‘Man
knows more than he understands’ Alfred Adler.
This
is the third book published by the Cafe Craft organisation covering
training systems for climbing. Who are Cafe Craft in this instance?
An organisation based in Germany, with ultra-modern climbing centres
in Nuremburg and Stuttgart, at the cutting edge of where training for
Sports Climbing and Bouldering is developing. Looming over their
story are the progenitors of the Redpoint, Norbert Sander and Kurt
Albert and the deceased figure of Wolfgang Gullich who despite being
dead since 1992, he was the tragic victim of a car crash, was one of
the first of the ‘modern’ elite to bring scientific training
methods into his development as a climber. A sports physiology
student at Erlangen University, studying under the famous Professor
Dr Weineck, he applied his knowledge gained into his climbing and set
new standards for Sports Climbing with routes like Action Directe 9A
in the Frankenjura and Punks in the Gym 8B+ in Arapalies, Australia.
To also note some outstanding rock climbs in the Himalaya; e.g. The
Riders in the Storm.
Jerry
Moffatt came into the spotlight of British climbing in the early
1980’s and for the next two decades he roamed far and wide,
pioneering high standard new routes and boulder problems,
participating in competitions and making early repeats in countries
as diverse as Britain, France, Germany, USA, Japan and Australia.
Learning, from these experiences and agreeing with Gullich that ‘The
mind is the most important muscle’ he has set down in ‘Mastermind’
what he believes are the most important elements in mental training
for climbers; guided by two climbers with a Professional background
in such, Professor Lew Hardy from Bangor University and Dr Noel
Craine an epidemiology researcher in the NHS. This knowledge is
formulated in short chapters covering such subjects as visualisation,
motivation, goal setting and planning, rehearsal, plus conscious and
unconscious thought etc. The books layout and setting is truly modern
and is typical of the author, a ’with it’ mind set bolstered by
wise sayings and epigrams, everyone from Muhammad Ali, Lao Tzu to
Bruce Lee. Unfortunately there are a number of literals and
grammatical errors in the text, but they do not affect one’s
understanding of any meaning of the contents.
Wolgang Gullich Image and his Professor Dr Weinick,
And
so for the mass of climbers who do not aim to be part of an elite
performers programme, who only climb for their own enjoyment and
‘fun’ they may ask the question, ‘Why should I bother?’.
Well, exploration of the mind is not time wasted, and may be helpful
in facing up to life’s inevitable problems in the other spheres of
our existence. Present day research into this still rests heavily on
the work of three men at the end of the 19th
and early part of the 20th
centuries Freud, Jung and Adler. Each developed their own take on
this subject, but the fact of all humans possessing a conscious and
unconscious mind is paramount to the understanding of our behaviour.
Inevitably as Psychology has developed and new discoveries have been
made there has grown a plethora of specialisation; Educational
Psychology, Social Psychology, Child Psychology, Clinical Psychology
etc but the one of most interest to where climbing is now at, is
Sports Psychology.
The core disciplines of performance are
bio-mechanics, kinesiology, physiology and psychology and within
climbing’s disciplines of Sport, Boulder and Competition climbers
are coming to appreciate the importance of the latter, and I guess
they are the ones that Moffatt’s book is now aimed at. This is
bolstered by a quote elsewhere by Shauna Coxey, who has already twice
been the World Bouldering Champion and is the only British climber so
far, to have qualified for next year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo: ‘I
long ago came to realise in this sport, psychology is way more
important than physiology!’
To
return to ‘Mastermind’ we learn the thoughts and how they set
about to reach their goals from several of today’s leading
Boulder, Sport and Competition climbers, Margo Hayes, Adam Ondra,
Alex Megos, Chris Sharma etc and from Jerry himself. Winning in 1989
at the Leeds first World Cup Competition was a major achievement in
his life, and this is also of some pride to myself, for I was heavily
involved in organising this along with DMM and it took place in that
City for that is where I live.
Alex Meglos
Friends of mine owned the venue and I
persuaded them to let us use their main hall. But Mastermind is not
just about those involved in what many see as the modern disciplines
in climbing, for included with their ideas and thoughts about mind
control are Leo Holding, Sandy Allen, Pete Whittacker, Stefan
Glowacz, Jimmy Webb, Alex Honnold and many more covering everything
from an epic ascent in the Himalaya, Base and Wing Suit Flying,
Bouldering, and a 24 hour ascent of El Capitan and much more. One
interview that really gripped was the one with Mich Kemeter using a
breathing technique and slack line walking between two balloons set
at 1000 metres up in the Sky. Many of these events are included as
‘Inspirational’ stories at the rear of the book.
