Dan Mirsky: How to Go From Bumbler to Crusher

We had a question emailed to us this fall about “moving up” in climbing levels when you’re climbing outside.  Specifically the question was about becoming a stronger climber in Rifle (Colorado limestone climbing area):

“I am one of those gumbies that can give 2 or so burns in the Arsenal and end up totally tanked for the rest of the day. How do the Ruckman Cave crushers/Wicked Cave punters move up?
How do you move into the Rifle crusher status? E.g. do the Chain Gang in a day, or a couple burns on Zulu (14a), and cool down on Pump-o-Rama (13a)?” -Adam

One of Rifle’s strongest climbers, Dan Mirsky, wrote this response.  Over the past 11 years Dan has spent 100s of days projecting rock climbs in Rifle.  This past season, Dan sent two of Rifle’s hardest routes, Lungfish (14b) and Bad Girls Club (14c). He knows a thing or two about progressing through the grades there.

He may have written this article geared towards climbing in Rifle, but a lot of the main points in it will work for you in any climbing area.

And, coming soon: Dan will be an online climbing coach for us! Stay tuned!

Enter Dan Mirsky:

As a resident Rifle Crusher who definitely started out as a bumbler, I think I can offer some advice to help you on your quest to become a Chain-Ganger or Wicked Cave Punter or whatever title you are hoping to attain.

I see two main ways you can bump yourself up the Rifle totem pole.

The First Part: the way you train/do you train?

I assume training interests you since you contacted TrainingBeta. Have you checked out their training programs?

Your training can only be as good as the program you are using, and its relevant application to the goals you want to attain. TrainingBeta is an excellent resource to get you on a program that will fit your goals and get you honed!

The Second Part (which I am going to address here): how you approach climbing in Rifle.

As someone who has spent way too much of their life in Rifle Canyon I have noticed some common things that I believe hinder progress in Rifle.

A lot of what I am going to explain is how to conserve the resources you already have. Ideally this will mean you can have longer, more productive days in Rifle that end with effortless looking cool down laps in the Arsenal (and perhaps a couple of 12 oz curls).

1. Let’s start at the beginning of the day, warming up.

Do you have regular warmups that you do each time you climb in Rifle or do you always try to seek out new routes?

When going out to climb a project or to have a big volume fitness day I think it’s important to warm up on climbs you know well. The type of warmups that you feel comfortable on and that you have already successfully redpointed.

The goal is to get warmed up for your workout, just like you would in the gym or any other athletic pursuit (not sure what these might be since I spend all my free time climbing in Rifle).

If you are totally gripped trying to onsight some greasy slab route or the newest bolted choss offering all you might get out of your warmup is blown out forearms and shot nerves.

I recommend picking a couple of  routes that you can climb, enjoy, and get pumped on in a controlled manner.

An important thing to consider in choosing your warmups is relevance to your project.

Meaning, if your goal is to climb in the Arsenal on Sprayathon for example, warming up on the vertical routes on the right side of the Ruckman cave won’t offer you much besides greasy footholds and lines of people.

You will likely get to the 3^rd bolt of your much steeper and pumpier project and wonder why you feel totally unprepared and yell TAKE. Pick warmups that are going to warm you up for your climbing goals for the day.

If you warm up properly you greatly extend the use of your available resources before you have to start pounding redbulls just to dog up your project. Personally I like my first warmup to feel more like stretching than climbing so I start easy. By the end of my warmup circuit I like to get pretty pumped.

But again, I do this on a route where I feel in control so I am confident that I am not going to get totally worked before I even get to my project. If you start to get too pumped on the warmup it is better to put the ego aside and say take than get totally blown out to impress the cute girl on the route next you.

2. Warmed Up? Check. Now: Start in on Phase One of the Project.

This does not mean tying into the route you are hoping to eventually send and gunning for the anchors all full of piss and vinegar from the first move on.

There is an art and lots of technique that goes into working a route in a productive way that won’t leave you feeling like you have been hit by a bus.

To start, whether you are picking a route you hope to accomplish in a lifetime or quickly in 5 tries the first thing you need to do is learn the beta. In Rifle this is NOT an insignificant part of the process.

The cryptic nature of the climbing in Rifle demands a lot of diligence and thought to unlock sequences and figure out beta that actually makes the route feel climbable.

If approached strategically you can get through this stage a lot faster and with a lot less wasted effort, leaving more energy for other climbing.

The first thing you must do is put your ego aside.

It doesn’t matter if you grab every draw, say take on every move, call up for your stick clip or lower down to the ground and come find me to ask for beta (And yes, let’s be honest, I do know the beta and will happily give it to you for a cold IPA).

