climbing – Action and adventure sports UK

August 13, 2021August 13, 2021

5 Tips on how to start climbing

So, you watched the Olympics yeah?

Got yourself all psyched ready to go ‘send’ something. You are just not sure what, or where you have to send ‘it’ to in order to get started. When you ask the postman if he could point you in the right direction, he just looks at you like you have lost the plot. Before you realise, the ‘psyche’ is waning, you are fast regressing from contender to couch potato …. again. Well, read on for all you need to know to get started.

In all seriousness, climbing can seem like a daunting thing to start. I mean, it’s dangerous right?

Climbing can be, yes. Then again so can driving to the gym or crag to climb but no one really thinks about that each time they get in their car. The element of danger is one of the things that attracts a lot of people to climbing. It’s the adventure of it. It needn’t be any more dangerous than a lot of sports though. I have noticed a lot of people on Facebook asking for tips on places to go, how to start, an easy crag for beginners etc. The Olympic effect may be beginning. So, without further ado here are some tips to help you get out, or in, climbing!

To start with it may be an idea to familiarise yourself with some of the different styles of climbing. To do that you can read a previous post here …https://actionandadventuresportsuk.com/what-the-hell-is-free-soling-and-why-the-f-is-that-dude-climbing-without-ropes/

Right let’s crack on.

Join a club

Yes, even if you live in the flatlands of Essex like I do you will probably have a club nearby. If you are in Essex, you can get in contact with the Chelmsford mountaineering club http://www.the-CMC.co.u k . It’s a great club and their members get out often and climb indoors regularly.

Joining a club like this is 100% the best way to get into climbing. They will run social nights at a local wall where you can start to learn the ropes (pun intended even if it is a weak one) and they will invariably have lots of experienced members that can help you transition from plastic to rock safely!

Check out this nifty link from the BMC (British mountaineering council)

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/climbing-wall-finder, it not only shows you clubs but also crags and indoor walls etc.

Join the BMC

You could and should join the BMC, just bear in mind that if you join a local club, you probably get BMC membership included.

Joining the BMC supports the organisation that supports and works hard for climbers, hill walkers, mountaineers etc. They do a lot of unseen work behind the scenes and thanks to them we have a lot of access to climbing that we probably wouldn’t have it were just left as a free for all!

The BMC regularly put on workshops to learn the skills required to start climbing. Check them out here. https://www.thebmc.co.uk/training-courses-with-the-bmc

Go to your local wall

Check out your local wall, it’s not only for hardcore climbers training for their next attempt of the ‘death wall.’ Most, if not all, run social nights for total newbs like you to rock up and get a session for cheap with a small group of other likeminded people. It’s a lot cheaper than private lessons and hopefully you will find someone you can start your climbing journey with. Everyone needs a belayer…well, almost everyone, bore off Honnold we’ve all seen your film. You can find indoor walls on the good old tinterweb or by clicking that nifty BMC link again.

Find an instructor

If you don’t have a local wall but you live near a crag or some real rock, you are a ~~bastard~~ I mean bonny lucky fellow. You can find guides/instructors on the Mountain Training website using this link https://www.mountain-training.org/find-a-leader. You will find me on there under RCI, Rock climbing instructor. I am qualified to take people out on single pitches climbing and abseiling, so you can always ping me a message if you want to book a day climbing.

There are a wide variety of qualifications, they are explained here https://www.thebmc.co.uk/qualifications-explained_0

For climbing outside you will need an RCI, a Mountain Leader (ML), or at the top of the UK tree an MCI, Mountaineering and Climbing Instructor. I recommend my mountain Ninja friend Dave Heaton if MCI’s float your boat.

You can also check out the British mountain guides https://www.bmg.org.uk/ . All their guides automatically hold European qualifications as well.

Facebook

I would urge caution here as you have no real way of telling how knowledgeable or safe someone is. However, there are lots of groups on Facebook that aim to hook up climbing partners around the country. Think Tinder for belayers. We all know photos and descriptions are not what they sometimes seem. There is obviously no sure-fire way to make sure you are tagging along with someone safe. I would suggest using a lot of common sense and caution and maybe trying to go when there seems to be a few people going. It is possible to check out people’s experience online with websites like the UKC forum, again these may not be accurate though.

