do it flawlessly soon after? It goes from a route where you think ‘I want to get that but it’s so hard’ to ‘that’s whatever, I already did that.’ Did you get that much stronger? No. You just have the full confidence that you can do every single move in the problem because you have done them previously. For maximum progression - this needs to be your mindset for not only climbs you have completed, but for climbs you haven’t completed.  

When Alex Honnold free solos all that tall crap, he knows that he must have this positive mindset because if not, it will only make him closer to falling, and well, death. He climbs knowing that every single move is well within his ability and without hesitation. That is why rock climbing is so mentally demanding. Full confidence in your abilities and skills as climber is the difference between success and failure. The Little Tank Engine that Could wasn’t playing around. Be positive. Climb with passion. Climb with

con·fi·dence - belief in oneself and one’s powers or abilities

holy crap Armenia…

I am so cool now.  ^_^

Weather the Storm

A rollercoaster.  A winding road.  A box of chocolates.  This is life as we know it. 

An overly optimistic saying goes like this: “There is sunshine after the rain.”  But if you are not prepared for the spontaneity and randomness of life, you will be caught off guard by life in its true form.  Perhaps we ought to remember that ‘there is rain after the sunshine’ as well.  Going by the first saying, do you think that after a rainy season you will get sunshine for the rest of your life?  No. 

There is sunshine after the rain, and there is rain after the sunshine; yeah, we understand that.  Sometimes, we get lots of sunshine after sunshine, but other times, there is more rain after it has just rained.  We forget that life doesn’t have evenly spaced out or equidistant peaks and troughs like a sin/cos wave.  Sometimes after the ups, there are more ups. And likewise, after the downs, there are even more downs. Tupac taught me that “when it rains, it pours.” 

We have to be prepared for whatever weather life throws at us.  A bad grade?  These numbers don’t define who you are.  People talking crap?  Let them think what they want - opinions are just opinions.  We all have our storms, but how we weather the storms makes us who we are. 

“Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.” - Luke 6:47-48

What is your foundation for weathering the storms of life?

How I Got a Free Pair of Climbing Shoes

So about 3 weeks ago, I made a blog post titled “F**king shoes!”  I didn’t really expect much from it except some ‘likes’, maybe a comment here or there, perhaps a few followers, or a few hits on my DPM Climbing blog that I linked at the bottom of the post.  The following day, I received the following email and comment on my climbing blog (on the ‘About Me’ page if you want to see for yourself):

I like your last blog post. I would love to get you into another pair of Mad Rock shoes. Please send me your mailing info, contact info, along with model and size. Thanks for the honest insight.

~markmyhsieh

 

Mad Rock Climbing

12878 Florence Ave

Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670

This was, by far, the awesomest email/comment/4sentences that anyone has EVER written to me!  It was on the same level as getting into college or getting a job.  Yeah.  I was that excited.  The 6 hours of sleep I was planning on having turned into 3 due to the excitement.  I mean, how often do you get expensive, free stuff? 

So 2 weeks went by and couldn’t help but think it was a fake.  I know it sparked some controversial arguments, but what kind of person fakes the best comment ever from a real person and a real climbing shoe company?  Expecting it to be a scam for over a week, my excitement was replenished when I got a knock at the door.

Thanks Mark Hsieh from Mad Rock California for the awesome gift!  You are a good guy.  Thanks for the Concept 2.0s!  I even slept with them on last night to speed up the break-in process before the comp on Saturday.  Let this be a lesson to all you bloggers:  keep blogging.  keep climbing.  stay passionate.

Ryan2theV.dpmblogs.com

Lent Lent Lent

Some use this time as a second chance at their New Year’s resolution.  Some simply participate because others around them are.  Some give up things just for the sake of the challenge.  So your friend gave up meat/soda/candy/whatever and you just want to see if you can do it as well?  That is not what Lent is about.

If you jumped on the bandwagon just to see if you can handle a couple of weeks giving up ______, then you are doing it for the wrong reasons.  You should ask yourself:  “How will this fast bring me closer to Him?”  If it doesn’t, you might as well do your little challenge any other time of the year and not say, “I’m Lenting _____.”  Lent is about trying to come closer to God through your weaknesses or addition of extra time, not about focusing on how you can handle difficulties by your own strength…

Happy Belated Valentine’s Day

^ my favorite and non-climbers won’t understand ^

ryan2thev.dpmblogs.com

“F**king shoes!”

