The beginning

When I began to take my first steps on the rock, I immediately looked for – without finding one – a teacher who was able to teach me “the art of climbing”. In those early years I received only a few pieces of advice, including that in order to learn I had to gain a lot of personal experience, and for a long time. I ended up believing that there was nothing to understand and that I had to proceed by random attempts.

Later, however, in 1981, when I started teaching, I immediately realized how difficult the task of a teacher was, if he wanted to do his job well. Even though I wasn’t fully aware of it, I sensed that something was missing and I began to ask myself the question that determined the birth of the Method: but what is the object of teaching in climbing? All the existing courses, apart from knots and rope maneuvers, more than teaching “led” the students to climb…

In the early 90s, by then an Alpine Guide, I participated together with other instructors and Guides in the first official course for “Climbing Master” organized at the CONI headquarters: training lessons, psychology, physiology, all very interesting. “ But what about the technique of movement, how do we do it ?”, was my inevitable question. I still remember the teacher’s answer perfectly today: “ Technique is the first and most important thing but we don’t climb and we don’t know it! You are the experts in the sector, you should know it!”. So how could we become “Masters” if we had nothing to teach? Despite the interesting statements of other participants, some of whom were already competing, who maintained that climbing was instinctive and technique didn’t exist, that teacher’s answer gave me the definitive confirmation that I was on the right path.

On that occasion I understood the importance and value of coherence. Without it, nothing truly important and well done is achieved. The unconscious cultural automatism that led to considering climbing “unteachable” was so strongly rooted in the environment that it made me understand that I would have obtained greater results by continuing my research alone. In the Method, coherence is crucial, all techniques are strictly interconnected and mutually dependent on each other since, in their organic whole, they form the entire mosaic of motor ability (not movements!) in climbing.

And so while in my personal activity I tried to acquire an ever greater awareness of my movement, when I taught I tried to understand which movements made the students improve the most. It took many years to obtain the first clear and tangible results, that is, to identify the first techniques.

I was trying to open a new route that was much more difficult than the climbing ones and I had to identify the path: a greater awareness of my movement corresponded to a greater effectiveness in teaching, and vice versa. Only one piece was missing, the knowledge and help of a different discipline, based on a movement par excellence natural and effective but also global, because it involves at the same time work on the body, on breathing and on the mind. Qi Gong, Tai Ji Quan and Shiatsu filled the gap. After the difficulty of understanding the true principles that are at the base of the movement of the body in the vertical dimension, the first techniques were born and then, increasingly rapidly, all the other progressions, with that simplicity typical of when you discover a new itinerary, particularly logical and natural. The first basic technique, the Fundamental Progression, was clearly outlined at the end of the 80s while, for example, the Balancing technique was born in 1992 and is not present in the first edition of The Art of Climbing (Ed. Mediterranee, 1992) because before inserting a new technique into the Method I thought it was important to experiment with it sufficiently to understand at what point in the educational path it should be inserted.