Tırmanışta "Mental Game", Sonuca değil Sürece odaklanmak

 Yıllar yıllar sonra neredeyse 6 yıldır tırmanan biri olarak son bir yıldır hafta sonları tırmanışa gidebilecek düzene sonunda eriştim diyebilirim, eriştim erişmesine de bunca yıllık güç ve indoor da yapılmış antrenmanın sonucunda tırmandığım dereceler bedenimin atletik kapasitesinin yanında gülünç kalmaya başladı, aslında tırmanışa ilk başladığım andan itibaren korku, panik ve ne yapacağını bilememek gibi bir sürü içsel sebepten dolayı o istediğim rotaları çıkamıyordum (aslında istediğim performansı gösteremiyordum). Gel gelelim bu anlattıklarım üstüne ilk yıllarda dedim ki belki güçlenirsem ve tırmanış yeteneğim artarsa herhalde daha az korkarım, sonra tabi bir mühendis olarak matematik ve ölçülebilir şeylerle aram iyi olduğu için ve güç antrenmanlarınında ( uygulaması takibi vs çok kolay geldiği için) yemedim içmedim güçlendim - tabi burada hep patlayıcı güce yönelik hareketleri seven biri olduğumu söyleyebilirim, biraz karakterimde de vardı-, tabii birde iki yıllık covid döneminde hem partnerlerim hem ev arkadaşlarım olan kulüpten sevgili Ender ve Mahmut ile evde kafayı yememek için manyaklar gibi de antrenman yapmamızıda üstüne ekleyince sonuç olarak 8- den daha zor rota çıkamamış ama tek kol barfiks çeken + 40 kilocuk ve fazlası ile fingerboard yapabilen biri oldum kaldım. 

    Ya ben niye bu kadar güçlendim ama neden tırmanamıyorum girizgahını yukarıda anlattım, tırmanış yıllarımın başlarında antrenman konusunda daha fazla içerik tükettim. Bu günlere geldiğimizde en azından bir kaç kitap ve birkaç yüz video sonrasında şuan kendi başıma fena olmayan bir program çıkarabilecek veya bir yöne kendimi yönlendirebilecek kadar bilgi sahibi olmuştum (tabiki bir antrenör seviyesinde değil ama temel konseptlere aşinalık konusundai, yada daha önemlisi neyi arayacağını bilecek kadar google'a yazabilecek kadar). İzmir de daha düzenli kaya tırmanıp hem kayadaki tekniğim hemde "mental game" konusuna odaklandığım zamanlar böylelikle başlamış oldu, düzenli (düzenli dediğim, en iyi ihtimal hafta sonlarından hafta sonlarına)  tırmanışımın sonucundan kaynaklı biraz daha beni limitleyen karakter özelliklerimi farketmeye başladım.

 Nefes, Stress, overgripping derken bir yandan da tam nedenini anlayamadığım zor rotaları denemekten kaçmak gibi bir sürü sorunla yüz yüze kalmaya başladım, tabi bu süreçte bir çok içerik tüketmeye devam ediyordum, yeni yeni ön yargılarımı kırdığım meditasyon ile nefes egzersizleri yapmaya başlamış, rotalarda nefese ve "pacing" gibi konulara dikkat eder olmuştum, içerik tüketmelerim sonucunda sonunda düzgün ve kapsamlı bir kaynak olarak gösterebileceğim kitabı galiba sonunda buldum, altta bu kitaptan notlarımı eklemeyi düşünüyorum, belki kitabın haricinde de benim için daha sonra dönüp dönüp baktığım bir hatırlamatma listesi olur diye ümit ediyorum, umarım hepimiz tırmanış gibi aşırı fiziksel ama bu yoğun fiziksel ve aynı zamanda yüzeysel zorluğun arkadasındaki tırmanışımıza etki eden içsel durumlarımızı keşfetme yolunda bir ışık tutar.

The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training for Climbers

* First, accept that life is hard, and that transforming our life—or our abilities, which amount to much the same thing—is very hard.

* A colossal swindle of the “New Age” movement is the notion that gaining a state of effortless being and doing requires no effort. In fact, great conscious effort, discipline, and patience are normally required to enter the “flow zone” where previously frightening challenges start taking on an aspect of relaxed ease. The venue does not change. Everest does not get smaller and the North Pole does not get warmer. It is we who must transform, and that takes work. If the process was easy, we’d all be world champions. Second, the work is a process, and that process lasts a lifetime.

