Patience And Lynn Hill

I've always been fascinated with Rock Climbing mainly from just watching videos and looking at scenic pictures in outdoor or climbing magazines. For some time, I've been fascinated with Lynn Hill. She is arguably one of the best climbers that has ever lived (Male or Female). After seeing a TV show where she lead a small team of women up a 2000ft wall in Madagascar, I became even more fascinated. I was extremely pleased when her biography Climbing Free was published 5 or 6 years ago. Lynn is only 5'1 and she's got hands that are smaller than mine (Her actual hand size is on the back of the book)

While perusing youtube, I came across her discussion on Patience. While the content of the discussion in the video is extremely specific to climbing, the points regarding patience could be applicable to any athletic endeavor...in my case Kettlebell Sport.



Initially, patience is one of those things many of us lack as lifters. We're too focused with winning or getting a rank initially to take the time to really learn the movement in the lifts. If we do learn it is often by accident and then our results are somewhat inconsistent.

Sometimes we are too focused on studying the nuances of others looking for some silver bullet to make our lives easier when what we really need is patience: Patience to perform the thousands of reps that are needed to really build the foundation for the lifts. There is nothing wrong with studying the elites or others and I've done plenty of studying, but you have to keep things in perspective. The basics are typically the basics. Nuances you notice in the techniques of others are result of someone playing to the strength of their bodytype and are not likely going to add 50 reps to your snatch when you jump to adopt them. Yes, I know I've blogged on basics and other stuff that is similar to this, but patience is needed by many of us to really learn to focus on the basics.

Now, I'm not going to compare the techniques of KB Lifting to something as death defying as Rock Climbing, but I will suggest that patience as Lynn describes it in some parts of the video is entirely applicable to our development as lifters. There is a good progression system in the rankings, but it seems that many of us want to rush through them..I know I was guilty of that.

We don't always have the patience to work for a duration and slow our pace so that we may analyze our own movements. Where is our weight distributed? At lockout, is the bell where it should be? When I drop the bell out of the stop the snatch, do I drop it and let it pull me down or do a move with it? Patience helps create that mindfulness and it is really needed since few of us have a coach standing in front of us yelling at us when we are screwing up.

CI