Competition, performance and fear

In this episode, Hazel and Angus speak with Emma Wood, one of the great minds working in the space of psychology in our community. We talk about sports psychology for competition, what we can all learn from how competitors manage their mindset and attention under pressure, problems with how we approach psychology in climbing, how our community could be better at educating, understanding and welcoming psychological concepts, why don't instructors and guides get any training around psychological concepts (?!) trying hard, effort and how this can be trained, winning mastery and competition and how to balance them all, process versus outcome, self-awareness and psychological tools to manage stress, fear and pressure and much more. Emma is always a joy to speak with and one of our most trusted thought leaders working in this space.

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Show Notes 

00:00 - 2:24 | Podcast introduction

3:24  | Emma’s introduction.

 4:05 | What is hypnotherapy, and how compares to coaching

 8:28 | Training as a psychologist, how to work with a climbers' mind 

 11:40 | Psychological research in climbing and in fear 

14:10 | The distinction between rational and irrational fear and why it’s not that useful

17:00 | Why don’t instructors and guides have any training around psychology?! 

21:51 | Mental health crisis training, trauma, ingraining fear and getting fall practice wrong 

28:09 | Competition climbers and their psychological challenges

30:29 | Youth comp climbers what do pushy parents look like these days 

32:55 | Shifting a competitor's mindset - mastery over winning, process over outcome 

36:00 | How to balance the desire to win with a learning mindset 

37:09 | Do external motivations help you try harder or not? 

41:00 | Motivations that distract us and the role of desperation 

42:00 | Trying hard as a skill 

45:56 | Healthy and unhealthy competitiveness 

47:55 | The relationship between confidence and performing well under pressure 

For the second half of this episode visit https://www.strongmindclimbing.com/podcast and become a podcast community member for $8 a month. 

In the second half we talk about: Mindtools and psychological strategies Emma teaches competitors to prepare them for the unknown of comp routes, managing confidence, and visualisation. Angus talks about his visualisation practice for trad routes, strategies for introverted competition climbers, self-awareness, how life stressors affect our psychology, reframing fear as an opportunity, fear as a performance aid, public speaking