Since I’ve started working at boulderhouse I’ve begun to feel a change in the way I think about climbing. I feel as if I started by approaching it as a learner but now I’m starting to see it more as a medium. This is largely due to the amount and variety of coaching I’ve been involved with. Before I saw each problem as a lesson waiting to be learnt but now I’m seeing them as a device to teach. With my change in perspective comes new goals that don’t align with the ones from my to do list post.

To start I’ve become less focused on grades as I’ve learned that they are subjective and discredit the climb most of the time. Grades are always being adjusted on outdoor climbs and indoor climbs its up to a setter to provide a grade. The problem I’ve realized with setters providing grades is that people don’t always agree with the grades and it becomes and object of obsession where now they are less focused on the climb and more on the colour tape associated with it. My goal now is to encourage my athletes to approach each climb as an isolated ungrade climb. That way they need to focus more on reading their climb and relating it to previous climbs they’ve done before with similar moves instead of comparing it to climbs of similar difficulty. This isn’t the easiest thing to do but it is crucial for competitive climbing where there are no grades.

This will be a useful skill to hold as a teacher though since engaging critical thinking is one of the core competnacies for every subject. Finding multiple ways to approach motivating my athletes to look past grades will cross over greatly to teaching in a highschool

Following this post my other posts will be more focused on how my climbing pedagogy will be evolving in order to better teach myself and my athletes as well as how those skills will be useful in highschool.

Image generated with the help of Bing ai image generation. Prompt was to create an image that represents how unimportant grades are in climbing. Tool accessible at this link