Its all too common to hear some dude at the gym yell that out after their failure on a route they almost sent. On the inside, I laugh at every single occurrence and occasionally, I walk away to laugh out loud. I find it hilarious watching grown men pouting as they remove their shoes and throw them on the ground – what are you, 8? Perhaps you are fortunate enough to not have whiny dudes bouldering at your home gym, but at Stone Summit, there are a select few who use this as their “go-to excuse.”

Looking around the bouldering room, one shoe, without a doubt, is the most commonly worn shoe. La Sportiva’s Solution. They are $170 shoes that are pretty awesome apparently (I wouldn’t know, I have never tried them). I notice that many of the V2-V4 climbers rock the high-end shoes – Solutions, Miuras, Testies, etc. I guess I can see why: ”Why not invest in the best shoes on the market for the sport you are so passionate about?  After all, they will make you worlds better.” False.

I remember this one dude falling on a V4 midway through the route. First thing he does: sits down, unstraps the velcro, angrily pulls off his shoes, and slams them on the mat while yelling, “f**king shoes!” Yeah. Tell those $160 Miuras who’s boss.

Scroll down. You see those shoes? Those are Mad Rock’s Phoenix. I am proud to have paid $35 for my shoes on clearance at REI. I find no shame in having crappier shoes than most gyms’ rental shoes. (One of the girls on the youth climbing team asked me while we were working a V8 together, “Why are you wearing rental shoes?”) I find it funny that it would cost more to resole the shoes than to buy a new pair.

So you aren’t paying for skill-in-a-box when you buy those high-end pairs. Spending $150+ won’t make you more technically skilled or supply you with more power. They are shoes. On the shoe box it should read: “Good footwork will yield best results.” They will make your climbing better if you are a good climber. If you have crap footwork, you will do just as well if you use rental shoes.

Do you think good runners need the best shoes on the market? It will help if they are already great runners but giving them to a crappy runner won’t make them amazing. Do you think a pro tennis player needs the best racket to beat you? No- give them any racket that works and they will still destroy you.

So why make excuses? Unless your toes are hanging out of your shoes, you sprayed Pam on the bottom of your shoes, or you are wearing sneakers while climbing, blaming your failure on your shoes is not acceptable. Why do I continue to wear my $35 shoes? Because I’m poor and they work. Ill make the upgrade when I surpass my V7 plateau. If this is you, do yourself a favor and put the nice shoes away for a little while, buy a crappy pair of shoes, and work on footwork. Not only will your footwork skill vastly increase but you will have a good pair of shoes waiting to be used for their intended purpose: skillful climbing.

For my climbing specific blog, go here: Ryan2theV.dpmblogs.com

Why I Rock Climb - in terms of Pokémon, puzzles, and Captain America

Why do we rock climb?  Hollywood has definitely assisted in providing exaggerated and inaccurate portrayals to influence us to climb.  Perhaps it was the super badass portrayal of climbing in the beginning of Mission Impossible II.  Perhaps it was how Sylvester Stallone fought terrorists armed with machine guns and helicopters in Cliffhanger.  Perhaps it was Jason Bourne showing us that climbing skills are only necessary when escaping the American Embassy in Bourne Ultimatum.  Perhaps it was the overly dramatic opening scene of Vertical Limit where Chris O’Donnell has to watch his dad cut the rope to fall to his death.  All of these movies did their fair share of false propaganda - death is around the corner at every moment, astronomical upper body strength is a must, and explosions are the normal on the wall. 

So what drives us?  We all have our own reasons - being one with nature, the feeling of pumped forearms, showing others how much of a badass you are, meeting new people, meeting girls specifically, the feeling of accomplishment upon the completion of a route, blah blah blah.  As for me, I find it best to explain in terms of Pokémon, puzzles, and Captain America. 