One other word of caution. If you do go on these Facebook groups, whatever you do don’t call the Peak District The ‘Peaks’ rather than the ‘Peak’ or the Brecon Beacons the ‘Brecon’s’ or is it the ‘Beacon’s?’ Damn I can never remember. They and will hunt you down and lynch you if you do!

Some of them seem to do more lynching than climbing!

Failing that you can always hang around Hathersage with a ‘belay for food’ sign like the late great Fred Beckey. It worked for him.

August 1, 2021August 12, 2021

Climbing in the Olympics, how does it work?

Climbing conundrum of the Olympics confusing you?

You are probably not alone. I mean, how did it even get there? You had heard ‘sport climbing’ was neither, right?

Doh! That was a joke by the way, not my view or even my joke actually. I stole it from the tinterweb. We will cover it another time though. But for now;

This Olympics sees 3 new ‘sports’, all of which got a fair amount of resistance from their respective communities regarding their inclusion. It’s long been argued that Climbing, Skateboarding and Surfing are not ‘sports’ and therefore should not be in the Olympics. That’s an old skool, staunch traditionalist view, one that probably deserves discussing in a full post later. I can see both points of view though. As an aside, it was interesting to see that the average age of the female competitors in the finals of the street skateboarding was 13!

But anyway, climbing, what’s going on? Why has Shauna Coxey got her stopwatch out, and is Ondra going to crush everything he attempts?

I really don’t know, I mean the dude is a beast, his neck is long enough to give him a head start on the speed climbing for sure. That was a low blow, sorry llama, I mean Ondra. I am just jealous. He is younger, stronger and more talented than I am. In fact, he is more talented and stronger than I EVER was and he comes across as a really nice bloke, probably nicer than me as I am giving him some stick. He is obviously more intelligent than I am as well! He speaks 5 languages fluently and has a degree in economics. Damn, I am going to stop bigging him up, it’s depressing me. I can match him on the youth thing though, I was young once.

Anyway, climbing poses an interesting conundrum for the competitors given that all of the athletes will be competing in something comparatively new to them, by Olympic standards anyway.

The format sees one climber compete in 3 disciplines. The thing is, unlike old Daley Thompson who always trained the ten elements of the decathlon, most, if not all of these climbers will have never really tried some of these styles. The speed climbing is the biggest spanner in the works.

First let me explain the format somewhat.

Each climber will compete in Bouldering, Lead climbing and Speed climbing.

This is how they will score each

Lead: Climbers climb a 15-metre route with a 7-metre overhang. Each hold on the wall represents a point, the higher you get the more points you get. You get one attempt. When you fall, you are done, that’s it.

Bouldering: The boulder wall is 4-metres high. Each climber gets 4-minutes to try to reach the top hold and securely grasp it. The more attempts it takes you, the more it costs you in points. First and foremost, the more top holds you reach the better your score will be. Then the case of how many attempts it took you is accounted for. After that, it’s the amount of ‘score zones’ you reached. They are basically getting close to the top but not making the last hold. Fairly simple, get to as many tops as you can in the least amount of tries.

All good so far, but then we come to speed climbing. This is a weird beast. Let’s also bear in mind that your final result will be your position placed in each event multiplied by each other. If you finish first in lead, second in bouldering but 10^th in speed 1x2x10=20, your final score will be 20. Points don’t mean prizes here, you want as low a score as possible. You can see how just being bad at one of these events could cost you dearly in the final placements.

So, speed climbing what’s that…?

Speed: Get to the damn top, bloody quickly! It’s run in a tournament style with 1v1 heats. Climb the route faster than the guy standing next to you and you advance on. Keep doing that through and the final and you win. Simples. Except it’s not. Let me explain:

To the uninitiated this may all seem like ‘climbing’ and that it’s all the same, so get on with it. However that is like saying football, rugby and basketball are played with a ball using your hands and feet and telling Ronaldo to just ‘get on with it’ as he packs down in the front row against Joe Marler!

Adam ‘the llama’ Ondra, it’s universally agreed, is probably the best lead and indoor climber in the world. He aint gonna win the speed climbing though! In fact, he had never even tried speed climbing until he was thinking about the Olympics a short while before he was selected. The same goes for Shauna Coxey our girl. The world record for the speed climbing route is 5.48 secs for men, set by Iranian climber nicknamed the ‘Asiatic cheetah’, Ondra’s (nicknamed the llama by all of us that are jealous of him) best time in comparison is something like 7.48 secs. It’s a big difference in a world of 10^th of a second margins.

