Looking Back: A Competition Love Story
My climbing career has a few pivotal moments that have led me to become the climber and coach that I am today. Furthermore, they have helped define and shape whatever influence that I have personally had on the environment and direction here at The Hangout Climbing Centre. Recently, we hosted the Hangout Open competition - a new type of event which was a unique combination of the best features from multiple competition formats I have seen and tried over nearly two decades of climbing.
David competing in the 2019 Alberta Climbing Association (ACA) Provincial Championships in Calgary, Alberta
I must say that I personally consider Hangout Open to have been a resounding success. Even though some athletes may have preferred a different format, or felt that they didn’t perform as well as they could have, I hope all of the competitors and fans could sense that they were part of something truly unique and special. The competition was designed to test not just the physical strength, but also the mental and emotional strength and abilities of the climbers as they battled the boulders and also their minds.
Jesse Popma sticks a hard move during the finals at the 2022 Hangout Open
Dozens of wonderful volunteers and sponsors helped out in the creation of the event, and I am eternally grateful for each and every one of them. Over the last few weeks I have been busy putting the gym and my life back together after becoming more overcome and overwhelmed with positive emotions than my analytical mind can comprehend and deal with - which has left me only partially capable of functioning as a human, let alone gym worker (my apologies to my wife, children, and co-workers).
The Hangout Open needed a lot of help to run smoothly, especially when it came to judging the athletes during the qualifiers and finals.
With that said, please allow me the opportunity to put down in writing some of the many thoughts and memories that have flooded into my consciousness recently. I hope they will help you feel even a small portion of the awe, wonder, and thankfulness I feel every day for the hundreds , if not thousands, of people I’ve met in my life who have helped me become who I am today, and by extension, helped Hangout’s members develop themselves into one of the strongest communities of inspiring climbers anywhere on the planet. I also think a few of you may even be inspired to test yourself and be the best you can be by becoming a competition climbing after reading this blog. Developing myself as a climber and testing my limits in competition has been one of the most challenging but rewarding processes of my life, and I hope you’ll feel the same if you decide to follow that path.
My Very Early Years
For the first decade of my climbing life, I never felt like I was worthy of stepping foot in my town’s local climbing gym… so I didn’t. I would walk down the hallway from my dad’s office at the college where he worked to stare through the doorway of the climbing gym, but I never entered because I thought I might be accurately identified as an imposter and asked to leave.
Obviously then, the most important key moment in my climbing career was the time I actually said yes and tried indoor rock climbing for the first time in my early twenties. I immediately discovered that none of my fears surrounding my own abilities (or lack thereof) were necessary. I also quickly fell in love with the challenge of growing in mental and physical prowess, as I occasionally found myself able to successfully maneuver around and through the various “problems” or challenges on the wall. As a bonus, many people at the gym where I first learned to climb supported and encouraged me and this helped me become more confident in myself.
After about a year of practice and fun, a local “crusher'' (climbing speak for someone operating at an impressive level) named Dave Johnson suggested that I enter a competition. I thought that there was no way I could be good enough to take part in a climbing competition, but he insisted that I would have a good time. Perhaps I was simply flattered by the fact he even spoke to me, let alone believed I wouldn’t outright embarrass myself, but for whatever reason I agreed to enter the next competition I could.
The next year, I moved to Edmonton, Alberta, for university and saw an advertisement for a small, local competition my school’s gym would be hosting. Of course, I imagined that at this competition I would probably be forced to climb in front of thousands of people who would watch me fail awkwardly as a spotlight highlighted my every technical and physical imperfection (much like everyone I ask to sign up for their first competition at Hangout probably imagines). Even so, I remembered the promise I had made to Dave earlier and reluctantly signed up.
Here I am climbing in one of my first ever climbing competitions at Urban Uprising Climbing Wall in the University of Alberta’s “Butterdome” building. It was a great place to learn to climb because the head setter was one of the best climbers in Canada, and many future and past National Champions trained at this gym. I must have thought my hair was weighing me down though, because I cut it off the next year.
While I can’t remember how well I placed in that event (it wasn’t very high), I definitely remember having a great time. It wasn’t anything like I had feared, but instead felt more like a big friendly climbing party with myself and a lot of other excited and supportive people all attempting to figure out the brand new climbs and encouraging each other to do our best. This was the second pivotal moment of my climbing career, and it marks the beginning of my seventeen-year-and-counting love affair with climbing competitions and competitive climbing (I was oblivious to their existence in my first year).
I got more serious and “Hulked up” for my next competition season. This photo was taken at the 2007 Pirates of the Carabiner Halloween climbing competition. I still feel I should have won “best costume.” Perhaps the judges didn’t appreciate my attention to detail in using the 1960s Hulk pants... Ever the supportive friend, my then roommate and later Best Man (and now Hangout accountant) Matthew Sharp deserves special recognition for helping apply the green paint to the “hard to reach areas.”
