How I Curbed My Anxiety on Chris Sharma’s ‘The Climb’

Megan Martin blew the fog horn. I made eye contact with Chris Sharma and edged toward the front of the rocking boat as more than 120 crew and nine other contestants watched. Muscles clenched, I breathed, focused myself, and teetered onto the jagged orange ledge at the base of Golden Shower (5.11d) at Cala Barques in Mallorca, Spain.

We were filming the first episode of season one of The Climb, and this was our first competition day. Golden Shower was 45 feet high, slightly overhung, and dotted with a confusing choice of pockets. The eight contestants who climbed highest would carry on to week two. The two lowest and slowest would go to the elimination climb. One would go home.

The choppy waters spewed droplets on my skin as I started to climb. My biceps twitched as I traversed into a wide-armed throw. The holds felt worse than I expected, a little wet, but I made it through the bottom. The camera crew hung off ladders fixed to the wall in my periphery, and I could hear the other nine contestants screaming from the boat.

Fifteen feet up, a giant rounded jug led to a cruxy bump between two shallow, sharp pockets. I felt confident, but then something went wrong, my foot slipped in the middle of the bump and I was suddenly falling through the air, heading straight toward the quaking Spanish sea.

Four of us fell on the bump, but I was the slowest climber. I came last with April Marr shortly behind; we were the first two contestants to go to the elimination round. I had deliberately climbed slowly, a strategy I used on hard repoints to calm my nerves, but in this environment where speed mattered, my old tricks fell short. In this competition, the stakes were $100,000. I imagined a climbing sponsorship, a hefty cash fund, and the freedom to finally quit my job and write. Winning, to me, felt like my ticket out of the life I was living, and now I felt like I was about to blow it all.

Months later, following the release of The Climb, strangers, desperate for their own chance at celebrity, slid into my inbox to ask how they could snag a spot on season two. But as I sat alone in my apartment replaying my performance, I was not thinking about how famous (or not famous) I was going to be thanks to my presence on The Climb; I was thinking, someone paid thousands of dollars and went through a painstaking selection process to bring me here, and now I might be the first to go home.

Walking into The Climb I felt confident of my abilities; I’d been climbing for 12 years at that point, redpointed 14a, and onsighted up to 12d; so when I found myself falling off a 5.11d, I knew I had to check in, restart, and refocus. To climb my best I needed humility. The climb demands what it demands, regardless of grade or style, and when that demand is higher than your performance, you fail.

In my panic before the elimination round, I asked to talk with the psychologist on hand (their presence is common but not required on reality television shows). I’d been coaching athletes on their mindset for nearly five years, so I knew from experience that it’s wise to seek a neutral perspective. As we stared at each other over Zoom, he assured me that focusing on my senses would calm my anxiety and recommended the 5-4-3-2-1 method, a mindfulness grounding technique. Pair each number with a sense and see five things, hear four things, touch three things, and so on. I’d used a similar tool in my climbing, the “rock technique.” I focus on the rock in front of me, seeing and feeling it in detail in order to clear the chatter from my mind during a climb.

The psychologist finished with a statement that stuck out, “Everyone has a physical limit. This might just be yours.” My first thought was to fight him, no way, but as I pondered the wisdom of his words, I felt liberated. Only the effort was up to me, the body would fail when it would.

I used to judge myself as “weak-minded” under pressure. But I later learned that my anxiety actually made me a better climber and a better coach. Weaknesses are only weaknesses when we don’t use them to learn. And so, with a few days before the elimination climb, it was time to implement a strategy: take control of what I could, build confidence, imagine the worst-case scenario, detach from the outcome, cultivate stillness, and stay present.

Taking control

Between the main climb and the elimination climb, I separated myself from everyone. When your job is to be on camera and go with whatever the production schedule demands, I found comfort in controlling the moments that I could, organizing my space, and doodling to calm nerves.

Building confidence

Speculating that the elimination climb would be around the same grade as the first climb, maybe easier, I wrote a list of all the climbs of similar grades I’d done. Finishing, I couldn’t help but laugh. I had sent more than 75 climbs rated either 5.11d or 5.12a, yet days earlier, having fallen on one, I’d convinced myself that the climb was my limit. But winning wasn’t a given, neither was a send.

Demystifying failure

I imagined the worst-case scenarios: I’d fall and go back home; I’d feel embarrassed, and feel like a fraud—the worst contestant, the first to lose. But that would be the extent of it. If I failed, I would live in the same house, eat the same breakfast, have the same job, and see the same friends. I would be fine. Episode two would be filmed. The show would continue. My life would go on as it had as if I’d never been a contestant on The Climb.