Being in the generation born in the late 80s and early 90s, I think it is safe to safe to say that you didn’t have a childhood if you didn’t play Pokémon Red or Blue.  (If you didn’t play Pokémon, replace the following analogies with any other RPG game, i.e. Final Fantasy)  It was our dream as Pokémon masters to grow up and travel the globe and be the best.  (And real Pokémon masters spelled Pokémon with that “é” and memorized how to type it - but for the rest of this post, I’m going to replace Pokémon with ‘dudes’ because it is easier to type)  What made the game so addicting?  Your dudes fought to gain experience points to eventually level up.  Such an exhilarating feeling it is of advancing to that next level.  Every few levels, your dudes learned new techniques to add to their arsenal.  It was this easy-to-see progression that made it so addicting.  After advancing a few levels, you could go back to places you had previously been before and fight those wild dudes that gave you so much trouble when your dudes were weak - you easily destroy the them because of how much you progressed.  Oh if life was more like this.  The good news is - this defines rock climbing.

In rock climbing, this is how easy our progress is measured.  How awesome is that?  What other sport can you say the same for?  If you play a sport for a while, you ask yourself at some point, “Man, if only I could play against myself from X years ago…”  Ok you can’t really do that in climbing either.  But in those sports, you feel the progress but there is no way to accurately gauge it.  You feel as if you have gotten a lot better, but as others are getting better around you it is harder to gauge that progress. 

As easy as it is to see your Pokémon level up, rock climbing is all the same due to the ingenious grading system.  Take bouldering for example.  Most noobs start off at V0 or V1 - after gaining some experience, you advance to V2s then on to V3s and so on.  So as you advance to the next level, the routes you couldn’t do previously are significantly easier.  Yeah we don’t have a bar displaying how many experience points we have, but we know for sure once we are at that next level.  I remember the early days of my V3 plateau- months climbing later at Stone Summit and now at V7s, those once impossible V3s are now mere warmups.  Progress couldn’t be clearer!

As much as climbing is physically intensive, it is just as demanding mentally.  Being a math major, problem solving comes naturally.  You’d be surprised of how many math professors and engineers who love to rock climb.  But it isn’t math problems I find joy in solving - it is all the other useless puzzles that aren’t necessary for life (but maybe for airplane rides).  Logic puzzles.  Sudoku puzzles.  Each problem is different.  Each solution is different.  If you get stuck, you have to try something different.  When you hear a good logic puzzle or riddle, we share it with someone else (like the guy who killed himself by hanging himself in a barn standing on a block of ice; the midget in the elevator with the umbrella) and pass it on, right?  Unfortunately, Sudoku puzzles definitely don’t share the same fate.  When you finish, its so addicting you want to do another one.  We are all familiar with the satisfaction of finishing a puzzle. 

The same goes for rock climbing.  No two problems are the same.  When projecting a route, we see what works and what doesn’t as we assemble the solution piece by piece.  Each problem has a different solution but there are multiple solutions per problem.  When we are on a good problem or complete one, we recommend it to others.  Upon completion, that “Yes!” or “Finally!” feeling kicks in, then onward to the next problem.  It is this satisfaction that makes climbing that keeps climbers coming back for more.

Ok so most of you people have seen Captain America.  Remember that super cheesy scene where the German scientist dude is like, “Why someone weak? Because a weak man knows the value of strength, the value of power…“ 

All cheesiness aside, this is actually meaningful for me.  We have all witnessed huge, jacked guys giving their go at climbing.  It is safe to say, 100% of the time, that they will suck their first day.  Knowing nothing about technique and thinking it is all about pullups, they will be too tired to climb in about 10 minutes.  Being a scrawny, short 5’4”-5’5” climber, I quickly learned that climbing is not about brute strength but utilizing your entire body to conserve the maximum amount of energy.  Why do girls advance faster in technique?  Because they understand this faster than guys whole can already do pullups.  Starting off as a weaker climber with good technique, I progressed much faster than the strong climbers with mediocre technique.  Why?  “Because a weak man knows the value of strength, the value of power…”

The satisfaction of crystal clear progression, the thrill of the puzzle, and knowing the value of my strength.  This is why I climb.  Why do you climb?