Breaking The Loop: Teaching Young Athletes The Reset Button

Pressure can turn smart climbers into repeaters. We’ve watched our kids and many young athletes fall into the loop—same beta, same miss, rising panic—while the clock burns. So we built a simple mental toolkit we call the reset button: stop, breathe, reframe, and make one clear change before the next attempt. It’s a quick pattern interrupt that swaps brute force for better decisions and helps young climbers read problems with fresh eyes.

We start with the repetition trap and why it’s so common in bouldering comps with 4–5 minute clocks and longer open sessions. After three or four failed burns, attention narrows, muscles tense, and choices collapse. The antidote is a deliberate pause: step off the mat, take a slow nasal inhale and longer exhale, then scan the wall as if seeing it for the first time. From there, we choose one variable to test—foot swap, body angle, tempo, or timing. By turning each burn into a tiny experiment, kids learn faster, conserve skin, and land more tops when it counts.

We also get practical about training this skill outside the spotlight. We share simple drills like the “four-try stop rule,” filming one post-reset burn for quick feedback, and rotating to another boulder for a macro-reset when an open session gets sticky. For parents and coaches, we offer low-friction cues that reinforce ownership—breathe, scan feet, name the change—while keeping the athlete in control of problem solving. Along the way, we connect this approach to other creative work, where stepping back often unlocks the solution you couldn’t force.

If you’re raising or coaching a young climber, this episode gives you a compact routine for smarter attempts, stronger focus, and better competition strategy. Subscribe, share with a climbing parent who needs a reset, and leave a review to tell us the reset cue that works best for your athlete.

• the repetition trap under time pressure
• the four-try threshold and full stop cue
• breathing to widen focus and reduce rush
• selecting one variable to change per attempt
• structuring resets for 4–5 minute and 45 minute formats
• practicing resets in training with simple drills
• parent and coach prompts that build athlete ownership

About This Podcast

It takes a village to raise a pro athlete.

For the first time ever this channel takes you behind the athlete’s ‘unspoken’ road what it really takes to raise athletes.

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ABOUT YOUR HOST:

Marina Kuperman Villatoro, a mama who is on a mission to help her sons reach their athletic (rock climbing) goals and dreams.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Why The Reset Button Matters
• 0:14 Marina’s Climbing Family Context
• 0:21 Spotting Unhelpful Repetition
• 1:11 Defining The Reset Button
• 1:46 Timing And Competition Constraints
• 3:08 Practice The Reset In Training
• 4:15 Community Feedback And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Pressing the reset button during competitions. Do you guys know what this is about? Well, stay tuned because let's talk about the reset button. It's real and it needs to be discussed. I'm Marina, your host, mother of two aspiring rock climbers, and wife to an extreme athlete. So in com in rock climbing specifically, in competitions, there's several different types of competitions, but particularly in bouldering, you have many attempts that you can do. And we have noticed that sometimes your child or an athlete can keep on doing the same thing over and over and over again. And it's not working, right? Like that famous saying by Einstein, if you keep on repeating, doing the same thing, hoping to get a different outcome, you're insane. But it happens, right? Because there's that time constraint, you know, the pressure of competing. We have noticed that this has happened several times to our sons, you know, and they're just constantly doing the same thing over and over again, and it's not working. And what we have started to talk to them about, obviously, it's a lot harder to put an implement into, you know, implement this into action, but we call it the reset button. So when it's not working, and you've tried to do it maybe three or four times, you've got to step back. Step back, take a deep breath, just kind of like zap yourself out of it and look for that new perception, right? You need to start to look at it from a different angle because the other angle that you've been looking at is not working. And what's interesting is this is we call this part of the competition training, because there's training and then there is actually competing all the time. And that is a training in itself, right? Because when you're competing to train, that's one thing. But when you're actually doing many competitions, that's when you can start to implement these different ideas, these different methods, because it will get you. So, what we are really trying to teach our sons is when you have tried at least four times to do the same thing and it's certainly not working, stop. Just stop. You normally in bouldering, it depends on the type of competition you'll have between four to five minutes, right? Um, it per per boulder. And sometimes when it's kind of um an open one that you try many different ones, you have about 45 minutes to be able to try many different routes. So you'll sometimes you'll be able to go the same route over and over again. And if it's not working, you need to stop. You have that time, stop, take a deep breath, count to 10 if you have to. Whatever is gonna zap you out of that continuous pattern and then reset. Look at it from a different angle. I don't know if you've ever heard of writing, for instance, because I write and I've written several books. Sometimes you need to just write out the draft and leave it alone for a couple of days or even a month, right? Obviously, you don't have that benefit when you're competing because you're right there. But if you stop and you take a breath and you make your mind be like, all right, I need to see a different perspective, it's a reset button, right? You could come at it from a different angle, and when you do that, that could be the difference of everything, right? That could literally change everything for that competition. So talk to your child about that, practice it because sometimes you can practice it without being in the actual competition, right? Maybe go to a uh, maybe watch them doing a certain boulder that they simply cannot get or a certain project that they simply cannot get. Take them out, tell them to stop, breathe, reset, and try again. Let me know if any of you guys have ever had that kind of training, if you've ever tried that, or what you guys do to get them out of continuing doing the same thing over and over again so that they could try something new. I would love to hear your perception on it, what you have done, your feedback overall. Remember, the more we could share, the better we can support our kids because it takes a strategic village to raise athletes. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends. Please leave me a review and let me know your feedback in the comment section. And thank you so much for listening.