You are in the research and development phase, you should be analytically approaching the route: checking out holds, trying moves and sequences, evaluating if they are efficient, asking yourself if the move could be done differently, trying it and either changing your sequence or eliminating the other way as an option and moving on.

Until you have a good idea of how you are going to climb each section of the route, where you are going to rest, where the hardest part is and where the redpoint crux might be, don’t worry about trying to climb big sections of the route.

Climbing lots of the moves poorly is ultimately not going to get you any closer to sending your project.

It will however, make you so tired that you aren’t going to able to crane your neck to look up at the Arsenal let alone do a lap on Pump-O-Rama.

Once you can do all the moves in a way that you could possibly see resulting in a successful ascent, you have completed Phase 1.

3. Phase 2: Testing the Work You Did in Phase One!

Note: the opening phase of projecting often times doesn’t feel like lots of climbing, but it is!

Bouldering on a rope to figure out the most efficient way to climb a certain sequence of moves over and over again can really beat you down. Give yourself a break if you feel extra tired during this phase. Also, quit while you are ahead.

You don’t have to figure out everything in one go. In a given session, if you learn one new thing on your project, consider it a successful effort and move on. If one section is giving you trouble, work on it but don’t kill yourself. Try and improve one thing and live to fight another day.

In general, Rifle routes tend to have hard sections separated by rests.

As you start trying sequences of moves think about how the route could break down into different sections. A good way to define a section is in between two ‘resting’ points (the end of the rope does not count as a resting point).

At times finding the rests might be harder than doing the moves but sorting them out early will save yourself lots of effort down the road. On Tomfoolery I literally turned around and faced away from the cliff standing on my heels while palming a roof above me to find a shake.

Once you can identify sections, approach them as mini routes. Try the easiest one first and make it a goal to ‘red point’ this section of the route. Give it a couple tries and if you do it great, if you don’t, try and learn something and move on.

Once you have completed a section of the route, try the next hardest section. Don’t forget to practice the rests in between the sections too. Once you can successfully do each section and believe that you can rest and recover in between the sections you are almost ready to actually start trying to do your project.

4. Phase 3: Redpointing.

At this stage of actually tying in to send your project it is critical to continue to be smart, analytic, and efficient. Do not fall at the crux, dog back up the rope, wait till you are no longer pumped, pull back on at the spot you fell and climb to the top and then talk about how easy it felt and how close you are to sending.

If you fall more than once on a given move start trying to overlap your way through that section.

By overlap I mean taking the place you fell from, starting below that point, and climbing through it all the way to the top. Climbing through it being the important part.

The idea is simple: you are never going to feel totally fresh and not pumped when you reach the hardest section of a rock climb, so why practice it that way.

An overlapping one hang is very close to success. If you keep overlapping from a lower and lower point eventually you will be standing on the ground with no more excuses.

5. The Bigger Picture.

We have addressed how to approach a day at Rifle but we have not talked about how many of these days you should have in a week or month or season.

For me, it is not possible to go out climbing 6 days in a row, whether working on my project everyday or not, and expect to get anything out of it except probably an injury and at the very least significant fatigue. Whether you get to climb outside every day or just on the weekends there is plenty of time to climb too much.

I feel four real climbing sessions a week is a lot of climbing, particularly if you are climbing on a project. It is different for everyone but my general advice is to try to be rested when you go out to climb on the proj or to train hard and to be psyched.

If you start to have an overwhelming feeling of dread as your lay your rope at the base of your current project you are likely climbing on it too much.

If you can make yourself feel sore by just thinking about the moves on that route you are likely climbing on it too much. Fewer, fresher, more psyched sessions are usually more productive than more, tired, ‘work’ sessions. It’s one thing to put in work on a project it’s another to have the project feel like work. I try my best to avoid the latter.

Although I have just digressed into a full blown ‘how to’ for projecting in Rifle, the big theme of what I am trying to impart is being efficient in your process.

If you go and beat your head against the wall unnecessarily each time you climb on your project, by doing the same sections over and over or worse making the same mistakes over and over, you are likely just going to knacker yourself to the point of not having any more energy to climb. Two burns in the Arsenal will feel harder and more tragically you will likely find yourself losing fitness. If however; you play it smart, have mini and achievable goals you will stay psyched, you will get closer to your big picture goal and you will still having something left in the tank to blow off your friends on Pump-O-Rama, Sprayathon or even Zulu.

Ultimately this is the goal, right? You will be gaining fitness as you close in on your proj, you will look cool to your friends, desireable to the opposite sex and most importantly you will still have enough strength in your guns to be able to lift your cold beer at the end of the day. Cheers!