The fear of falling is quite stressful, unenjoyable and pumpy. It’s like driving a car with the handbrakes on. The muscles tense, you’re over gripping, your heart beat races, your hands get sweaty, you stop breathing and quickly pump out or yell take. This fundamental fear can have an almost paralyzing effect on us.
Managing this fear rarely “just happens.” You need to practice falling to manage this fear. Ignore it, and it will most likely follow you as a dark shadow throughout your climbing career.
How to practice:
Take practice falls:
- You start of by taking some short falls with the bolt near your knees (or where you feel comfortable). With rope stretch this will result in a 5-6 foot fall. When you feel comfortable with doing this, climb a bit higher so the bolt is somewhere near your feet. Depending on the amount of rope between you and your belayer, this will give you a 10 foot fall, give or take. Make the falls progressively bigger as you get comfortable. Make sure that you practice big falls on an overhanging wall so you fall into air, and don’t hit the wall or a ledge.
- To simulate a real situation as close as possible, you want to move into the next stage: Start practice falling while going for the next move, and eventually while climbing at your limit. Part of the fear of falling lies in the fear of losing control. So fall when you’re not completely in control! Start by telling your belayer where on the route you are planning on falling, until you feel comfortable just letting go. A good belayer should be prepared for catching a fall at any point.
- A good to drill is to skip clipping the anchor and jump from the top of your overhung warm up routes. This often helps to release a lot of unnecessary tension, so you can be more present during your red points. I know of a guy who would tie in long and jump off his portaledge every morning just to get the exposure jitters out.
- Set a goal for each training session of how many falls you need to take before the session is completed. Five or 10 falls is a good number to start with.
- Another fun game for practice is to decide that whenever you belayer yells FALL, you have to let go and take a ride. Again, this requires an experienced belayer to be able to practice this safely.
In time these skills will wire into your brain, and help you get better at managing climbing while at your limit. That will allow your climbing be more playfully and relaxed.
The more comfortable falls you have under your belt, the less it will limit your climbing, and help you make the right choices during difficult situations. One bad fall can be enough to set you back to scratch — I know all about this! Therefore it is really important to practice this with an experienced climber and in safe environments.
By practicing, you’ll also automatically develop good falling technique, and get more and more comfortable. This will allow you to think about how to fall while falling. In turn, your falls will be safer!
All the climbing in the world won’t get you past the fear of falling — only in falling will you come to manage this fear – Erik Hörst
