Arno Ilgner is quite the legend in southeastern rock climbing. He has been putting up “hard man” routes since the early 80’s. He has also delved into mental training and wrote the book “The Rock Warriors Way,” followed by “Espresso Lessons” about a year ago. Now Arno travels the country teaching the way of the warrior in his clinics.
Arno always smiling!
I was fortunate enough to take this training with my fellow employees of Fox Mountain Guides. The training made me realize I am not very present in the moment when I am climbing. I was already familiar with and had practiced most of the teachings and techniques Arno advocates in his clinics. The problem with guiding is that we rush through climbing to get the rope up. This tends to spill over into our recreational climbing as we are always reinforcing this hurried movement into our brains. Arno says this is a more intuitive approach, and focusing on a more analytical way of climbing will balance out our movement. Stopping and thinking during climbs was hard for some of the guides and made typical “cruiser” terrain somewhat difficult at first. Once you learn to rest when you rest, and climb when you climb, you start to feel more like a warrior on the rock.
Check out Arno’s site here: http://warriorsway.com/