Achieving Mediocrity
While I continued to enter any and all local climbing competitions I could for the next eight years, I never truly felt like I deserved to compete against the best climbers. I had always thought that they were somehow so physically superior to me that I would be laughed out of the building if I dared step foot on the same mat as the semi-professional climbers in the Open division at any of the larger events that were held. That did not stop me from entering the competitions in one of the more recreational categories, or showing up to cheer on my favourite local heroes in the Finals, but it did keep me from ever truly testing myself against the best for many years.
I may have only been an average climber, but I had a lot of fun!
One day in 2017, I saw an online advertisement for a Tour de Bloc (National grass-roots climbing series) event in my old university city. I had always loved participating in these events in the past, and knew that a key unique feature was the intensely competitive Open category that often featured some of the best climbers in Western Canada.
Tour de Bloc Finals video I filmed and edited in 2009. The winner of this event, Thirza Carpenter, also went on to become the National Champion that year. I don’t remember ever seeing her fall off a boulder in Finals for any of the competitions I watched. She was truly a special climber and was always kind to me, which I appreciated a lot.
A few years prior to this, I had started a new job as the day-to-day coordinator of the climbing gym where I had first learned to climb at Grande Prairie Regional College in northern Alberta. I had a dream that one of our gym’s climbers would one day be in the finals of a major climbing competition like the Tour de Bloc, while I cheered my head off in the stands like a proud father or brother. Unfortunately, I did not have any experience with what it would take to qualify for the Finals in such an event. To remedy this, I thought I should enter the Open category for the first time ever to gain a better perspective and be able to better share my far-reaching vision with the rest of the climbing community at our “small-town”, isolated gym.
Entering this competition was one of the more terrifying challenges of my climbing career, and the third pivotal moment for me. One of the major mental challenges in giving myself permission to enter, was again overcoming the fear that I might be called out as an unworthy imposter and laughed out of the gym when someone saw my amateurish performance next to some of the best climbers in Canada - who I thought would no doubt be upset that I was getting in their way.
The Battlefield of the Mind
The feeling of being an imposter has been a recurring theme in my climbing career that I have worked at constantly to overcome . It had taken me more than ten years to step through the doors and try climbing for the first time, but it took me more than twelve years of hiding in the lower divisions of local competitions before I finally forced myself to face my fear and attempt to do battle with my own Fear of Failure and see how good or bad I really was when compared straight-up against the best climbers in the province. I was in my early thirties at this time, and felt the need to see once and for all how good or bad I may or may not be compared to my peers, before it was too late and I had no chance at all. I remember sweating with anxiety as I registered online for the competition, but I was at least able to reason with myself that a little (or even a lot of) emotional risk was better than living a life filled with regrets over what may have been because I didn’t try, and so I resisted the urge to quit.
I distinctly remember finishing an unimpressive, but unsurprising 75th out of 77 competitors at that Tour de Bloc event. While this might be a discouraging result for some, I honestly wasn’t expecting to place any higher, and was simply relieved that I wasn’t at the very bottom. I was surprised though, that on some of the climbs I couldn’t finish I was still able to make decent progress. After analyzing the final results for all of the competitors, I left that event feeling that with a bit more practice I might even be able to make it into the Top-40. This became a goal of mine and I started training a bit more vigorously and intently with the purpose of achieving better and better results in each event.
To be honest though, my placements never seemed to improve much, and I did not place higher than 61st position over the next two years by trying to get stronger. I thought this was odd, since I could tell that I was a bit better technically than some of my opponents who were beating me, and definitely far more experienced as a climber. Some of the athletes who were placing higher than myself looked like they had literally just started climbing that year. Frankly speaking, it was difficult for me to comprehend at the time how I could be so bad after having climbed for well over a decade.
While I never thought about quitting competitive climbing (I simply love the atmosphere of the competitions too much), I would be lying if I said I wasn’t starting to become disappointed with myself. The dangerous idea that I would never ever be better than the bottom quarter of the field started to creep into my mind, and I started to lose hope that I would or could ever achieve my goal of placing in the Top-40 at a Provincial-level event.
Towards the end of that year a serendipitous moment (perhaps of divine intervention) occurred that makes up the fourth and final pivotal moment. I had registered two adult competitors from my gym to compete alongside me at one of the last Alberta Climbing Association Provincial Team qualifying events of the 2017-18 season. Both of them pulled out due to anxiety at the last minute, and so I received permission from the event organizers to substitute their places with two other climbers from my gym.
One of those competitors, Noel, was fairly new to competitions but seemed to love climbing more than life itself, so I extended him an invite. I naively assumed he would have the same fears I did, so I tried to give him some “pre-game advice.” I told him how difficult the problems were going to be, and warned him not to get his hopes up for great success. In the end though, it was this sixteen-year-old relative competition rookie who ended up educating me.