* the qualities you bring to game day will be the exact same qualities you cultivate during practice. In other words, the way you live your life is exactly the way you will climb.

* One of the shockers of doing any deep work is discovering how little we act and how much we react. And our reactions are steeped in our old fear-driven patterns, with all our survival instincts attached.

* Awareness is the key to beginning any process and to solving any problem.

* I recommend Way of the Peaceful Warrior, by Dan Millman, and The Craft of the Warrior, by Robert Spencer, burada yazar warriors way olarak adlandırdığı felsefeyi anlatan kitabı öneriyor 

* Ego controls much of our behavior. We constantly act out of fear and avoidance, rather than out of the love of challenge or of climbing itself. Our mental habits raise unnecessary barriers and often, unconsciously, drain the vitality from our performances.

* The following are basic tenets of the Rock Warrior’s Way mental training approach: 

1. Our performance is greatly affected by the subconscious, hidden parts of our minds. 

2. Improved performance occurs through a process that is fundamentally one of growth, which, in the mental sphere, we also call learning. You learn best by focusing your attention on the situation, in an attitude of problem solving. 

3. Motivation is a key ingredient in performance, and the quality of that motivation, not just its quantity, matters. Performance is improved by moving away from fear-basedand toward motivation motivation. love-based 

4. There are two types of fear: survival and illusory. The former is healthy and helpful while the latter is not. It is important to be able to distinguish between the two fears. 

5. Death is our “advisor.” In other words, awareness of our mortality is a helpful reality check. It reminds us that every action matters, and thus directs our actions toward what’s really important, valuable, and purposeful in our lives.

* In order to reclaim the energy that the Ego wastes, we must usurp its power and dethrone it. In exchange for the Ego, we call upon the Higher Self. The Higher Self isn’t competitive, defensive, or conniving, as the Ego is.

* A warrior is a realist. He realizes that, in an absolute and external sense, he is no more and no less valuable than any other human being. Outside factors, such as other people’s opinions, change capriciously in response to complex agendas. They are not reliable sources of self-worth because they are here one day and gone the next. A warrior knows that the functional, day-to-day value of life and of acts must be decided personally, internally.

* As with all the Rock Warrior processes, the key step in Becoming Conscious is to focus attention. 

* By identifying the Witness position and going there, you separate yourself from the complex goings-on within your conscious mind that affect your life and climbing performance. This separation allows you the objectivity necessary to analyze and change habitual or unconscious ways of being. It also provides the sense of autonomy necessary to examine issues that threaten your Ego, such as, how you develop your self-image and assign your self-worth. Knowing there is an inner you independent of any beliefs or thoughts gives you the power to change.

* Self-image directly affects how we perform. Regardless of our actual level of fitness, if we feel strong, agile, and adventurous, then we climb better than if we feel weak, clumsy, and meek. Climbing hard—and “hard” is always relative—involves making moves that feel improbable, and continuing when the situation seems nearly hopeless. If you have a low opinion of yourself, you will have difficulty imagining yourself doing the unlikely things necessary to make it through your climb. If you can’t imagine yourself doing these things, you won’t do them. You absolutely must have an image of yourself as one who is capable of pulling it off. All the training in the world will have minimal benefit to you if you don’t give yourself room to believe.

* Performance is most easily improved not by adding things, but by removing obstacles.

* The most significant factor that differentiate top climbers from the rest of us is their habitual sense of “normal” performance is extraordinarily high.

* The expert knows there may be difficult moves, but is confident he will find a way, and that he has enough reserve for a climb of this difficulty.

* Part of Becoming Conscious is to recognize that our self-image is not an objective description of our selves or our immediate capability. We can experiment with new attitudes, new self-images. We’ve experienced the expert’s mindset, even though we may have only mustered it for a climb rated 5.2. Our performances are constantly being sabotaged because we cling to a self-limiting self-image based on past performance.

* Habitual self-image is one limiting factor you can work on. Working on self-image involves redefining yourself. Another limiting factor is self-worth. Working on self-worth involves changing what you value. 

