RIVALRY IN CLIMBING – A CURSE OR A BLESSING?
“A while ago I saw a very strong woman climbing at my local bouldering gym, that I had never seen before. She was effortlessly doing all my open projects one after another. She was beautiful, had long hair, her body was very defined and strong. Whereas I am very tall - she was rather small. As I was observing her, I felt admiration for her graceful and efficient style of climbing - but at the same time it was like a wave of envy and jealousy washed over me. She seemed to be exactly what I was striving for, an excellent and strong climber, while also being very feminine. I felt like an intruder was in my gym and taking my spot. My mind was creating this idea that besides the obvious thing, that she is such a strong climber; she is probably a mean, bossy, nasty and dumb women. This invented idea of her, made it more manageable to have her around in my space. Luckily I was way too proud to let her feel what nasty picture my brain was making up. Also there was a small voice inside of me that wanted to know who she was, where she was from and get to know her. So I approached her with as much of an open mind as I could. Today this strong climber is one of my best friends. We both inspire one another with our very different styles of climbing and different strengths. While she is very good at hard crimpy boulders, I love a coordinative dyno and am not scared to jump around. The other week we were talking about how fruitful this climbing friendship is for the both of us. During this conversation I told her what was going through my might when I first saw her in my local gym. To my surprise, she told me that she experienced the same pattern of thought. She felt intimidated by me and was on the edge of shutting up/turning away from being open minded. We both laughed and I felt grateful that we were both able to put those rivalry feelings behind us. To be honest, before this I had various other encounters, in which I was not able to let go of this rivalry mentality – even when there was nothing to be competing for.”
– Marieke Nordmann, Climbing Psychology intern & passionate climber
Due to the fact that in climbing success can be very visible (we either send or don’t), comparison and competition can be enhanced. Compared to other sports where you practice with no one watching, or as an observer you might not be able to see who is the best player in the team, in climbing we always see who is topping out or who falls and does not finish a climb. Competition can therefore occur quite easily, also in “normal”, non-competitive environments when climbing in the gym or at the crag.
To some extent, we are all exposed to competition within and outside of climbing (e.g. in our work setting, in the classroom, at university, in our dating life, in the climbing gym or at the crag). In the literature, competition is defined as a situation in which two people’s outcomes are opposed (ranked): the gain of one comes at the loss of the other (see Stanne et al., 1999). Competition is an objective situation, which is created when actors must compete for scarce resources (e.g. only one gold medal, only one spot on the team, only one promotion at work for more than one applicant).
Rivalry, on the other hand, describes the relationship between two people which is characterized by an increased subjective importance placed upon competitive outcomes – independent of objective characteristics of the situation. In other words, rivalry can take place between two individuals, when there is no „real competition“ for a scarce resource (social approval, trophies, spot on the team, promotion) but more a subjectively perceived competition. It is also worth noting that rivalry may be one sided: it can happen that only one side feels the rivalry without reciprocation. This is rather unusual because in theory, rivalry and liking one another are understood as opposite of a spectrum.
Rivalry is neither inherently purely good nor bad. Although, in some situations we have to state that behaviours that stem from rivalry can be labelled bad (e.g. aggressive fan behaviour of rival soccer clubs).
This leads us to the next point: Rivalry can change how we behave and therefore have certain benefits and costs.
Various studies have indicated that rivalry may lead to an increased motivation and task-effort performance. This means, when your rival is in the gym as well, you might find it easier to push really hard in training. Generally, competition and rivalry are both measures which push us to get better, further push our limits of what we are capable of and to strive for improvement.
However, we also know that rivalry might have some costs.
It can lead to an increase in risk taking behaviour, unethical behaviour and to poor decision-making. This can be demonstrated for example if a climber is cheating on score cards during a competition in order to get more points than an opponent he regularly competes with. Additionally, we have to note that we experience rather difficult emotions when we are in this rivalry mindset. We might feel envy or jealousy (“I don’t have what he has.”, “Why does he top this route and I don’t?”, “Why does she train with those strong people but I don’t?”). Those emotions do not emerge out of nothing. Underneath them, there often is fear and pain of not being good enough, which will most likely trigger the motivation to try harder, to fight and to try to show that we are good enough. But envy and jealousy are hard emotions to experience and therefore we often shut off when we experience them. It is hard to stay open-minded and open-hearted when we are jealous. Another downside of rivalry are the friendships, mentorship, connections and learning opportunities we are missing out on due to us making it a competitive relationship and shutting off.
This also leads us to the underlying questions of why do we get into rivalry relationships?
It has been assumed that there are three main relation factors which may increase rivalry: similarity, repeated comparison and evenly matched contest. Meaning sports rivalries may involve competitors who are roughly equal in their ability and have similar characteristics, which have repeatedly been compared and who have also been evenly matched in the past.
If you find yourself in a situation where rivalry is causing you more negative side effects and cost, you might ask yourself: how can I get out of rivalry? Or you might want to prevent viewing others as rivals but instead expand your mentorship and friendships in climbing.
Thinking back to the definition of rivalry again: rivalry is a relationship in which an individual places subjective importance on an outcome. So e.g. if I placed high importance on being considered the strongest women in the gym – all other women would be a threat. Or if I placed very high importance on climbing my long-time project before other people climb it – I’d probably won’t show my beta to other climbers.
A good place to start can be asking yourself the following questions:
🧗🏻♀️ What am I competing for?
🧗🏻♀️ Why do I place such high importance on what I am competing for?
🧗🏻♀️ Is this really a scarce resource – or can there be two of us achieving the same thing and being happy for each other?
🧗🏻♀️ What could I potentially miss out on because of my rivalry?
Reflecting on these questions, taking a deep breath and being really honest with yourself can be a powerful start to understanding why you think and behave in a certain way. At this point we might realise that there is no need to be fighting a competition in this situation, or that what we are fighting for (e.g. social recognition) is not scarce and we don’t need to fight. When you ask yourself the question of: what you might be missing out on because of your rivalry, you might find that you are missing out in potential fun, joy, friendship, mentorship and connection with others.
Another powerful tool to better deal with rivalry or to prevent it can be positive affirmations. We talked about this tool before in other blog posts (read our previous one on how to stop social comparison).
Maybe you prepare a positive affirmation for when you might get in a situation where you experience rivalry (e.g. a climbing session with someone you struggle with to stay away from unnecessary competition). Positive affirmations – or self talk – is one of the most powerful mental tools you can have in your mental toolbox. They remind us of the psychological resources we have – beyond a particular situation and broaden our perspective beyond it. In order for them to work properly - they need to be accurate and feel right for you. This means, everyone of us will find different affirmations helpful.
Let’s go back again to the example from the beginning. When you know you easily get into unnecessary rivalry which you don’t want to get into sentences such as the following ones can be very empowering and also help us to broaden our perspective to what you might want to focus on.
“I don’t need to prove my worth by being the strongest.”
“I am allowed to fail.”
“Falling does not equal failing.”
“When another climber has successes this does not equal my failure.”
“There is no need for competition.”
“I want to focus on having fun today.”
etc. (make sure you formulate your self affirmations yourself in your own words).
In an upcoming post we want to further explore differences in men and women experiencing rivalry in climbing.
To conclude on the topic of rivalry in climbing for today we want to highlight that rivalry can happen and it’s nothing fundamentally bad. If you do notice that it impacts you negatively though it can be worth to work on this. Check out our 1:1 online coaching offers – and feel free to schedule yourself a free first appointment to get to know each other and learn where we can go from here.