How it was born and developed

Understanding what are the best positions and movements for each sport discipline requires years of studies, observations, and experiences.

As in all sports, particularly the more complex ones, understanding how to improve technical and coordinative abilities is key to a real knowledge of the discipline itself. But what are the techniques for vertical body movement?

For a long time, the belief that climbing movements were “instinctive”, like walking, dominated, forgetting that for a child, this is an achievement that requires a long and difficult process of learning and coordination. Climbing is also much more complex than “simple” walking. The study of the “best” movements allows identifying involuntary automatisms that prevent free and conscious movement: the limits of these automatisms can simultaneously concern motor, mental, and cultural aspects. Involuntary automatisms are the cause of the difficulty in acquiring new knowledge and expanding one’s motor skills.

In the recent past (and still partly today), in the world of mountaineering and climbing, there existed an unconscious “cultural automatism” that believed it couldn’t be taught and, therefore, that technique didn’t exist. Or rather, it was believed that it was not possible to identify specific technical principles that determine correct movements and the best progressions (Technique). This was also because – it was said – the climbing practice terrain is always different, so the possible movements are infinite, that is, not identifiable and random. But are snowy slopes perhaps all the same? Is a single type of body movement, and consequently, a single way of turning enough to ski on all kinds of snow? Are the angle, length, and force with which a tennis ball is hit always the same? In all sports disciplines, different motor situations have favored and certainly not hindered the identification of general and specific aspects that regulate movement and the use of possible tools, highlighting the soul of each discipline, that is, Technique. Why should it have been different for climbing? It was just a matter of identifying the starting point for the research.

All humans have four limbs and a pelvis, where the body’s center of gravity is located, and they act in a world governed by the same physical laws. This obviously allows for some general considerations about how the center of gravity and limbs can be reciprocally moved, in different contexts.

In climbing, there was a gap that, from the early years, the Method I developed has tried to fill. However, the techniques of the MC go beyond the mere technical and didactic aspects related to vertical body movement or skiing, identifying a precise approach to climbing, mountaineering, and the mountain as a whole that focuses on the development of the person in harmony with the natural environment, beyond sports performance and purely competitive aspects.