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Güncelleme: Ocak 2026

Kitabı bitireli çok uzun zaman önce olmuş, son yıllarda kayadaki zihinsel süreçlerimi, tırmanışa bakışımı çok geliştirmiş olsamda, tırmandığım her gün yeni bir şeyler öğrendiğim bir sürecin içerisinden geçiyorum, bu o kadar zevk verir bir hale gelmeye başladı ki her gün tırmanmak istiyorum nerdeyse, neyse eskiden aldığım notları pekde düzenli olmayan bir biçimde buraya "fırlatıyorum", burada yazılanların bir kısmını zamanla öğrenmiş ve deneyimlemiş biri olarak daha çook uzun yolum var gibi geliyor, ama bu durum tatsız değil, tam tersi, merakımı ve ilgimi daha da uyandırıyor.

kitap tam bir "mindset bibile", tüm notlarımı geçirdikten sonra yeni bir kitap üzerine kısa bir yazı ve notlar ekleyeceğim ayrıca

* You’re facing the facts more clearly when you say, “I think that moment of hesitation shut down my commitment.”

* The last step of assessing is fully accepting what you’ve found. Don’t lapse into wishing you’d found larger holds, more pro, safer falls, or stronger arms. Accept what you’ve found so you can collect the necessary information in order to see the situation as clearly as possible.

* Earlier, we mentioned wishing, hoping, and victim thinking, typical mindsets that keep us from accepting a situation as it is and taking responsibility for dealing with it

* Now let’s examine specific ways we shirk responsibility: blaming, denial, excuses, pretending, and justifying

* Denial is keeping you from approaching your motivation issue with the same straightforward problem-solving tactics you’d apply to figuring out a sequence of moves. Don’t indulge in denial behavior, which only creates illusions and reduces your ability to see how to improve

* Excuses behavior also causes us to shirk responsibility. You may say, “My forearms are too weak.” That may be partly true, but what else contributed to your arms getting pumped so quickly? What about your breathing, your balance, how you paced yourself, how much you were overgripping, or how much pro you placed

* You focused your attention on justifying your performance instead of learning from it and figuring out how to improve. What a waste of power!

* These behaviors not only drain attention away from the effort, but they direct that attention into negative work. They create illusions, making it more difficult or even impossible to analyze what really happened in the experience and to learn from it.

* In general, we are socialized to have a receiving mindset. Driven toward the imaginary American Dream, we are not encouraged to be appreciative and grateful for what we do have. We’re conditioned to think we will be happy when we obtain: that new car, that promotion, our lottery check. The same mentality appears in our climbing. We think we will really enjoy climbing when we get something: stronger forearms, more free time, the redpoint on our project.

With a receiving mindset we slip into thinking we have a right to be happy, and we are somehow entitled to what will make us happy. We may work diligently, but in our minds we are waiting—waiting to receive what we think we deserve. The real world doesn’t work that way. We don’t have a right to be happy. Nor will any specific outcome automatically make us happy. What we do possess, that no one gave us or can take away, is an ability to learn and grow. Taking advantage of this ability, however, always requires real effort. We have to give something.

The more we give, the more we will receive—regardless of the specific outcome. It is the combination of giving and learning that brings happiness

* The key is to place your expectations not on a specific outcome, but on an attitude of possibility, effort, and learning

* It’s not about being powerful. It’s about learning to become powerful. If you keep your focus on giving effort and learning, then you’ll continue to improve skills like climbing cracks, placing pro, and becoming powerful. These skills aren’t end results. They are in a constant process of improving. 

(inanılmaz, sadece bu cümle kendi başına bile çalışma - öğrenme -deneme arzusu oluşturuyor)

* After exploring and experimenting, decide upon a specific opening sequence for the first moves that separate you from the unknown.

That’s your initial focus, just those moves, and you’ll go for them 100-percent. Beyond those few moves, your information is incomplete. Your plan must be more flexible, but you don’t want to confuse flexibility with vagueness. Your plan needs to be as clear as possible so you will be able to commit 100-percent

* The key factor was that desire to engage

* Create a moment of truth, a sharp breaking point. Every fiber in your being must know that you aren’t preparing anymore; you are going into action

(bilgi edindikten, onsigth için örneğin, sonuna kadar, bir sünger gibi tüm bilgiyi özümseyip, daha fazla wishfull thinking yapmadan, aksiyona geçme amaçlı söylüyordu bu cümleleri)

* Until now your conscious mind has been involved in extensive internal dialogue, assessing, exploring, and gaining focus. You have accumulated all the intellectual knowledge possible about the unknown realm you want to experience. You accept the two

【Not】onsigth attempt 7 li derecelerde, bu his.olusuyor, daha.basit daha cok onsigth!!!

