A hair over three years ago I was introduced to rock climbing by a colleague at SolidWorks and I took to it like a duck to water. Climbing rocks requires a singular focus that shutters out the rest of the world and places you mentally in the now. Combine this mental lock with the double dose of endorphins from pure physical exertion and defying the laws of gravity and it is like a stress bug bomb. I love going to the gym, especially when I have had a bad day, to forget about everything that is going on in my life and focus on the now.

After a year of climbing I found that I wasn’t getting any better. The hard stuff still seemed impossible. I would watch these men and women floating up the wall and just think that they were ungodly strong. Some sort of rare genetic mutation that made their fingers super tacky. That all changed when I decided I needed some lessons. I took the NuSchool Basic 1 and Basic 2 classes. Within six months I went from struggling on 5.10′s to working on 5.11′s. Within a year I was working 5.12′s and had my sights set on ascending a 5.13. The classes changed my world of climbing and I became an evangelist of the lessons they taught. I see so many strong climbers in the gym that just need someone to focus their energy to make them the best they can be.

So I was pleasantly surprised when NuSchool head instructor Dan Alroy asked if I would be interested in teaching. I jumped on board and after shadowing classes for a couple months I started teaching in November. Fortunately the class format closely follows the writing tutoring format I trained for in college and so it felt very natural for me. The goal is to steer students to making their own discoveries. If you tell them they forget, but if you guide them on a self discovering journey then they learn and they appreciate the road they have traveled. From there true knowledge will have set root and will grow long after they have left their teacher behind.

Rock climbing has been a big part of my life for a few years now and this new venture has cemented climbing as a fixture in my life. So without further ado rock climbing now gets its own category on my blog and I hope to keep you updated with all the cool ways climbing touches my life.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at 2:54 am and is filed under Rock Climbing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.