Why and how does the slackline improve results in climbing and other sports?
It’s not about more strength, more speed, better rock recognition or maybe the right nutrition. I can say first-hand that technique still plays a key role. That’s why, even without training, ” by experience “, we can outperform physically much fitter colleagues. I will not go into the physical basics of climbing technique here. Let’s rather look at a more important aspect that can be used to describe a good movement on the wall, on the slackline or when dribbling under the basket. It is the notion of fluency, of continuity. In Spain they even have a term for such a climber – flutan.
Today, a huge number of people in Slovenia are involved in sport climbing in various forms. Compared to what I was used to 10 years ago, the change is more than obvious. I have been doing it for 30 years now and I hear others saying that “I know how”, that “it looks easy”. But what is it that really makes the biggest difference in climbing – both among beginners and among those who have been doing it perhaps even longer than me? Everyone finds a difficulty that suits them, but it’s quickly apparent that for many, even the easy challenges don’t go as smoothly as they could.
Why fluidity in the first place?
Bruce Lee said “Be water, my friend”.
- When we move like a fluid, we spend much less energy than when we approach an activity over-tensed.
- We take advantage of the momentum. We don’t end movements abruptly, but link them together. This just redirects the inertia of the mass, rather than stopping it and using additional force for that. That is also why we do not need so much strength. Kinetic, elastic and potential energy are converted among each other without unnecessary losses.
- The fluid way of moving also gives us the best chance of achieving flow, a psycho-physical state in which even the most difficult problems are solved easily, playfully (more in >>). This also makes the activity much more fun, the problem makes sense, even if only for the sake of play.
How to become more fluid like?
To increase the fluidity of movement, we need more feeling. More feeling is gained through kilometres, time and practice – being as present as possible and paying attention to what is happening, to the sensations in the body.
With balancing on the slackline, the problem is more or less the same all the time, but it never goes away (whenever you choose a long or difficult enough line). You always have to try hard and chase the balance. It is this intensity of the ever-present problem that we face on the slackline that I find crucial to continuously improve our sense of body, movement and fluidity. There are few sports (at least at the recreational level) that require constant, several minutes of total focus on the challenge. Therefore, on the slackline we have more time to train the fluid way of moving in a difficult situation.
So how to perform presence/mindfulness exercises on the slackline or climbing? I suggest the following:
- Perceiving signals from the body as broadly and quickly as possible (proprioception). Focus only on signals that are useful to you in a given task. On the slackline this is for example sensing the movement of the body’s centre of gravity, sensing the breath and adjusting its speed, sensing the pressure of the webbing on your feet, the contraction of the torso and the relaxation of the arms. In climbing, we can pay equal attention to the movement of the centre of gravity, the strength of the grip, the breathing, the resultants of the forces on the arms and legs, the sense of the amount of friction between the rock and your hands and feet… It is important to try to pick up the selected signals with as high a frequency as possible.
- With the improved proprioception gained from the first task, we will also have more control over our movements, we will be able to perform movements better and also more fluidly, without unnecessary extra movements. The next task is to increase fluidity. A good exercise on the slackline is not to stop while walking, but to always keep moving forward. A variation is also to swing vertically (up-down) all the time. In climbing, the same applies: to start with, you can link two or three easy movements as smoothly as possible. Then continue with a continuous movement of the body’s centre of gravity. The aim is to make the movements completely connected and to create one long, continuous movement from a set of individual movements.
- Visualization. Unless we have a good idea of what we want to do, we are unlikely to succeed. The visualisation exercise is done on solid ground, where we can close our eyes and try to imagine as vividly as possible what our physical experiment will look like. The more details we can clarify, the easier it will be to realise them later.
If you think you are still too stiff in your sport, it is definitely worth trying some of the tips in this article. If nothing else, “fluidity makes sport an art”, as my partner, who has mastered tango among other things, remarked.