The Rock Warrior's Way by Arno Ilgner

 

A year or so ago I read Training for the Uphill Athlete and learned that it's possible to train your metabolism using exercise. I had originally picked up the book to help improve my endurance, but instead, I learned new levels of training. Since then, I've been looking at other texts on areas I felt were harder to train than just your muscles or lungs. Something I'm sure lots of people can relate to is the mental element in a lot of athletic endeavors, I've often felt hindered in my two favorite activities - mountain biking and rock climbing - by mental obstacles. So I wondered if it was possible to train your mind.

On discussing this with a friend of mine he lent me the Rock Warrior's Way by Arno Ilgner. I was initially skeptical; the title seemed doofy and the concept of a "warrior" is overly fetishized by the self-help grift. Plus there are some nauseating self-help tendencies in the book itself. For example in discussing the power of choice (I mean...come on...) Ilgner drops this gem on us: 

"'I have to work full time,' implies that you have absolutely no choice. In fact, you choose to work. Working produces income for things you've deceied are important, such as food or your children's college tuition. You could also choose to quit work and accept the consequences."

The idea that we have simply decided food was important and not a bodily function to live is comical. The consequence of not working is the inability to afford basic necessities, while Ilgner is technically correct that this represents a choice, basic philosophical concepts tell us it is a false one. I don't want to get too much into the Cake or Death illusion of choice at play here, but rather use this moment to illustrate that Ilgner's book doesn't offer much in the way of philosophical thinking. It's actually filled with the sorts of platitudes that might be heard in the halls of our favorite multi-level marketing schemes.

This likely sounds harsh, but it's only because there are some really good tips on training your mental game in whatever activity you're embarking on and it's unfortunately shrouded in pseudo-philosophical self-help garbage that forces the reader to dig through it. I wouldn't want to recommend the book for its good bits without first warning the reader of the really, really bad parts.

The driving idea behind what Ilgner somewhat erroneously calls being a Rock Warrior (there are approximately zero words dedicated to the conceptual basis of a warrior being to kill others in...you know...war) is that when we're in "the moment" of our chosen sport - on a rock face, dropping into a MTB line, running a race, whatever - our subconscious often takes over our decision-making matrix and if it isn't sufficiently trained to react calmly to potential risk, is unfocused, or more focused on our ego we are going to experience what we often describe as a mental obstacle.

Many athletes don't have this mental obstacle at all, think of renowned free soloist Alex Hannold who has said while climbing the thought of death or failure never once enters his mind. Other athletes might have more trained subconsciousness almost by accident and so their mental obstacles are very small and easily surmountable. Yet a large body of especially hobbyist athletes likely feel significantly hindered by mental obstacles. 

Ilgner's antidote to our subconscious effects on performance is to train our more active thoughts so that when our subconscious takes over it's more likely to respond in the way we've trained our active thoughts. This is how athletes train many other muscles, it's why those who play team sports run plays, the idea is that when you drill something enough times when the moment comes to do it when it counts your body will react reflexively. 

So Ilgner instructs us to "become aware" of our thoughts in our waking life and attempt at every turn to push back on negative thinking, ego-based decision making, and other obstacles forming thought processes. This type of training isn't new - in fact, Ilgner admits himself he's amalgamating other works in the field to be climbing-specific, but the Rock Warrior's way does, at the very least, do a good job couching the language in the context of climbing. 

This is all to say I've put some of Ilgner's tips to practice. There is a lot to be said, especially in gravity sports like MTB, for making your subconscious react less on the basis of fear or ego and more in line with learning and appreciation for the sport. While the biking season isn't in full swing, I have noticed some improvements in my climbing. I have always had a hard time with my local gym's bouldering wall, it's pretty high at 15 ft and every climb is a top-out. Where I used to struggle to top out of even easier problems, since putting some of these techniques into practice I've noticed I have had an easier time at the top and developed more comfortability in falling. 