Sure, Ondra can boulder, in fact he is the only male competitor to have won world cup titles in both lead climbing and bouldering. That alone shows you how different those two are, let alone the speed climbing. Shauna Coxey, yeah, she is a beast as well, and yes, she can lead climb. She is not a ‘lead climber’ though, she is a boulderer and a bloody successful one at that.

So, it’s fair to say that most of the lead climbers will have tried bouldering, but not specialised in it. It’s likely, in the scenario of Olympic athletes that all of the boulderers entering had competed in lead climbing before, like Shauna. That’s not necessarily the case for your average punter in a bouldering gym or at Fontainebleau. What is common though is that none of the ‘recognised’ climbers out there will have speed climbed before. The difference is like asking England’s football team to play rugby against England’s rugby team. Whilst I think that would be an amusing spectacle, it’s rather slanted toward the rugby team to win.

To understand why, you have to first understand what attracts climbers to climbing. Not including the merits of, the places you get to travel to and the people etc, we haven’t got the time. Let’s just talk about the physical aspects. Climbing is like human chess. It’s about solving a mental and physical problem. It’s about working out that single move on the wall that will unlock the route for you, that will mean you can ‘send’ it and get to the top. How your mate does it may be totally different to how you need to do it. Famous or particularly difficult, dangerous, or fun ‘chess puzzles’ are what attract climbers from all around the world.

Even indoor climbing provides a regular supply of different routes and puzzles to solve. One thing I find quite often with people who don’t climb is that they don’t realise all the routes inside are changed regularly. So, when you see a climbing wall full of coloured holds making up a route, they will be totally different from 6 weeks ago. The wall will employ specialist ‘route setters’ who will come in and change the holds around every couple of months to make totally new routes to keep challenges fresh and keep climbers coming back. It wouldn’t be much fun otherwise.

Speed climbing is the total anthesis of what 99% of people call climbing. Sorry if there any speed climbers out there I have offended. Don’t get me wrong, speed climbers are great athletes, but it’s not ‘climbing’ for me.

You see, the speed climbing route has been standardised since the early 200’s when it was set almost by mistake by Frenchman Jacky Godoffee. Since then, the route has been the same, and I mean exactly the same, down to the tiniest of details kinda the same!

This means people have been climbing the same thing, over and over and over again, for years, just to shave tenths of a second off their time to get to the top. Imagine climbing the same thing week in week out. The same holds, the same shapes, the same movements zzzzzzzzzz.

To me and most people I know that’s purgatory, boring as hell. I just don’t understand how anyone could keep it up, but I guess it’s no different to being a 100-metre runner, it’s all about your time.

The standardised route allows people from all over the world to train on exactly the same route and compete purely on speed. It’s all about muscle memory and power and in a weird way the ability to not think. To switch that part of your brain off. It will probably make for the most entertaining spectator event of the three to be fair. It’s easiest to understand if you are a non-climber. Simply who gets to the top first. To be fair they look pretty crazy doing it as well. A lot like spiders on…well speed actually.

So, the long and short of it is that the three disciplines are so different. Each climber will have never really trained at least one of them, most likely the speed climbing part. Of course, to win overall you need a good score in all three. It’s going to be interesting to see how some of the best ‘climbers’ in world perform when already under pressure, they have to turn their hands to alien event.

One thing for sure, it’s probably going to be the only time you get to witness Adam Ondra blown clear out of the water in a climbing competition!

July 25, 2021August 12, 2021

One word, 7 letters, starts with F … and I bet I am better at it than you!

It’s not that! You filthy lot, it’s not as fun as that, hence no one likes doing it.

Its Failure or failing. Damn I am good at that shizza! We could have also used ‘falling’, I will come to that in a bit though.

There are countless famous quotes on failure out there from Edison to Michael Jordan, so I won’t try to come up with my own. In short though, failing is one of the best things you can do. It’s something you should strive to get good at and teach your kids to embrace. It’s tough though, right?

