We’ve all been there. Staring at a crossroads, the map of our future frustratingly blank. Do we take the secure, well-trodden path, or the rocky, uncertain trail that calls to something deeper? My mind often wanders to an old friend. Years ago, fresh out of university, he stumbled into a sales role. He was a natural—the rookie with surprising numbers, the easy smile that closed deals. Yet, beneath the commendations and commissions, a quiet unease grew. This wasn’t a calling; it was just something he happened to be good at. The relentless chase for targets felt hollow, a sprint on a track leading nowhere he truly wanted to be.
So, he made the brave, sensible choice. He left. He found a stable, respectable job with clear hours and a predictable ladder. It was, by all conventional measures, a "good" move. Friends, myself included, breathed a sigh of relief for him. He had found safety. But life, in its infinite complexity, rarely offers clean endings. Years later, seeing former colleagues—those who had gritted their teeth through the same early doubts—now thriving, celebrating major deals and leadership roles, he confessed to a quiet, complicated ache. It wasn’t regret, exactly, but a poignant cocktail of "what if?" and a faint sense of paths diverging. The question hung, unanswerable: What was the right choice?
I found myself pondering this question not in an office, but hanging from a piece of wood in my garage. The object of my contemplation was the Two Stones Hangboard. This wasn’t just another plastic training gadget; it was a beautifully simple, brutally honest tool carved from solid maple or oak. Its name comes from its two distinct sets of edges: the "River Stones," smooth, rounded and unforgiving, and the "Mountain Stones," sharply incut and positive.
Training on it is a study in dichotomy. The Mountain Stones are your allies. They offer trust, a secure bite for your fingertips, allowing you to build foundational strength, practice deadhangs, and execute controlled pull-ups. They are the equivalent of that stable job—supportive, reliable, enabling growth within a secure framework.
Here, everything changes. The smooth, sloping edges offer no mercy. Your fingertips scramble for purchase, your tendons scream in protest, and your mind battles a primal urge to let go. Holding on requires not just raw power, but an exquisite, full-body tension—from your engaged core to your glued-on shoulders. It’s a exercise in pure, distilled contact strength: the ability to apply maximum force, instantly, on a terrible hold. You fail. A lot. You peel off after three seconds, your skin burning, forearms pumped. The board gives you nothing; it only reveals what you have.
And therein lies the connection, the philosophical heart of this slab of wood. The Two Stones hang board, in its elegant duality, teaches a profound lesson about commitment and the nature of "hold."
In climbing, as in life, we face two types of "holds." Positive Holds (The Mountain Stones): These are the clear opportunities, the stable jobs, the defined paths. They are good and necessary. We can use them to build our foundational strength—our skills, our resume, our financial security. There is no shame in using them; they are part of the wall.
But the true test, the route to the next level, often involves Slopers or Terrible Edges: These are the vague passions, the risky career pivots, the uncertain ventures where the outcome is unclear. They offer no obvious grip. You cannot simply "grab" a dream or a calling. You must create the hold through full-body commitment. You commit your fingertips, your focus, your nerve, your entire being to the act of staying on. The strength required isn't just in the fingers; it's in the mind's refusal to entertain the option of letting go.
My friend who left sales made a choice based on a lack of positive hold. The role didn't offer him a meaningful "incut" to latch onto. His subsequent stability was a wise move to a better hold, a Mountain Stone. Seeing his old colleagues succeed isn't about their path being "right" and his being "wrong." It's that they, for whatever reason, found a way to commit to the sloper. They figured out how to engage their entire professional being on that slippery, demanding surface long enough for it to become their hold. They developed the specific contact strength for that particular challenge.
The Two Stones climbing hangboard whispers that there is no single "right" choice. There is only the choice you make, and the quality of your commitment to it. The stable job is a fantastic Mountain Stone—use it to build the ancillary strength (savings, peace of mind, transferable skills) that might allow you to later attempt a terrifying River Stone elsewhere. The entrepreneurial gamble is a pure River Stone from day one—requiring a blinding, all-in commitment with no guarantee of friction.
So, how do we train for life’s River Stones?
- Embrace the Dual System: Don't shun stability in pursuit of passion, or vice versa. Use the secure "Mountain Stone" areas of your life to fuel and support your training on the "River Stones" of your ambitions.
- Quality Over Duration: On the terrible edges, a 7-second maximum effort hang with perfect form is worth more than 30 seconds of sloppy, half-committed clinging. In life, dedicated, focused hours on your passion project trump years of lukewarm, distracted dabbling.
- Failure is Data:* Every peel-off the board teaches your nervous system. Every professional "failure" or closed door teaches you about the shape of that particular sloper. Adjust your grip. Try again.
- It’s a Full-Body Endeavor: You cannot cling to a difficult life-choice with just your fingertips (or just your bank account, or just your dream). It requires the engagement of everything: your health, your support network, your mindset, your resilience.
I hang from the River Stones until my world shrinks to the burning points of four fingertips. In that quiet, painful struggle, there is a strange clarity. The board doesn’t ask if I made the right choices yesterday. It only asks, with relentless simplicity: Can you hold on, right now, with everything you have?
Perhaps that’s the only answer we ever get. Not a verdict on past choices, but the continual, daily practice of committing to the hold—smooth or sharp—that we have currently chosen. The strength we build, in our fingers and in our character, is the only thing that makes any hold, eventually, feel like home.