Vertical Mind

Psychological Approaches for Optimal Rock Climbing

By: Don McGrath PhD, Jeff Elison

Narrated by: Don McGrath

Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's Summary

In Vertical Mind, Don McGrath and Jeff Elison teach rock climbers how to improve their mental game so they can climb better and have more fun. They teach how the latest research in brain science and psychology can help you retrain your mind and body for higher levels of rock climbing performance, while also demonstrating how to train and overcome fears and anxiety that hold you back. Finally, they teach climbing partners how to engage in co-creative coaching and help each other improve as climbers. 

With numerous and practical step-by-step drills and exercises, in a simple to follow training framework, your path to harder climbing has never been clearer. If you are a climber who wants to climb harder and have more fun climbing, then Vertical Mind is required reading. Well, what's stopping you? Pick it up and get training today!

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2014 Sharp End Publishing (P)2017 Sharp End Publishing

horrible narration

sounds like a robot trying to read a book.
I wish a climber read this one

self help for climbers who lost having fun

Great book that I would recommend to pretty much everyone who is willing to improve their lives or athletic performance. Sure this is a climbing book so most examples are focused on climbing and most issues discussed are climbing related, but almost everything can be translated to any other althletic activity or life in general.

Climbing is a strange. For me it is purely a hobby, I am not even a good climber by any means, not internationally, not locally, not at my gym and not even among my friends, however it is still a big part of my life and my identity. This has led to numerous problems, for example fear of failure and even unhealthy amount of time spent climbing or training for climbing, to the point where I would feel frustrated to skip a training session to have a beer with friends.

This book will adrress many such problems and ways to overcome these crippling habits. I want to improve my climbing, I also want to have a healthier relationship with my favorite activity and I want to have more fun and less negative emotioms and thoughts when I am out climbimg, so I had a very open mind while reading this book hence it reflected greatly to me. I found many areas to fix on my approach to climbing and life in general with great tips and advices how to achieve that.

To incorporate what I've learned to my life and climbing and actually improve is now up to me.

obvious information

no new ideas or information. the first four chapters were full of obvious information. couldn't continue.

great book for more than just rock climbing

loved it! It's a great book that teaches you how to think differently and from a different perspective. and a lot of what is taught in this book can be applied to almost anything.

worst narrator

there were some great points made but it was struggled with this one. it would be better if someone else read it.

Good book

This is a good book with excellent content, written by a long time climber. The narration ruins the whole thing. Also there are many charts, tables and graphs that are unavailable in the audiobook format. A climber should have read this one

Academic read

This book is an academic read for someone interested in improving their climbing game. It reads like a lot of other books about psychology, fairly technical and heavy on the science. I found the book to be informative and interesting though. However I love psychology and climbing. I think this book would be really beneficial to anyone seriously interested in improving their climbing. I have already started implementing some of their advice.

Dry

I was truly excited about this book & the promise of overcoming the mental aspect of climbing. I’ve tried to listen to this book twice now & it’s a bit of a struggle. The narration is monotone & just flat. The info is good, but it’s hard to take it all in. Left feeling underwhelmed & like nothing really stuck. It was a struggle to finish.

very informative

I liked the insight. I identified with several of the concepts expressed. very interesting.

I should have read this book a long time ago.

Great book with great insights. Many of the strategies are so applicable outside the scope of climbing. Being a father of a young child, I particularly enjoyed the section on coaching.

Great training manual - Bit of a slow listen

The book has loads of great information on training the psychological side of climbing. I thought it worked well as an audio book on the whole but there are a few lists that take a couple listens to fully comprehend. I'd recommend it.

Robot Reading

Quite hard to listen to, sounds like there is a robot reading so very little charisma or emotion.

Narrative was a bit poor and too technical

okay context but bad narrating, the narration felt very technical and as a climber i felt that the narrator did not know climbing or if he did, he could not present it in a way that would keep me intrested. listened allthough all the way through the book, because I am currently injured and want to still progress as a climber