1. Buy a gym membership and feel like you have to “get your money’s worth.” Set a schedule and climb five days a week on the same problems/routes whether it’s pouring rain and 33 degrees or sunny, 55, and perfect in every way for sending your outdoor project(s). Even better, do this to yourself every day.
2. Hangboard for hours repeating the same two Metolius workouts the entire time. Don’t play music or watch crazy Adam Ondra videos to get you psyched. Bonus hate if you don’t use chalk.
3. Climb with people who onsight several grades above your hardest tick and convince yourself that you have to outclimb them.
4. Focus solely on grades.
5. Never take rest days: Climb in the gym every day, even on the days you go outside.
6. Make every day a workout. When you climb outside, do sets of push-ups between burns, four-by-fours on granite razorblade crimps, or continuously climb up and down the same route, five, ten or twenty-three times to “work on your endurance.”
7. Decide that you’re only going to work on your anti-style for the next year.
8. Punish yourself with push-ups, pull-ups, sets of five-minute planks, or insert your least favorite exercise here if you don’t send your project. Also make sure said project is several grades above what you normally climb.
9. Set unrealistic goals and hold yourself to them. Chris Sharma sent 5.15c, so in six months you should be able to as well.
10. Only eat energy gels, granola bars, and protein shakes with a sandy consistency before, during, and after climbing.
11. Expect to send harder routes/projects every day you climb.
12. Remind yourself that climbing is not a fun, relaxing activity involving the enjoyment of nature and figuring out beta with friends. It’s purely a workout.

Originally published April 26, 2015, on coffeetapeibuprofenclimb.blogspot.com.