* If you want to exceed your old boundaries you need to create a new and expanded understanding. Not only must you enter the risk zone on the rock, you must enter it in your mind. Just as you leave the comfortable stance and launch out onto steep, smooth, unknown stone, so must you let go of those comfortable notions that define what you think you can do. The risk zone is the learning zone

* In the Choices process we talked about setting an intention and introduced the concept of unbending intent. Unbending intent might seem opposed to a mindset of listening, but it’s not. The beginning of your action may involve predetermined moves you are certain of, but after those moves, your intention must be able to accommodate new information. Your intention isn’t to put one hand here and one foot there. It’s to continue climbing through the risk or to fall. In other words, you make a 100-percent commitment to effort and action, not to some specific 

* in advance and develop rigid expectations about the moves you’ll do. These expectations ruin your ability to climb spontaneously. 

* seeing a crux as a “difficult” place lacking easy passage, see it as a challenging place offering the opportunity for learning

* Within your unbending intent to climb in-to the challenge, you’ll keep an open, attentive mind. Remember, your level of receptivity determines your speed of learning

* If the conscious mind begins to engage in thinking, direct your attention to your breath, which helps put the conscious mind in neutral. See and feel the holds and moves as they are, without perceiving them as good or bad, easy or hard

* Intuition comes from your subconscious and tends to manifest as very clear and specific feelings about doing something. Inner dialogue manifests itself as more ambiguous and thought-intensive messages, typically related to the concerns of the Ego

* The following methods will help you improve receptivity to intuition while climbing:

• Observe yourself. By separating and observing yourself from the Witness position you will recognize intuitive mes

* Be nonjudgmental. A judgmental attitude ignores or discredits intuitive information, making it difficult to recognize. Gavin de Becker suggests that a dog’s keen sense of intuition is partly due to its inability to judge

* You can produce a nonjudgmental state by focusing on options and possibilities instead of opinions and evaluations

* variously perceive: a strenuous layback crack, a delicate stemming problem, a dangerous, unbolted trad route. These three perceptions are tainted by past difficulties, fears, expectations, and beliefs. All are limiting. The reality of the rock contains a far greater range of possibilities

* Be aware of controlling aspects when you climb through a risk. Signs of being controlling include climbing slowly, climbing too statically, resisting or dreading falling even when it’s safe to fall, overgripping, holding your breath, grabbing pro, down climbing excessively, and placing more pro than needed. These behaviors waste energy and attention and reel you back into the comfort zone when you need to be moving forward into the climbing process

* Accept the situation as it is. Trust the process.

* Keep a possibility mindset. Stay with your intent. Don’t, however, confuse possibility with hopefulness. You aren’t hoping for any specific outcome. Your goal is learning, and that’s being achieved

* When comfort thoughts arise, let the thoughts go and stay with your intention. You’ll accomplish this not by arguing or reasoning with the conscious mind, which takes you even further off task, but rather by doing something with your body. Breathe, consciously and continuously. Shifting your focus from the intruding thoughts to your breathing makes a bridge back to the body, to the flow of action and movement. Keep moving

* The physical body always operates in thepresent, but the conscious, thinking mind always dwells in the past or the future. You cannot have a thought about the present moment; in the time it takes to form the thought, the moment is already gone

* When the conscious mind is engaged in thinking, a gap is created between your body and your mind. Fear enters through that gap, and attention leaks out.

* When you love the challenge, you freely give your attentionto it. You are in tune with the flow of the experience. You aren’t fighting it, avoiding it, or wanting to end it

* Forget the top. Just be there

* The risk zone is uncomfortable, and we are in the habit of escaping discomfort. What we say in the heat of the moment, such as, “If I could just get to that hold …” betrays the mindset: our attention is slipping out of the journey toward a destination

* Such an approach will make your effort jerky, halting, and wasteful of energy. Instead, be fluid and flexible. Climb continuously, with unbending intent, leaving no time to latch onto fear and doubt.