Divorcing from the outcome

In his fifth-century book Meditations, Emperor Marcus Aurelius advised readers that there is no such thing as failure, only outcomes. If you’re overly attached to sending—an outcome—you lose focus on what’s happening to you right now, paradoxically making the desired outcome less likely to come about. With my climbing athletes, I call this chain gazing. Stuck in the far-away wish to send, you get distracted and make mistakes by focusing only on the chains. I needed to focus on the main thing, not the consequences towards which it might lead. And the main thing, in this case, was the climbing itself.

Putting it into practice 

Six a.m. on elimination day, I put on the same clothes I’d worn during the previous climb: black shorts, blue sports bra. I stayed silent and launched into a grounding yoga routine and hangboard routine, knowing that my formal warm-up would be dictated by the non-climbing producer’s commands.

We drove the dark winding roads to the crag in a white van. On the rocky shore, Megan and Chris announced that the elimination climb was Metrosexual (5.12a), a 40-foot climb that started up easy moves to a good rest before traversing right over the water through a mix of huge huecos, small pockets, and monos to the top of the cliff.

My heart started to race, and I extended my exhalations to slow my heart. Whether I liked it or not, I would have to climb.

The other contestants all wished me and April good luck, then settled in to watch as we walked to the base of the climb. I felt their gaze and felt a building pressure to perform, but I told myself that I didn’t have to live up to anything, I just had to climb.

April went first. She made it to the steep crux but fell on a move to a small pocket, splashing into the water. It was my turn.

I started quickly up the climb, having vowed to move faster this time. When I came to a small hold in the traverse before the steepest hueco, a voice whispered, This hold isn’t big enough. I focused on the rock and moved past it. When I was uncertain whether I could hold the mono to complete the necessary toe hook, I ignored the thought and focused on clenching my core. And when I had my hand in the hueco, I knew that I had won, but I chose not to dwell on it. I pushed my feet firmly on the footholds. The climb shrunk. I had made it to the top.

On the edge of the cliff, the Mediterranean sparkling below, I performed awkward obligatory celebrations for future viewers. The false dance felt shallow. Being at the top felt more like a simple stringing along of one moment to another. I had gone from “here,” at the bottom of the climb, to “here” at the end.

In the middle of the climb, I forgot about winning, the contest, the producers. It was just me and rock. I had managed to free myself from worrying about the outcome and getting buried in treacherous what-ifs.

But while I had won one competition, many were ahead. My win was just a passing moment. Even if I climbed well or was lucky, I would face this situation again, and again, until I was either eliminated or won.

I learned more in that first week than any other week during the rest of the competition, but each week I had to keep reminding myself that anxiety isn’t real, that it’s based in the future, and that now is the only moment we ever have. To climb for winning, money, status, fame is to get stuck in chain gazing, to climb only for the send is to live only for the grade.

I had forgotten why I said yes to being on The Climb in the first place: because I loved the physical exertion of climbing, the tattered skin, the breathless movements, and the feel of catching just one more hold.

A lesson I needed to learn, and the elimination climb to show me how.

Try the Exercises I Used to Send the Elimination Climb

Consequences Journal

Imagine and write down the worst-case scenario if you don’t perform well or send this climb.

Confidence Stack Journal

Write down the number of climbs you have done similar to your project. How many days/years of experience do you have with this rock type and style?

Tips for Cultivating Stillness

• Minimize stressful interactions with people before a difficult or scary climb. Sometimes, as in my case on the climb, that might mean seeking solitude altogether.
• Perform a morning ritual reading through your confidence stack, do a short meditation and listen to your favorite song.
• Wear your most comfortable clothes and shoes that you have the highest trust in.
• Do a mind warm-up and body warm-up (hang boarding, therabanding, cardio to raise body heat).

Yoga for Grounding

Close your eyes and create shapes with your body, from yoga or just any movement. Try to feel each muscle as it works to contract and relax based on the shape you’re making.

Self-Calming Exercises

Monitor anxiety before you climb by lowering it as it creeps up by using deep breathing, and extending your exhale. Use distraction techniques like mindful coloring to avoid circling thoughts.

Mantras: Use these or create your own.

• If I lose then that is my true limit. That’s okay because I am learning and increasing my limit.
• One more move.
  You know what you’re doing.
  Stay calm and strong.

Also Read:

• Meet Cat Runner, Winner of The Climb

• Season Two of The Climb Should Look Like This

• The Seven Deadly Sins of the Climbing Gym