No one likes failing. Failing is the flea bitten, mangy, skinny, unloved mongrel in the corner of the shelter. It’s been there for ever, no one wants to go near it in case it bites them. No one wants to get bitten by failure. Everyone wants to take home the pristine pedigree with the shiny coat. It makes them feel good, walking about with the show dog. Avoiding failure is not the answer though. The pedigree dog looks good (like you sticking to your one thing you are good at), but deep down we know that it’s riddled with genetic weaknesses and problems. Once you have tamed that mongrel and learnt to love it, you are going to end up with a stronger, healthier, fitter beast.

So, we know failure is good for you but sometimes it’s hard to grasp it when you are young, or even when you are a parent. It can be a hard thing to learn or practice. How do you really practice failing? There is, in my humble opinion, one way that is super fun and is a tool that teaches failure like nothing else. Read on and I will tell you, but first let me give you some insight as to why I think my opinion counts.

Yes, this blog is about action and adventure sports, many of which I have competed in or coached/taught in, not at a high level I admit. However, aside from action and adventure sports I have also competed or coached in many other sports such as, Boxing, BJJ, Judo, Karate, Shooting, Rugby, Football and Basketball. I have played around with a lot of others as well. A bit of a ‘Jack of all trades master of none’ but we all know how the rest of that saying goes though don’t we? (It’s included at the end of this post if you don’t!)

So, I have experienced failing at a lot of things, in a lot of different ways with a lot of different people. So anyway, enough banging on, you want to know the best way to learn or teach your kids how to fail, repeatedly in fact, and to embrace it, so here goes.

Contrary to popular belief, and the impression they may like to give, skateboarders are well adjusted pillars of society. Well, ok that may be a bit strong. What is true though is that they have a lot of skills and characteristics that can take you a long way in life. I believe that this is, in part, because they practice failing all day long, day in, day out.

If you want you, or your kids to learn perseverance, determination, courage, humility, teamwork, encouragement, resilience and the value of failing repeatedly and trying again and again until you get it right, take up skateboarding.

Go to any skatepark and watch the skaters down there for a while. There is nothing that teaches failure like falling onto hard concrete, again and again and again!

Nothing that teaches you to pick yourself back up, dust yourself off and try again. To put that last failure behind you and try once more.

Sure, you can participate in other sports and miss a pass, drop a ball, serve out of the box…whatever. Oftentimes you are carried along by a team though. Or you can just slow your serve down to guarantee it stays in. It may be a crap serve, but hey, it’s in, right? Boom, success.

With skateboarding there is generally not the same level of tolerance for error. You either land that 180 kickflip, or you don’t.

A lot of the time in skateboarding failure comes with a physical consequence as well, unlike a lot of other sports.

When you are watching the skaters at your local park next, and you see them repeatedly trying a trick and falling …hard! ask yourself how many times you would be willing to do that. How much determination and resilience have you got? How many failures are too many before you stop to go back to do something more comfortable?

Teamwork is something I mentioned as well, and encouragement. Skateboarding may not be the ultimate team sport of course, but …

I have been stood on the top of a ramp before, bruised and cut, bleeding and tired, having failed again and again.

About to go home when the group of 3 teenagers on the ramp helping me swelled to 10, one more attempt, another failure, now there are 15 kids, now 20 all cheering me, a 42-year-old rubbish skater, encouraging me, shouting instructions, willing me to send it. One more go, the support making the difference. I land the coveted trick…finally. The ‘crowd’ erupt, the sounds of clanging decks on the surface of the ramp bring a smile to my face.

If that’s not teamwork, humility and comradeship I don’t know what is.

In a world where everything is made as comfortable as possible. Where we flatten as many obstacles for our kids or us as we possibly can. We have forgotten how to fail and be comfortable with it

If you want to learn how to fail and better yourself in life, take up skateboarding. Its gonna hurt, but it will be worth it!

https://actionandadventuresportsuk.com/how-to-buy-your-first-skateboard/

‘Jack of all trades master of none, oftentimes better than a master of one’

July 14, 2021August 12, 2021

What the hell is Free soloing? And why the f*** is that dude climbing without ropes?

You have all seen it haven’t you?

I am a bit late to the party here I admit. In fact, quite late. The ‘Free Solo/ Alex Honnald’ is finally behind us, thank God. Not taking anything away from Alex and his incredible achievement. It’s just I was so done with being asked “have you seen that guy climbing that mountain without ropes….ohhh is that what you do?”

If every climber out there had been paid a pound each time they were asked that question, you wouldn’t be able drive around Borrowdale for brand new VW California’s!

