I’ve had the nice experience of teaching my younger brother chess and as he made those bad blunders I started to remember when I played the same and made me happy. We like to review his games together and have a laugh at the shit moves and crack jokes like “killing a fly with a bazooka”.
So I would like to know what you guys enjoyed re-living and teaching.
I started rock climbing around 2011, and began teaching others maybe a year or two after that. I still love teaching just as much as actually going climbing, and it is kind of annoying sometimes how the two conflict. But it’s always super rewarding to watch someone break new ground - their first toprope, their first lead, their first lead on gear, their first time seeing systematic training work…
I’m always super safety conscious when I teach people systems, and I really harp on the important things, having people practice them again and again on the ground before they go up, and then again and again on toprope or with supervision or on easy routes. And then the most rewarding part for me is when I get to tell them “Okay, you know the systems, you know how to keep yourself safe. Now it’s time to flip the switch and fucking go for it.” Watching a new climber push through their fear and go to their limit is probably the most inspiring thing I see on a regular basis.