* Adopt an attitude of appreciation toward the challenge and the learning. Set goals that involve the journey and the effort rather than the destination and the redpoint. The goal shouldn’t be to redpoint a climb but to stay focused on the effort so that a redpoint ascent will manifest. You’ll find that your climbing makes a lot more sense. And it’s more fun

* This is the foundation of the Rock Warrior’s Way: love-based motivation. If you are strong in your love-based motivation you are already practicing the warrior processes whether or not you’re conscious of it. When you love something, attention is automatically focused in the moment because there is no other place you’d rather be

* Setting an Intention

Whatever you choose to practice, set an intention. In the climbing exercises below, set a conscious intention prior to leaving the ground. Your partner can help. Ask your belayer not to yell vague encouragement, such as, “Go for it!” or, “You can do it!” but rather to remind you of your specific intention.

By setting a specific intention you’ll sharpen your focus and reduce the chance of falling into your habitual way of climbing.

Setting an intention helps you stay on task for what you want to practice

* These images tend to bring about the reality. Likewise, images of you climbing effortlessly, in perfect balance, and of powering smoothly through crux moves, can create that reality. Your body responds to commands from the mind. By deliberately practicing visualization you choreograph the performance you want and ingrain it, not only in your mental realm but also in your physical body. In your mind’s eye, see yourself going through the moves flawlessly and precisely, as you want to do on the rock. Make the vision as realistic as possible, including tying into the rope, the sounds and smells of the environment, and the texture of the rock

* Meditation helps you identify the Witness position. You are not your thoughts; you are the observer of your thoughts. The Witness is the position from which you notice thoughts carrying your attention to other things in your environment. By identifying the Witness you give yourself a position of power from which to observe your thoughts. Then, you can consciously choose whether or not to act on any given thought

* It’s a simple exercise: you say “STOP!” when you catch yourself in a habit

* The purpose of the exercise is to check your consciousness of habits, and help break them. By saying “STOP!” you give yourself a moment of consciousness to stop acting out the habit

* !!! 

3. Delay and Dissociate

Setup: Choose a route that is outside your comfort zone. If you’ve done lead climbing then it’s best to do this exercise on lead.

Climb to the point where you think falling is

inevitable. Habitual thoughts will arise, such as to down-climb or to grab a draw. At the moment of truth, you’ll … wait.

Set the intention: to delay acting out a habit. Recognize before you start up the route that as you get stressed, “comfort”

thoughts will come up. Perhaps you’re in the habit of tellingyourself that you must grab a draw, say “Take,” or in some other way escape the discomfort of the effort. Welcome these thoughts. When they arise, simply delay acting on them. Don’t down-climb, don’t grab a draw, don’t do  anything. Simply hold on to the holds and stay where you are.

Next, begin “dissociating” from your habitual flow of actions. By delaying, you’ve broken the one-two momentum of the habit.

* Then, further break down the habit by talking about it and making it conscious. Talk to yourself. Call yourself by name:“Okay Arno, you just thought about grabbing the draw.

You may still grab it, but for now you’ll delay.” While you delay you can make a move up or down or reposition your body.

Delay or do anything that is different than what you habitually do. Once you’ve broken the chain of actions that form ahabit, you can finish the exercise with any non-habitual action. Do something that feels a little bold.

Say, “Give me two feet of slack!” rather than

“Take!”—then jump off. Or, keep climbing and go for the next rest. Purposely slap for a useless hold and force a fall. It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as it’s non-habitual.

Delaying and dissociating help you move to the Witness position. From the Witness position you are able to break the habitual cycle of reacting to limiting thoughts

* Watching yourself on video is a great way to separate yourself from your performance.

You are able to see your performance more objectively because you are seeing it as others would, separate from the subjective feelings of effort.

* Place/Push

Setup: Choose a route that is easy for you, either toprope or lead.

Set the intention: to climb by pushing with both legs. As youclimb this way, push your hips up and in, close to the rock. Place/Push improves your consciousness of using your bodyto climb efficiently. It also creates a more positive posture, a more balanced style, and generates confidence

* Rock Meditation

This exercise is great to include in your warm-up.

Setup: Choose a route that is easy for you, either toprope or lead.