People couldn’t seem to get their heads around the difference between ‘free climbing‘ and ‘free soling’, so here’s an explanation.

There are actually quite a few different styles of climbing, each with their own niche. I thought I would briefly explain the most common ones. In case you are new to a bouldering gym somewhere and are trying to get your head around what people are saying they are doing at the weekend.

Or maybe you have new friends at the climbing wall that are ‘free soloers’ and you have always wondered why so many of them gave up climbing so quickly and never came back to the gym.

Here goes …

Free soloing is climbing without ropes. Almost always with the consequence of sure death or life changing injury if the climber makes a mistake that causes a fall. Fun, right?

It’s what you all saw Alex Honnald do on the TV programme. He is not the only one surprisingly enough. Lots and lots of climber’s free solo crazy stuff. It’s not unusual to be at a crag in the UK somewhere and see someone soloing a route near you, albeit not as crazy as Freerider on El Cap of course!

Free climbing is climbing using only your hands and feet to climbing your way up the face of the rock BUT you are protected (to a degree) by a rope system clipped as you go through protection in the rock. This is versus Aid climbing where you hammer rope ladders or fix gear into the rock and ascend using the ladders or the rope with mechanical aid.

What are the different types of climbing?

Bouldering

Damn, bouldering is a hot buzz word these days, isn’t it? I bet everyone from your boss to your binman is a boulderer now.

Bouldering is climbing without ropes. I know, I know, your mate who’s a climber told you that was free soloing and to stop asking him about Alex Honnald.

Its climbing without ropes, but not like that.

In bouldering you have what’s called ‘problems’ to climb which are generally only around 3-5 metres high, using big crash mats (bouldering pads) and spotters (pals to hopefully stop you from landing on your head).

I guess you could compare it a little to sprinting. Its short and sweet and requires a lot of power. The ‘problems ‘will consist of difficult moves that could require max effort and commitment. If you fail, you just land on the boulder pad and you or your friend tries it again. It’s sociable and accessible. You don’t need to understand rope systems or buy complicated equipment. It’s also great fun.

This is why indoor boulder walls have become so popular in recent years. You don’t have to have achieved your Scout/Guides knot badge to rock up and enjoy yourself.

For some It’s just a fun fitness tool, a new type of treadmill.

Sport Climbing

Sport climbing is climbing with ropes and a belayer (the person on the ground holding the rope for you), as you climb higher you clip the trailing rope into fixed protection in the wall using quickdraws.

The fixed gear is metal bolts or ‘hangers’ these days drilled and glued into the rock. Because this is super safe it allows the climber to really push their athletic ability, you can and will repeatedly fall whilst sport climbing, this is because you know the ‘gear is bomber’ as we say. Sport climbing is normally on single pitch routes. So, one ropes length, normally around 20-30 metres only.

Sports bolts drilled and glued into the rock

Sport climbing is super fun and safe. It’s very popular across Europe, especially where it started in Verdun France.

Traditional (Trad) Climbing

Trad climbing is what is most common in the UK. We have a very rich history and heritage of it.

It, like Sport climbing, uses a system of rope and protection. With Trad climbing the difference is that instead of the hangers being pre-drilled and glued into the wall super safe style, you take your own gear up and find a home for it as you climb. Sketchy…!

You clip a mixture of protection onto your harness, small pieces of metal called nuts, clever devices called cams that open and close with the squeeze of a trigger, some other funky bits and pieces. Then as you climb up your route, you find small cracks that hopefully one of these pieces of protection will slot into or behind, you clip the rope through the nut/cam then if you fall hopefully your gear will hold!

That means you hope that you don’t see it fly past your head as you fall down below, watching it rip out of wherever you placed it.

A Hex placed as an anchor in Trad climbing

Trad climbing is inherently more dangerous. Therefore, the average climber cannot ‘push his grade’ or climb as gymnastically as he could on a safe sport route. The spice comes from placing your own gear and trusting it and getting out of your head to climb past it. learning to do it as safely as possible takes a lot of experience.

Trad routes can be long, long affairs. They are generally much more adventurous and its more about the journey rather than the physical climb. That said there are exceptions to the rule of all these styles.

You can have run out sport routes where the bolts are spaced way apart, or the first one is high off the floor, meaning you must climb unprotected a fair way to get to it. You can have short, well protected, easy Trad routes. You can have Trad routes where even though you have the rope and belay system in place, you get to ‘fall and die’ sections.

Me, Trad climbing on a famous route in the Lake District

Climbing is a rich tapestry with many, many options to choose from. people are often surprised when they hear how varied ‘climbing’ is.

We could carry on, we haven’t even mention Hi Balls, deep water soloing, multi pitches, ice climbing, off width climbing, big wall climbing …

It’s often been said that climbing is not a sport, it’s a lifestyle. That is very true. If you have never tried it before, get to your local gym or club. Hopefully now you can see that there will be a lifestyle out there that will suit you!

November 3, 2020August 12, 2021

Are extreme sports really extreme?

Extreme sports, they sound, well… extreme, don’t they?

As a kid I grew up wanting to be an extreme athlete. I saw the VHS tapes and read the magazines of my hero’s doing cool, crazy things and dreamed of following them. I wanted to be a cool kid, who didn’t?

I would go outside and ollie a few kerbs and chickenfoot a few kickflips on my skate board or jump out of a tree. In my head I convinced myself I was doing the same as them.

As I got older, I realised of course that I wasn’t, not quite at least. I still loved every minute of it though.

I mentioned that I watched VHS and read magazines, real ones you can hold in your hand, so yes it was before the good old tinterweb.

Getting into an “extreme” sport back then wasn’t as easy as it today, especially if you didn’t live in a suitable part of the country. These days it’s all there for you on the web, the path to start, the instructors, the courses you can book, the purpose-built walls or parks. It’s easy. So, I wonder why so many people seem to be afraid to try them.

I have taken so many people out climbing that have told me “there is no way I could climb rock like that” or say to me “you are mad I have seen it on the telly, I don’t know how you do it”

The secret is that Extreme sports are more often than not, not that extreme at all.

Sure, stick big Dave McLeod on you tube and watch him send Rhapsody and you will have even the hardest weekend warrior sweating through his pants.

And don’t even get me started on Alex Honnald with his Free solo documentary. If I had a pound for every time someone told me they saw him on telly doing that “free climbing”.

I got bored of trying to explain what free climbing is and that I take my eleven-year-old son free climbing regularly. And no, that they didn’t need to call child protection on me.

I now casually mention I haven’t seen it and that it doesn’t surprise me that he doesn’t have to pay for climbing as he is so famous. Throws them off a bit.

Of course, when we are down the pub with football loving friends, we embellish a few titbit’s and sex it up a little. We are extreme athletes after all, we have a mythical reputation to uphold.

Yes, we may have done something at the edge of our limit this particular weekend but there have been plenty of times when we have plain and simply dawdled or bottled it all weekend.

The point is Dave Mcleod didn’t one day just decide to go to climb a route that has a potentially ‘fall and die’ scenario. Alex Honnald didn’t just decide to go for a ramble and then accidently solo Freerider.

It’s a progression and most of the time the general armchair viewer or enthusiast only sees the culmination of years of practice and dedication. It’s something we all know but seem to forget when it relates to a sport or anything we are not familiar with.

This progression can be voluntarily stopped at any time. You don’t have to go from riding a few local trails to riding the Cuillin Ridge, you can stop somewhere in the middle or even right at the start.

I know lots of casual climbers that never push their grade or fall on their gear.

I know lots of casual skaters that are not as young and bouncy as they used to be or maybe totally new to the pastime, but still love the lifestyle and skate community. They go to the park, get involved but they are not trying to land laser flips or skate vert.

You can repeat this for mountaineering, BMX, diving etc.

There are lots of people enjoying so called “extreme” sports in a totally non “extreme” way.

I even know people that love going climbing for the weekend but they only belay! Basically, an active picnic for them. Gold if you can find a few of those to knock about with.

The important part is that those that are not at the “extreme” end of their action sport career are not having any less fun than those that are.

If we stopped saying that these are “extreme” sports (are they even sports by the way) maybe we could get it across that the entry level barrier is much lower than is presumed.

So, get down to your local climbing wall. Buy a set-up from your local skate shop. Take your bike over the nearest trails. Get involved in an action sport.

Just get started and do something. The world’s most famous base jumper Carl Boenish didn’t just jump off a cliff on a whim he started at the beginning.

Go find your beginning … it’s a lot easier than you think.