Climbing with Adam Ondra, crucial lessons I learnt

Hello Cracksters

Why is Adam Ondra the best climber in the world? and how can you take some of what he has and apply it to your own climbing?

Well lucky for you, I’ve spent a number of days climbing with him now and being the analytical person that I am, I picked up on some little nuggets of gold just for you guys. Of course Adam has fantastic technique, incredible climbing movement and bundles of endurance, which take years of practice to build up. But what are the simple things that Adam does, that maybe many climbers miss but could easily have a go at doing themselves?

In this newsletter:

• I’ll explain a few useful things I saw Adam do
• and whilst copying them directly might not be the best solution, I’ll instead give you some ideas of how you might apply them to your own climbing.

Enjoy learning from the best climber in the world :)

So what are the 3 things that Adam has??

1. THE MENTAL SWITCH

As climbers trying a project, we often go through a process of: 

• Discovering phase
• Working/learning phase
• Redpoint attempts phase
• The send

What I saw in Adam is that he had great mental stability throughout all four phases, and his ability to switch between each phase was impeccable.

Now, I want to focus on the switch between ‘working phase’ and ‘redpointing phase’, as this was the most interesting to me.

Whilst he worked the climb, there was certainly a lot of ‘try hard’, but in general he seemed a more relaxed person, joking around, soaking up knowledge, trying moves etc. However, the switch completely flipped when it was time to go for a redpoint. Adam made every single go count. His breathing, posture and body language changed to a more serious and focussed version of himself, he knew it was game time.

This might seem like an obvious thing to do, however think about all those times you’ve got on the redpoint of a boulder at the gym with the mentality of ‘I’ll see how it goes’ or ‘I’m not really expecting to do this, but I’ll give it ago anyway’.

Now imagine if you take the Adam Ondra approach, which to me seemed like 100% every time. How much quicker do you think you’d actually send?

Now, I know what you’re thinking…

“but Pete, Adam has been practicing this for years, how am I suddenly meant to be able to do this?”

Yes you are correct, it would be impossibly hard to do this as well as Adam straight away, we’re not expecting that. But what you can do is take the concept and think about applying it just once in every session.

So, next time you’re at the gym, on 1 boulder and 1 attempt, give it full focus. That’s all, just 1 to start. Think about it as your last ever climb, or a climb you’re performing infront of a large audience. think about doing it well and doing it with purpose. Master just doing this once per session and reflect on the practices that you use which have the greatest success rate. As remember the practices Adam uses might not necessarily work for you.

2. NEW IDEAS

Adam is not afraid of looking totally ridiculous for the send, he’ll do whatever it takes. Remember when the Silence video emerged. It had Adam lying on the floor, thrutching, squirming and screaming whilst mimicking moves of his project. It looked ridiculous, no one in climbing had seen this before! But there was Adam paving the way, trying new things (which looked bonkers), but as a consequence succeeding.

So, whilst climbing in The Cellar I noticed this again; there he was sat like a buddha with a burner between his feet and heating the rubber on his shoes to (hopefully) make them softer and fit in the crack easier.

Now, unfortunately unlike the air climbing, the shoe burning didn’t work, but what we should take away from this, is don’t be afraid to try something new just because we’re a afraid of looking like a fool. You never know it might just be the missing piece to the project puzzle

3. CRACK GLOVES

So last but not least, Adam loved the Wide Boyz crack gloves ;)

Yes we had to get that in there. Now I don’t think Adam has sampled the full market range of crack gloves, but from the pairs he has worn, in his words…’they are the best ones I’ve used’, making particular note to the thumb coverage and protection. And on that note it’s worth mentioning that Wide Boyz Crack Gloves are now back in stock, which for this time of year would make a great Christmas gift or be perfect for the up coming season depending on where you live in the world.

That’s all for now, keep spreading the jamming joy

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