Dynamic Movement

Not many girls (in my category especially) enjoy huge, committing moves. To be fair, when I'm at the top of some highball route and you ask me to carry out an enormous awkward dyno (or if, say, I've already hurt myself falling from said move...), I won't be happy about it. But 99% of the time, big jumps are my movements. When I practiced at Psicobloc, the deep water soloing wall in Park City, Utah, I was one of few people under six feet to try the wicked 7 foot dyno on the 5.11d and one of even fewer to send the route, with its three dynos of progressively larger sizes and three-move campus finish.

I've talked about how mental climbing is. What it has come down to, at least for me, is simply arguing myself into going all-out. When I was shaking out after the second dyno of the 5.11d, looking up and to the right at my next hold, thirty-five feet above 55 degree water, I realized the logic of jumping. That high in the air, I knew that a half-hearted jump, with me holding back because of my fear of falling, would unavoidably lead to a gravity-fest. The only way to make the move was to use the potential consequence to force myself to commit, knowing that if I didn't, I would fall. The next time I got on the route, I sent it, sticking the dyno with my right hand and swinging wildly into the wall.

Well, that was exciting.

At the PRG local

Ever since then, whenever I compete red point I scope out the most dynamic routes and make sure I do them--for example, A6 at the Focus competition (see Localized: Wrists and Jumping) and 30 at a Phoenix Rock Gym local with a scary sideways lunge (which I was one of two people in the competition to send). I love it because it forces me to overcome my fears if I ever want to make it to the top.