However
talking about the use of a breathing technique to keep the level of
anxiety or fear at managing levels in order to undertake a dangerous
challenge like ‘Slack Line Walking’ I have to observe that this
is nothing new. It is obvious that Jerry is impressed with Chinese
martial artists as I. They are masters at such techniques and are
common practice in some of their meditation techniques. I have
visited the Shaolin Si in Henan Province, China on two occasions
previously: the Monks there have developed Gong (Kung) Fu techniques
for over a thousand years. Unfortunately they have become a part of
the entertainment industry (and maybe that is where Competition
Climbing will also develop into given time) but they can still
perform some amazing feats. I also when in Jiangyou in Sichuan
Province, China witnessed a Daoist monk perform a staggering feat, a
one finger hand stand.
On another occasion in Northern Sichuan I
observed a monk tightrope walking between two high rock pinnacles. He
had no safety line and if he had fallen it would have been terminal.
But finally in reporting the observing of Chinese mind training
activities, adherents following Tai Chi exercises can be observed
anywhere in Parks throughout China, but the one activity I have
seriously studied was at a Qi Gong centre on the isle of Hainan off
the south coast of the mainland, and it was most rewarding. In this
one follows a strict regime of exercises, calligraphy, meditation
etc. And learning how to harness the power of one’s centre using Qi
is both relaxing and impressive. It is why a Qi Gong master who came
to the UK sat down and challenged a group of Royal Marines to lift
him. They could not, and interesting for Jerry’s benefit might be
the information that Bruce Lee of ‘Enter the Dragon fame’ was
taught by such a master sensai.
So
humans for generations have known about the potential of harnessing
the power of the mind, and though slow to accept Sports Psychology in
Britain it was adopted much earlier in the USA. Coleman Griffith of
the University of Illinois is credited as one of the founders of this
discipline. In 1918 he began to use cognitive and behavioural
strategies to improve the performance of basketball and USA football
team members and in 1925 he opened the first research laboratory in
‘Psychology and its relation to athletic performance’. I was
invited in the mid 1980’s to join the Board of the British
Association of Sports Psychologists, and at that date we still lagged
far behind Germany, who like the USA had adopted the discipline as
early as 1925 led by Dr Carl Diem in Berlin, and we had hardly noted
the fact that 450 Sports Psychologists from many countries of the
world had gathered in Rome in 1965 for the disciplines first World
Congress.
An amusing anecdote is that one of my fellow Board members
was invited by the Manager of one of the First Division Soccer Clubs
in 1986 to advise his players and to begin adopting psychometric
methods in their training, he came back chastened for the team had
ganged up on him and refused to take part in any mind training. They
totally misunderstood what he was about and felt it was a dark
suggestion that some of them were mentally unstable. Remember that
the First Division became the Premier League just a few years later,
so this was an indication of how far behind they were in adopting
what are now the accepted norms in such training. Sports Psychology
came of age at the Olympics in 1984, and for the summer Olympics of
1996 the USA Athletics team had a group of 20 such accompanying their
participants. It is now the norm for Sports Psychologists to be a
part also of our national teams, and even the Premier Division
football clubs.
I
am sure like me Jerry Moffatt sees climbing as a different kind of
sport than athletics, although it is a sport in which I have also
been involved. He started climbing as a 15 year old, and was prepared
to really ‘rough it’ just to get out onto the crags. I started as
an 11 year old and used to walk long distances to do the same at a
time when our country was still recovering from the war. I would have
suggested to him when he was putting together ‘Mastermind’ to
give an indication of where he thought climbing was travelling along
to? It is still a broad church, with boulder, trad , sports,
competition, alpine and greater ranges mountaineering all a part of
climbing. But will it remain so with Olympic recognition?, and what
experience I have is that though several times in ‘Mastermind’ we
learn that training and competing is all about having ‘Fun’, it
does seem awful serious now with little or no hint that anarchy
might still break out given half a chance to do so. So as I have
observed before, ‘Quo Vadis Climbing?’
Kurt Albert
Finally
the book is illustrated by many fine photographs, and is intended to
be used as a training manual. At the end of some of the sub-sections
there are blank, lined pages to write thoughts and detail as in a
diary, of where the climber is at in their training methods ,and
progression for example ‘In Strength’. And into the Case binding
is bound a page marker and a pencil holder. I am informed that
‘Mastermind’ has sold 12,000 copies outside of the UK so it will
be interesting to note how it is received here, doubtless it will be
like its author another milestone in our own climbing story.
Mastermind’.
Mental Training For Climbers. Jerry Moffatt
288pages
Case Bound. Published by Cafe Craft GmbH. £25.00
Available
in the UK via Vertebrate Publishing.
Dennis Gray: 2019
