ABSTRACT
As a sport, rock climbing only took off at the end of the nineteenth century and is thought to be founded by Walter Parry Haskett Smith in 1894 when he successfully made the first ascent (in free solo style) of the 70-foot Napes Needle in the Lake District of England. Rock climbing can be classified into many forms based on the degree of safety, ranging from bouldering as a low-risk option to the higher risk involved in free soloing where a climber climbs without a rope. A person new to climbing might think that to climb well you need a strong upper
body with powerful arms to pull yourself up the vertigo, but this is incorrect because it is a very technical sport. Indeed, rock climbing can be technically complicated but in this chapter I suggest developing an understanding of the centre of gravity and being able to shift it to make climbing more efficient as a key to climbing. In it I draw on past experience of coaching rock climbing to primary-school children in which I focused on them developing awareness of their centre of gravity and being able to shift it to climb better and as the big idea that helps the climber make sense of more detailed technique. The climber’s continuous development of good climbing techniques depends upon having a sound practical understanding of this key concept. More often than not, coaching in rock climbing is overly technical and almost
exclusively reliant upon direct instruction. The rock climbing I have been involved in teaching was part of my duties as a physical education teacher in Singapore, which led me to think about alternatives to the direct instruction of technical detail. With my recent reading about Game Sense, suggestions for a similar approach to coaching individual sport (Light, 2014a) and Positive Pedagogy (Light and Harvey, 2015), I recognized similarities with what I had been developing for rock climbing. Reflecting on these experiences I recognized how I was moving towards an holistic and humanistic approach, which I provide an example of here, while making a few suggestions for improvement as a type of critical reflection informed by my understanding of Positive Pedagogy.
