What Exactly Are We Doing When Trying Hard Boulders?
Author’s note: The Craft of Bouldering is a revised and updated edition of a classic climbing text, The Boulder: A Philosophy for Bouldering. Why the new name? I don’t know exactly, other than the publisher who bought the rights wanted to put the title more in line with The Zen of Climbing, which is also in the series.
My purpose in writing The Craft of Bouldering was twofold—to make you a better boulderer (and climber in general), but also to put bouldering into conversation with disciplines as varied as architecture, dance, skateboarding, painting, parkour, martial arts, and gymnastics. That exercise, as literary as it is philosophical, helps us to better understand what it is we are doing when trying hard boulders. In short, this book intends for us to think about our bodies and our sport differently. When I first tried climbing, around age 13, I was a gymnast, which is also a movement art, just as pure as bouldering, with an analogous bodily language. But once I was a climber, I fled the gym and spent the next few years bouldering in the woods of Maryland, on shit rock infested with poison ivy. We bleed. We cleaned. We topped out. Bouldering was a language I learned fast, and one which I’d spend over a decade refining. I hope some of that comes through.
— Francis Sanzaro
Below is an excerpt from The Craft of Bouldering, published by Saraband.
No Style Needed
The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no style at all. —Bruce Lee
To a boulderer, a problem is infinite in its own little way, forever changing the way it greets us when we climb on it or even look at it, never boring us with its fixed number of holds but always opening toward us, always revealing a new aspect of itself, and, conversely, of us. The slightest bit of humidity (or frustration) can make a hard problem feel impossible—whatever your limit is—just as a split tip can set you back on attempts for days.
To boulder is to be put into a space that is, well… only like bouldering, which is both obvious, and not. Once you are hooked, a boulder is no longer a chunk of lifeless stone but a giant apparatus to which we sacrifice our greatest energies—something to which many, myself included, devote years of prime physical strength. Contrived? Yep, but what isn’t?
In time, we are defined by the stone as much as it is defined by us, by its speeds, textures, holds and behaviors; our muscles and tendons adapt, bigger lats, bigger triceps for mantels, or, equally, our bodies break, in which we are defined by it much more. As sprinters of the climbing world, no form of climber is as injury prone as the boulderer.
When we see boulders, we scrub, touch, inspect and analyze every inch of their bodies, looking for a way up. We search for a line to ascend, which will allow us to leave our mark on the sport, something lasting, a first ascent. We are looking for a creative act that will eventually produce a performance that others can share and admire. Bouldering is unique in that unlike a famous football goal or touchdown, the consequence of the first ascent of a boulder problem is a publication of its movement sequence, like putting down notes to a new song on paper so others can play it. This solution is postulated against the theses of other possible solutions; it is a brave thing, really.
Once you are hooked, a boulder is no longer a chunk of lifeless stone but a giant apparatus to which we sacrifice our greatest energies
Hopefully, we have found the unique sequence—since the success of our problem is often judged against other possible solutions (or lack thereof). A simple kneebar or a crimp a first ascensionist didn’t see can significantly drop the grade—not an ideal scenario—bruising the ego, but, more importantly, indicating that they didn’t look carefully enough. Fontainebleau bouldering sensei Charles Albert, who climbs barefoot, had his first V17 downrated by two potential grades because Nicolas Pelorson found a better heel hook. Because we boulder with different bodies, bouldering will forever be a dance requiring reinterpretation. As it is with stone carving, so it is with bouldering—look five times, strike once. We succeed to the point that others don’t. That is, we succeed in cataloguing our brief performances into bouldering’s archive when we are the first person to perform this movement. This act is both extremely solitary and public—a boulder problem’s solution is ultimately found by an individual at a single point in time, yet its solution is often, but not always, a collaborative agreement born from a team mentality. Therefore, the boulder problem lives only insofar as it is remembered and memorialized by those for whom the act itself is of the utmost importance.
A problem is a short performance, lasting about a minute or two. Despite the prep and training and obsession, when you are bouldering at your limit, a hard send feels like a gift, often coming at the most improbable of times—at the end of a long session, for example, or on a ‘rest day’, or on your last try before you have to pack things up and drive home. This was the case with Ben Moon’s first ascent of Black Lung (V13) in Joe’s Valley, which, in legendary fashion, he sent on his final go of the trip, after having packed up and gone for the car, only to turn around because the snow stopped and conditions got prime.
Bouldering will one day go extinct. Like the ancient and not-so-ancient sports of Harpasta, Jeu de Paume, Equilibrium, Tug of Hoop and Trigon, bouldering will no longer be part of the cultural imagination. Bouldering will no longer “live,” for sports have lifespans, like people. One day, the lights will be turned out inside the boulders themselves—the life they once had, which we boulderers gave to them so passionately, will die, and that vision and yearning we had for them will die as well, which isn’t to say it was pointless, quite the opposite—all the more meaningful.
Before we “found” them, boulders were anonymous faces of stone in varied landscapes—forests, mountains, valleys, neighborhoods, Central Park—and we walked past them or simply marveled at their shape and color. Now they are apparatuses for the most brutal, pleasing, modern athleticism, a combination of art and instinct, max exertion, and softness. The combination of said skills is what it feels like to be in that bouldering space.
Non-Habitual Movement
Non-habitual movement, which is the breaking of our formal movement patterns, is the sine qua non in bouldering. In general, sports work within this category, but not all require the violent positions that the boulderer must undergo.
Solutions to problems work within the non-habitual range of movement. In what is now an internet classic, the “wizard of climbing” (a.k.a. Dave Graham) speaks of “imaginary boxes” that one must get into in order to succeed; boxes which, one might add, take a long time to construct. Likewise, a golf swing has these imaginary lines, the swing itself being such a finicky thing that a professional golfer can “lose” his swing for an entire year. Tiger Woods went through several swing coaches to get his back again (he was critiqued for this type of swing ‘outsourcing’), and it was a sad day when he could be heard saying that he “just wasn’t playing well today” because of a glitch in his neutral position mechanics. Swinging from a place of instinct only to then sweat the minutiae of mechanics is like being stranded on a deserted island—one has suddenly been alienated from a “place” once known intimately, and now, will do anything to rekindle the relationship. The calculating mind does indeed help in practicing a swing or learning the moves on a problem, but it is a hindrance once it’s game time and you need to perform. As boulderers, we all know how mechanical some movement feels and how instinctual other movements, often within the same problem. A quarterback loses his toss, a pitcher his fastball, a batter her swing, a hurdler her step—this is just the nature of athletics, and there is no formula: one must wait and experiment and hope. Body position and posture-in-movement remain as elusive as anything.
Like what you read? Check out Sanzaro’s book here.
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