Lead Head
Recently, I experienced something climbers call lead head.
It’s the moment fear shows up where confidence used to live. Not because you’re unprepared — but because your relationship with risk has quietly changed.
What surprised me wasn’t the fear itself.
It was that I never thought it would happen to me.
I’ve always felt strong and confident lead climbing. Falling never rattled me. I trusted my belayer. I trusted my gear. I trusted myself. Lead climbing was where I felt bold.
But over time, my focus shifted.
I started following more on top rope for trad climbing. I pushed harder grades in the gym — flashing 5.12s, flirting with 5.13s on top rope. I was progressing, technically and physically.
What I didn’t realize was that I had stopped practicing leading.
And confidence, it turns out, doesn’t disappear all at once.
It decays quietly when it’s no longer exercised.
Climbing is at least 90% mental. You can have the strength. You can have the technique. But if you don’t believe you can make the move — you won’t.
On lead, fear changes everything.
You stop committing to big, bold moves. You hesitate. You down-climb when you should go up. You choose “safe” over “possible.”
Progress stalls — not because you aren’t capable, but because you aren’t willing to fall.
So I made a decision.
If I wanted to move forward, I had to face the thing I was avoiding.
That meant practicing falling again. On purpose. Repeatedly.
It meant rebuilding trust — not intellectually, but physically. Trusting that my belayer would catch me. Trusting that the system would hold. Trusting that falling didn’t mean failing — it meant learning.
There’s a strange humility in relearning something you thought you had mastered.
Nothing about my strength changed. Nothing about my skillset changed. What changed was my exposure to risk — and with it, my confidence.
The fear wasn’t irrational. It was unfamiliarity disguised as danger.
And familiarity only comes back through reps.
So I took the falls. Small ones at first. Then bigger ones. I reminded my nervous system what my brain already knew.
And slowly, the fear loosened its grip.
Not because I talked myself out of it.
But because I proved — again — that I could trust the system.
That I could trust myself.
This experience has stayed with me because it’s such a clean reminder of how growth actually works.
We don’t lose confidence because we’re incapable.
We lose it because we stop practicing the things that require courage.
And the only way back is through deliberate discomfort.
There’s no shortcut. No mindset hack. No motivational quote.
Just the willingness to step into uncertainty — and fall — until trust is restored.