Set the intention: to climb slowly and pay attention to how you are climbing. Use precise footwork, climb and breathe continuously, push with both legs, and focus on balance.

By climbing efficiently and fluidly on easier routes you’ll seta tone for the day that will continue through your later efforts on harder routes.

* If you replace problem  with challenge when framing the question, your answer will necessarily imply action: “My biggest challenge is to overcome my fear of falling.” Even though you’re talking about the same situation, your thought process is more love-based and you’ve got the beginnings of a plan

* Finally, if you replace challenge  with opportunity, your answer becomes even more action-oriented and love-based. For example: “I have the chance to go out, practice some falls, and get over my falling fears.” By using opportunity  in the question, you generate an answer that helps you engage the situation and actively improve your performance. This is where you want to be. This is love-based motivation. You can use this

* Deliberate Breathing

...

each breath, force the air out with your abdominal muscles and blow it audibly out of your mouth. By doing this you hear and feel that you are breathing continuously and not holding your breath. Your inhalation will become automaticand the breath cycle longer and deeper.

Breathing continuously and deliberately helps you stay in the process and reduces fears and anxieties.

* Soft-Eyes Focus

Soft-eyes will make you more receptive and attentive to your surroundings.

Setup: Choose a route that is easy for you, either toprope or lead. As you climb, don’t focus on any one hold, feature, or body part.

You will see everything in your peripheral vision as well as what’s right in front of you.

Set the intention: To spread out your visual attention so thatit covers the whole field of view.

Normal vision focuses attention on a small part of your surroundings. Your conscious mind is isolating parts of the environment and homing in on them. By not focusing on any one thing in your field of view you spread out your attention. Soft-eyes focus gives equal value to all things, enablingyou to obtain more complete information from the situation. Information can be picked up by your subconscious and incorporated into your climbing effort.

* Describing Objectively

This exercise involves describing a climbing situation as if you were a scientist.

Described objectively, a route will sound the same regardless of who describes it because an objective description has nothing to do with ability. This means the description won’t include subjective words such as good, bad, hard, easy, reachy, pumpy, etc. Have your belayer also describe the route and see if your descriptions are similar. Then look for subjective elements in your description and eliminate them. Your goal is to gather information about the situation in order to see it as clearly as possible, without subjectivity or illusions

* I’ve noticed that climbers who naturally perform strongly—close to their potential—tend to image the process of a climb rather than the result

* They see challenges as being within their ability because they see them made up of 

* processes that are within their ability. For example, a climber wants to climb a 5.11 finger crack that is at his limit.

He doesn’t image the destination of doing an on-sight or redpoint, but rather images the components that will lead to an on-sight or  redpoint

* This exercise helps develop your ability to commit. The exercise is simple: instead of climbing statically, you’ll practice lunging or leaping for holds. Lunges are particularly committing 

* Many climbers “decide” to fall when they are convinced by their conscious mind that they can’t continue climbing. Basically, they don’t give 100-percent; they give up. We tend togive up when our discomfort becomes “too much to bear.” Seeking comfort, our conscious minds lie to us, and decide for us to fall -> bu madde bu blog postuna başladığım zaman bende de vardı, bırakıyordum ve düşüyordum, şimdi bir çok başka sorun olsa bile rota üzerinde "performans göstereceğim" zaman elim kayıp düşüyorum

* Continuous Climbing

This is an intuitive climbing exercise. By setting your intention on constantly moving your arms and legs, you’ll be forced to respond to intuitive signals and disengage from conscious thinking

* A sharpened version of this exercise is called No Second Guessing. Follow your eyes and use the first hold you grab or put your foot on. If the hold isn’t as large or as positive asyou expected, use it anyway

* Trust in the process  by climbing and breathing continuously. By climbing this way you maintain your momentum. You are in the risk now, focusing forward 100-percent

* Your conscious mind, however, will try to pull you back intothe comfort zone. Expect your conscious mind to create “comfort”

thoughts and realize they are not true representations of your ability. Remind yourself to stay with your intention to commit forward to climbing.

* Keep attention in the moment  by looking for comfort in the risk rather than at some destination. Don’t let your attention stray to the top of the climb, to the next rest, or to your last pro. You’ll either get there or you won’t. Find comfort in the chaos by staying balanced