We’ve all been there. The playlist is on shuffle, and suddenly, the opening synths of Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department anthem, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” filter through your earbuds. As you’re chalking up, getting ready to pull on some holds that are barely bigger than a coin, the lyrics hit a little too close to home.
"I'm so depressed, I act like it's my birthday / Every day / I'm so obsessed with him, but he avoids me like the plague."
You might not be crying on a bathroom floor of a Dutch museum, but maybe you’re nursing a different kind of heartbreak. Maybe you just got shut down on a project you’ve been training for. Maybe you took a whipper that shook your confidence. Or maybe, the heartbreak is the kind that has nothing to do with climbing—a relationship ended, a job lost, a friend moved away.
In those moments, the climbing gym or your hangboard at home becomes a stage. And just like Taylor on her Eras Tour, you have to put on a brave face. You have to perform. Because the truth is, in climbing, just like in life, the clock doesn’t stop when your heart is breaking. You have to get on the wall. You have to find your grip.
The Hangboard: Your Personal Stage for Resilience
This is where the hang board comes in. For the uninitiated, a hanging board (or fingerboard) is a training tool made of wood or resin, featuring various edges, pockets, and pinches. It’s used to build the specific finger strength required to haul yourself up a cliff.
But for those of us who are "putting on a show," it’s so much more than that. It’s a meditative practice. It’s a controlled environment where the only thing you have to focus on is the next seven seconds.
When Taylor sings, "I can read your mind / She's having the best time / I can show you lies," she’s describing the performance of normalcy. In climbing training, that’s exactly what we do. We walk up to the hangboard, our minds a mess of static, our guts in knots, and we tell ourselves, "Alright, seven seconds on, three minutes off. Let's go."
The climbing hangboard doesn’t care about your heartbreak. The edge doesn’t care if you’re sad. It just cares if you can hold on. It is an objective, unyielding partner. It forces you into the present moment. If you’re thinking about him or her or that fall while you’re hanging from a 20mm edge, you’ll drop off. The only way to survive the set is to quiet the noise. It’s the purest form of "doing it with a broken heart."
Why You Should Train When You're Down
It might sound counterintuitive. When you’re emotionally drained, why would you physically drain yourself? But there’s a strange, cathartic magic in it.
1. The Controlled Suffering: Climbing is hard. Life is hard. Hangboarding is a specific, controlled type of hard. When you’re in the middle of a max-hang protocol, the burning in your forearms drowns out the burning in your chest. For those few seconds, the physical pain is louder than the emotional pain. It’s a welcome distraction.
2. The Evidence of Strength: When you feel weak in every other aspect of your life, watching yourself hang onto a small edge for seven seconds is undeniable proof that you are, in fact, strong. Your body is doing something difficult. It’s a small victory, a tiny trophy you can hold onto even when everything else feels like a loss.
3. The Routine: Taylor’s song is about the grind of the show—the hair, the makeup, the smile, the performance. Hangboarding provides that same structure. It’s a routine. It’s something you can check off your list. You might not have solved your problems, but you did your repeaters. You showed up. You did the work.
The Encore
As you finish your last set, lowering yourself from the board and letting your arms hang loose, you might still feel a bit hollow. The heartbreak hasn’t magically vanished. The problems are still waiting for you outside the door. But for that hour, you faced a different kind of battle, and you won.
You held on when it was easier to let go. You pulled when you wanted to crumble.
So, the next time life feels like a show you didn’t sign up for, grab your chalk bucket, put your headphones in, and let Taylor’s anthem fuel you. Because you can do it with a broken heart. You can hang on. You can take the weight. You can put on your own damn show, one rep at a time.
"I cry a lot, but I am so productive / It's an art."