“There’s Always a Jug Up There”: A Conversation with Climbing Coach Klemen Bečan

Klemen Bečan built his reputation on the World Cup circuit, where he was known less for raw power than for something harder to teach: an almost uncanny mental composure when it counted most. These days, Klemen channels that same philosophy into coaching — working with adult climbers through Rockbusters to help them unlock what’s already there. We caught up with him to talk about how it all started, what on-sight climbing means to him, and the one phrase he wants every climber to take home.

You’ve been climbing since you were a kid. What first pulled you in?

They built a wall in my hometown — one of the first walls in Slovenia…Nobody knew what climbing was back then. I used to go to skiing trainings before. And one cousin, he went to see climbing and said, ‘You should try it.’ And I went instead of ski training, and this was the last time I thought about skiing. Since that day, all I was thinking about was climbing.

It was one wall, like eight meters high, a wooden wall — it looked like a closet by today’s standards. You were standing in line, ten kids for each route. In an hour and a half of training, if you were lucky, you could climb twice. And if it was your turn and you didn’t have a harness to borrow — back in line. 

I was eight, nine years old, and with friends and neighbors we started climbing all the walls around our town. There was a nice ruined castle — just the walls were standing — and we were doing traverses left and right. It was a nice experience. The castle was built not with concrete or anything, it was just stones piled on each other, and you had to be really careful what would break off and what wouldn’t. You had to move nicely and smoothly, applying as little pressure on your feet and hands as possible. I was spending all my childhood there, basically, just doing traverses, left, right, up, down.

You went from youth competitions to win the World Cup Championship. What was the transition to the World Cup stage like?

Youth competitions were still a little bit easier, I would say. We were in the beginnings [of the competitive sport], so the youth series had just started. It was not a lot of us. But still, those who were training, they were strong. We were in a good group with friends from the town — three of us training together and enjoying all the time in the world, climbing outdoors. It was good.

But then at the end of those youth competitions, I broke my leg in a motorbike accident. I crashed head-on into a car that was standing because I was going a bit too fast, and I shattered my foot completely. I was not able to step on my foot for half a year while they restructured everything.

And I think this was one of the best things in my climbing career. I took a break, I couldn’t climb. And then I came back and I was just hungry. A friend I was climbing with before — we were climbing the same routes, training all together, everything the same — he was climbing 8C (5.14b) and he wasn’t even warming up on my project of the day, because I had just restarted [after my injury]. I had just learned to walk again. It could have killed me, like destroyed my mental health. But instead, it just motivated me to go up. After a month or two, we were already projecting the same routes together. But then I just passed over him.

You eventually stepped away from competing. Why?

My strength was always technique and mental preparation and the flow of climbing, which I could not get on [while] training inside. When the big sponsors came — Adidas and others — all of a sudden we had to be super serious. And when I went outdoors to the rock to find that flow and come back with the technique, it was kind of [people saying], ‘You’re not serious enough.’ So I got way stronger [while indoor training], but I was climbing way worse. And the results were way worse because of that.

At one point I just said, I like climbing. I don’t like this — training just to sit in the isolation zone and stress myself. I had twenty years of international competitions. It felt like the right call.

Your website mentions that on-sight climbing is something you love especially. What makes it special to you?

I like it because it’s problem solving. You need to get to the crux and resolve it. You need tactics — where you will be resting, how you look at the route. It’s more complex and more fun, I would say.

When you’re redpointing, you can always take a break, you can do this, you can do that. On-sight, you have only one goal and you have to put it all in. If you don’t risk it — and you decide when you will risk it and when not — it’s more complex. With redpointing,[if] it doesn’t work today, you come back tomorrow. When you’re working the route, you’re doing just one move, and in the end you go over because you’ve done it so many times. On-sight, you have to have the base of all the moves already in your body, in your muscles, so you can just execute when you get there.

But I’m not saying redpointing is not fun. I had to learn this as well — I was always on-sighting, and when I went on a trip I couldn’t be hanging on only one route all the time. I wanted to try every single one of them. But at some point I changed and learned that it’s also fun to work the route.

You also love multi-pitch and taller routes. What makes you love them over single pitches?

More climbing. I like to climb. That’s why I do this for all these years, because I like to climb. Longer routes, it’s more climbing. Shorter routes, you do the move, you go down. It’s more resting and more hanging [out] on the ground. I like the movement. I like moving up the rock.

And with multi-pitches, it’s even better. You go into a wall, it’s 300 meters, and you’re just going — one pitch to another. In between you’re enjoying nature, you’re disconnected from the world.

Also, big walls are more complex. If you want to try the fifth pitch of a route, you need to get there somehow. Even better was when we were in Mont-Rebei trying the last pitch — three hours driving from Barcelona, one hour walking, crossing the river with a boat we had to inflate, and then jumaring 200 meters just to try the pitch. After two meters [of climbing], I cut my finger open and I was bleeding. Should I go down? No, of course not. You …keep going. If you would go to a harder [route] project somewhere where you just drive there, it doesn’t give you that much [satisfaction]. Out there [in the backcountry] you appreciate it way more.

You’ve built a coaching practice specifically for adult climbers. How did that come about?

I already started coaching kids when I was still competing — you need to earn money somewhere, and this is the best thing to do. I was doing quite a lot of it. Sometimes one group of kids for an hour and a half, then another group for two hours, then a more advanced group for another two hours, and then I started my own training. I spent a long time in the gym.

After I stopped with the competitions, I saw that for the competitors, there were already a lot of trainers in Slovenia — everybody was fighting for these few good ones. But there was nobody telling adults how to improve. And there were a lot of them [adults] around, and they also deserved the chance for some shortcuts — how to become a better climber, a better human being on the wall. So that’s why I started doing this [coaching].

And I saw it’s actually a very good thing. Sometimes they [adults] are way more motivated than competitors. Competitors, they go there because they have to. These people come because they want to be there, they want to improve, they want to listen — most of them.

You’re known for spotting technical mistakes quickly. Where do you think that ability came from, and how do you break someone of a bad habit they’ve had for a long time?

I’m observing. I’m picturing myself in the same position — how I would do it. Since I started specializing in technique, a lot of things go through my head when I’m climbing: how it’s happening, where I need to press, how much, how’s the position of the body. So it was a lot of thinking for myself, and it’s easier to transform that into what I see in others. In competitions, when you go to observe the route you’re going to climb, you need to imagine yourself up there. So I can see from the ground what would be the most obvious, the best way.

But many times they [climbers] don’t believe me. And it’s kind of hard to tell sometimes. With video [I take of them], they then see — ah, okay, that’s true. For example, they say, ‘I pressed on the foot.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, so why did you lift it when you were doing the move?’

The technique definitely helps you the most when you want to improve, because most people think they have to get stronger. But in my theories, people use 20% of what [strengh] they have, not more. They could push it to 40%, if they are really working the moves. But for more [improvement], you would need to do more mental training.

If someone spends a week climbing with you and can only remember one or two things from the trip, what do you want them to take away?

Fight like a zebra. The story behind it [the phrase] is that a lion is fighting just for dinner, and a zebra is fighting for her life. What I want to tell them is: you need to fight for your life to get over your imaginary limits, to give everything you have to reach that top — or just the next hold.

And the other one they use a lot already: there’s always a jug up there. