Ben Mayforth

Before going out for my finals route yesterday, I said truly live today. That helped helped me committ for this finals and truly move with peace and flow with this challenging sequence. What a joy and a dream to climb like this yesterday and know when to shift gears in each section of this route. And was able to bring home the gold 🥇 Stoked to see how far @usaparaclimbing has come and how much the competition field is changing and challenging the athletes to find right their right reads for these routes. Cant wait for different challenges as I prepare for the next two stages of the World Paraclimbing series. #worldclimbing #paraclimbing #usaparaclimbing #neverstopexploring #evolv @thenorthface @thenorthface_climb @evolv_worldwide @wildcountry_official @cruxpowerclimbing @asanaclimbing @usaclimbing @usaparaclimbing

Today's Psychological Sunday is on a stoic principle of Eudaimonia. Eudaimonia is a stoics word for a state of inner calm and self development regardless of one's circumstances. To be able to grow and flourish precisely overcoming things. This week while preparing for the @worldclimbing world Paraclimbing series in salt lake, I spent a lot of time reading through Stoic mindsets to get ready for any circumstance and to self reflect about my process over the last training block. Being injured half this block brought a lot of self doubt into my mind and whether I was ready to compete. But I also focused on how much my mindset has changed over the last year and decided that no matter the circumstance I was going to face that I should continue to compete, and be happy with how much I have grown in a small amount of time. I leaned into this reflection of having a hard year last year with dealing with my triggers, chaotic hypomanic states and life changes and ensured myself that I have overcame and enjoyed that process and the person it has helped me become. Yesterday I trusted the mental processes and celebrated it and the people that helped me stay the path. In that time I was truly happy and realized and gave thanks to living a dream. By doing that mental reflection I knew that I would be at peace with any result. In the end the competition ended with a gold. Whether I would of lost and won though it was truly a new level of peace in competing that I have never experienced. This stoic principle of eudaimonia will be in the competition tool box for quite sometime now and look forward to exploring it in a deeper meaning in the rest of my life. Thanks to the people who have kept me on this path of self growth and our @usaparaclimbing coaches and staff for supporting our athletes this weekend. #psychologicalsundays #stoicism #usaclimbing #worldclimbing #neverstopexploring @thenorthface @thenorthface_climb @evolv_worldwide @wildcountry_official @cruxpowerclimbing @asanaclimbing @usaclimbing @usaparaclimbing 📸 @gajdaphotography

Heading into finals for the @worldclimbing para Series tomorrow. Really psyched on my mindset for this round. Felt calm and knew when to change gears when the routes called for it. Really satisfied with the mental and physical work I have put in since nationals. Thanks to @usaparaclimbing staff for putting in the work today with all the athletes. And getting everyone ready for today. Now time to refuel and start the process for tomorrow! #worldclimbing #worldparaseries #usaclimbing #usaparaclimbing #thenorthface @thenorthface @thenorthface_climb @evolv_worldwide @wildcountry_official @cruxpowerclimbing @asanaclimbing @usaclimbing @usaparaclimbing @worldclimbingpara

Some spray wall work to shake it out before the start of the season. Feeling like today I was able to shake off some mental thoughts and feel my body be ready after working back from an injury. Super important to me to keep my head clear and work through stuff thoroughly. Mentally I spent some time today reading and meditating to fix my head into the right mindset and focuses. The overall objective today was to keep an open mind/heart and have fun during the shake out. That I can say I accomplished. Thanks @usaparaclimbing staff for facilitating the shake out today and engaging with every athlete! Ready for this weekend! #competitionprep #usaclimbing #worldclimbing #neverstopexploring #evolv @thenorthface @thenorthface_climb @evolv_worldwide @wildcountry_official @asanaclimbing @usaclimbing @usaparaclimbing

Getting read for the competition season with @evolv_worldwide shaman 2s. This shoe has been the right balance. Soft enough to smear on the wall and on volumes with the right amount of stiffness when I need to edge. Super stoked to have these in my quiver this weekend. #evolv #evolvshaman2s #teamevolv #shoequiver @evolv_worldwide 🎥 @gazleah

Some activation today at the TC. Feeling like my tension is great moving up the wall and my ability to change gears. Super psyched to start the season at the end if the week. And ready to see the learning opportunities in this competition. #usaclimbing #usaparaclimbing #worldclimbing #neverstopexploring #evolvphantomprolv @thenorthface @thenorthface_climb @evolv_worldwide @wildcountry_official @asanaclimbing @usaclimbing @usaparaclimbing

Third installment of Psychological Sundays. This week we had the @usaclimbing paraclimbing performance camp. During the camp we had a lot of discussion sessions talking about different mental performance practices. The one that took to me the most is the concept and balance between effort and ease. These concepts talked about balancing the effort you put in and also making sure you have the right amount of relaxation in yourself. Finding the right arousal level for competition, between your sympathetic nervous system snd your parasympathetic nervous system. This concept is one that I have struggled with most of my career. Finding the good balance with these leads you to that peace and flow state inside of your climbing and allows you to be the same person off the wall as you are on the wall. The goal of this year is to properly find that balance and consistently pursue that peace and flow. And when it doesnt arise the goal is to be gracious to myself and understand that we are human and make mistakes. We can't always be superman. Some of the key points that has helped me figure some of this lesson out is acceptance and a pursuit of greater understanding of yourself. When focusing in on this and letting yourself be honest with yourself allows this to become clearer. When you allow this to happen the balance between effort and ease will allow them to complement each other rather than fight each other. This in its self is progress and part of the harder lessons to learn in life and climbing. Thanks to all the coaches that helped out this week at the performance camp and encouraging us to pursue and explore these concepts for ourselves. Hopefully we will all be warriors in a garden. #easeandeffort #selfgrowth #psychologicalsundays #neverstopexploring #balance @thenorthface @thenorthface_climb @evolv_worldwide @wildcountry_official @asanaclimbing @usaparaclimbing 📸 @gazleah @wellgoodmedia

Another good one from @usaclimbing performance camp. Tons of learning experiences from the last two days. This route I felt good about some of my problem solving in the moments. And really tried to have the right balance between effort and ease with this route. Feeling like I am taking a lot from this camp and really going to start applying it more to my competition prep. Still incredibly grateful for the lessons taken from this camp. #usaclimbing #performancecamp #neverstoplearning #thenorthface #evolvshaman2slv @thenorthface @thenorthface_climb @evolv_worldwide @wildcountry_official @cruxpowerclimbing @asanaclimbing @usaclimbing @usaparaclimbing

@usaclimbing Para performance camp was the last two days combined with the Australian para team. We are exactly a week out from the first World Paraclimbing series of the season and having this camp was extremely helpful and introduced a lot of concepts and movement styles that we should be taking into consideration for this season. The first day really challenged me in terms of newer movement and the mental process going through those specific moves. This has has reinforced some lessons I have been learning over the past couple years and that is being kinder to myself and allowing myself to learn in those moments. Not every route will be a top or a win but if I take a lesson from every opportunity I have inside of comps, trainings and climbing outside then I am processing that as progress in learning something new about myself and about my climbing. Thank you to @usaparaclimbing and @ausparaclimbingteam for helping put on the opportunity to learn and grow as humans and climbers. #performancecamp #usaclimbing #usaparaclimbing #australianparaclimbingteam #neverstopexploring @thenorthface @thenorthface_climb @evolv_worldwide @wildcountry_official @asanaclimbing

Some fun session time @usaclimbing tc today. The next two weeks will be pretty busy with a @usaparaclimbing training camp and a @worldclimbing World Paraclimbing series the following week. Felt like i just needed a fun day today while training and have a moment to laugh and actually have fun with some of the work I have been doing. Staying positive and celebrating the work that I have had to do since nationals. Its been a weird road coming off an injury but purely proud of some of the training I have gotten since recovering. Feeling gracious of the time I have spent in the TC the last few weeks and really loving climbing and the time I have put in. #usaclimbing #usaparaclimbing #worldseries #neverstopexploring #evolvshaman2slv @thenorthface @thenorthface_climb @evolv_worldwide @wildcountry_official @asanaclimbing

Whats in your quiver. I rotate climbing shoes quite a bit. Different situations call for different shoes. Especially when I have discrepancies in my ability between my right and left leg. I tend to keep two to three different pairs of shoes in my bag. @evolv_worldwide shaman 2s shaman pro and phantom pro have been in my competition bag and been in that rotation for me for a while now. Each pair serving different purposes. Whats in your bag for different situations? #evolv #evolvshamanpro #evolvshaman2slv #evolvphantomprolv #teamevolv @evolv_worldwide

Second installment of Psychological Sundays. This weeks topic is climbing with peace. I have been climbing for ten years now and competing for 8 year. There has always been stress revolving around competitions for me. This stress has always slightly taken away from the competition experience for me in some way or form mostly due to internal expectations, or pressures I have perceived to be put on me. This has made it hard to be at peace while competing. I can only remember four competitions where I had pure peace on the wall and fully felt the tranquility of the flow state. In those four competitions, I was truly celebrating some kind of work or growth that I had done leading up to that competition. Celebrating work you have done leads you to an internal peace that I can't fully describe. Going into this year Para climbing nationals I celebrated two main things. The work I put into my anti style of climbing, and the actual mental growth I had done over the last year. For my anti-style I worked on pressing, understanding where my feet go on volumes, and being okay with being uncomfortable on the wall. For mental growth I celebrated my ability to let go of stressors that would only distract from climbing and full acceptance of any situation put in from of me. These two growth factors helped tenfold in my performance and allowed me to walk around with grace and climb with true peace. Working on these two specific growth points allowed me to figure out how to perform more consistently and to know myself in a new way. Instead of being stressed I floated and had fun and succeeded. What growth points do you need to work on. Do you have to let go and accept what is in-front of you and when you do that work are you going to celebrate it. Theres still work to do but celebrate those growth moments, it truly leads you to a deeper peace than I can describe. #psychologicalsundays #growthmoments #celebrategrowth #peace #neverstopexploring @thenorthface @thenorthface_climb @evolv_worldwide @wildcountry_official @asanaclimbing 📸 @stace__jam