Do I recommend The Rock Warrior's way? I wouldn't dish the name out as often as I talk about Training for the Uphill Athlete, but I would probably suggest it to a friend who might be explicitly lamenting an issue with mental obstacles. I would do so only with the caveat that there is quite a bit of cheesy trash to sift through.

The Woke Mob Under The Bed

Somewhat recently an entire database called Canceled People was launched to document the so-called victims of so-called Cancel Culture - a phenomenon where public (or public-ish) figures are accosted by large, usually online, public bodies calling for their resignation or expulsion from public life. It isn't the first of its kind, but it claims to be bi-partisan and sizable. 

The database includes names like Liz Cheney (allegedly canceled for being critical of Donald Trump) and Donald Trump (whose cancellation was manifested as a permanent Twitter ban), but there are also figures on the left like Cenk Uyger of The Young Turks and Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs. We don't need to focus so much on the database, but more that it represents the latest installation of this trend in the discourse that tries to show the Woke Left to be as censorious and destructive to human life as the Right. The argument is that both sides of the political spectrum fail to value divergent opinions and try to silence them rather than engage critically.

This argument is often seen from the center of the political spectrum, but prominent voices on the left (such as Glenn Greenwald) and right (such as Charlie Kirt or Candace Owens) have also made the argument that the woke left is as authoritarian and censorious as certain elements of the right-wing. However, this comparative analysis is very obviously missing any context about institutional power. This doesn't render it wrong necessarily - people are getting fired or demoted after mobs of people demand it - but without such context, it's hard to take the problem as a major priority in preserving free speech and independent thought.

When we look beyond the culture wars, where it might be common to trade a teacher being fired for teaching CRT with one who does or says something racist, it's obvious that the biggest practitioner of the most concerning effects of "cancellation" is the Economic Right. The Economic Right is a group that might actually hold fairly liberal social views (not necessarily), but also holds and practices economic ideals more aligned with the right-wing of the political spectrum. While the culture wars between the left and right as they pertain to social issues probably do reflect a bipartisan, cancel culture that sees people terminated from their jobs or positions in media, the Economic Right is responsible for more heinous crimes against humanity.

Given the enormous amount of institutional power the economic right wields - be it as direct government officials, wealthy elite, corporate executives, or just sitting directly at the helms of the institutions themselves - the effects of such power are devasting. Unbridled capitalism and the pursuit of markets are clearly destroying the planet at the expense of all of humanity. Wars are waged over the ability to privately hold finite resources, every human causality as a result of such a war should concern our moral sympathies and demand our deepest outrage more than the entirety of college professors fired across all of time. If mobs of socially liberal voices expelling a comedian from their public pedestal disturbs us, mobs of economically ring wing figures overthrowing sovereign leaders, retaliating against union organizers, sending police to brutalize environmental activists, and leveraging mass incarceration for cheap labor should chill us to the bone. Yet such things are rarely given the same moral handwringing as "cancel culture" as we traditionally know it. 

Even when the Economic Right wing of the political spectrum does participate in the sort of petty grievance style "politics" of the more traditional cancel culture, the institutional power being wielded is far greater and the damage far more devastating. Steven Donziger - who is nowhere to be found in the CancledPeople database - is a demonstrative example. After winning a court case against Chevron on behalf of Ecuadorian people whose water source was poisoned by the oil corporation. As what can only be described as retaliation, Chevron partnered with a US judge who was in their pocket and a legal system beholden to corporate power to bring criminal charges against Donzinger for contempt of court, sent him to jail, put him under house arrest, and effectively ruined his life for over a year. The battle is still ongoing and more can be found out about Donzinger here. 

All this is not to say cancel culture isn't real, but to hear the argument that the left and right are equally destructive when wielding power and using their voice is absurd. The economic right, which can be bipartisan in its own right, is far more concerning in its ability to destroy not just oppositional discourse, but oppositional people. If I am expected to concern myself about cancel culture, I am far more worried about institutional power being exercised by corporations and politicians than I am about a large group of people telling a celebrity to "shut up" on Twitter.