Towards the end of that competition, I once again found myself struggling to finish many of the problems. While I was routinely making it almost to the last hold of many climbs, I couldn’t seem to generate the power needed to get to and grab the finish. While I was sitting around after the competition, planning the next improvements to my strength training program, Noel came over to me somewhat upset.
He told me in no uncertain terms, that I had lied to him and done him a great disservice. I asked Noel what he meant by that, and he said that I had told him that the climbs would be difficult. He had stressed himself out worrying and hadn’t performed very well as a result. He wasn’t upset about losing though, he was more frustrated that most of the problems, in his opinion, were only moderately difficult and would have received a grade that would translate roughly to Purple, Pink, or Black in the Hangout grading system (approximately V3 to V6 by the standards of the climbs in the Duncan Boulderfields). If that were the case, they would be hard enough to require effort, but not nearly as hard as either of us could complete if we tried and did our best.
I was getting ready to correct him and point out that if they were as “easy” as he said they were, then there would have been no way I could “fall” off the last move of more than half the problems. As these words were about to come out of my mouth, I thought again about each problem at the competition. After a minute of reflection (there were only seven problems), I had to admit that the distance between the holds, and even the positivity of the last holds would have suggested that I could have done the moves had they been set in our own gym. It made me wonder if my failure to finish the climbs had less to do with the fact that I couldn’t do the problems, but rather that I wouldn’t do the problems?
After weeks of further reflection I realized that for many reasons (which will certainly be the topics of future blog posts) I was becoming overwhelmed by fear and anxiety just before the last hold of each climb. It turns out that more strength was not what I needed, but in fact more commitment and courage. I really dug into the subject and now have an extensive library of sports psychology resources for climbing, which I consider some of my most valuable climbing tools.
While there is far more to this story than I can fit in just one blog post, suffice to say the process of looking into, uncovering, and reforming deep-seated beliefs about my own self-worth has helped me become a better climber, a better coach, a better parent, sibling, son, and person. Without the experience of battling against and overcoming the negative voices of my own mind, I may never have had the confidence to step out of my comfort zone and become a founding co-owner of The Hangout Climbing Centre with my wife, Kayla, and our good friends Tom and Jeanette.
As I was preparing my notes for this post, the thought popped into my mind that perhaps something in Noel’s past had led him to think differently about the climbs at that competition than I had. I phoned him up, and we chatted at length. Noel gave me permission to mention that he was diagnosed with haemophilia as a youth. If left untreated, the average life expectancy for someone with this condition is only about nine years. It is my opinion that since Noel was constantly told that he couldn’t play many sports growing up, and certainly not any sports as exciting as rock climbing (even a small cut or bruise could lead to his death). He also would have had a dearth of positive rock climbing role models with whom he could identify (i.e., who also had haemophilia), which would have made it difficult for him to believe it was possible to succeed.
By the time Noel first came to climb at our gym in Grande Prairie (after being inspired by the film Valley Uprising to become a big wall climber) he was well practiced at making up his own mind about what was possible for him. I think it was this unique characteristic that allowed him to more easily see the reality of anxiety as it relates to sport performance and recognize its effects on his fellow climbers (including myself). Consequently, he has taught me many invaluable lessons (more on those in future posts) and has been a good friend for many years.
Noel climbing a tricky volume problem during an ACA youth event in Edmonton, Alberta. Noel’s secret weapon during competitions was that he always believed he could complete any boulder if he was able to give it just “one more try.” I now try to employ the same attitude when I compete.
Beginning of a New Era
As I mentioned in the introduction to this post, we recently hosted the inaugural Hangout Open. By most accounts it was a tremendously well organized competition. It was the result of many years of hard work from the ownership team - getting ourselves and this new climbing gym in Duncan, BC, to the point where it was able to host such an event. In many ways it was also a presentation and representation of all of the love and passion I have for competition climbing. I sincerely want to thank the hundreds of climbers, parents, family, friends, volunteers, staff members, sponsors, and community members of Hangout and Duncan in general who helped make this event not only possible, but more amazing and exciting than I had even hoped it could or would actually be.
The amazing Claudia Pampin came up from Victoria to compete. She is strong climber and has become a good friend of Hangout. Check out her videos on Instagram @claudia.pampin.
Because of this gratitude, I am excited to dedicate the new few posts to sharing with you an (after the fact) behind the scenes look at what it took to put on such an event. As well, I would like to share my thoughts on what I love about competition climbing so much (even more than I was able to share in this post), and also some tips I have learned to help improve my own performance capabilities and those of the young athletes I have had the privilege and honour of coaching and whose amazing dedication and abilities I have leveraged to make myself seem like a better coach than I may possibly be in reality.
The next few posts will be exciting for me, and hopefully for you too. I can’t wait to read your comments and opinions below or hear them in person at the gym. Cheers!
About The Author
David Murray has been coaching climbing for more than 17 years. He has helped over 5000 new and experienced climbers become more efficient and have more fun. David is currently a co-owner of The Hangout Climbing Centre in Duncan, Canada.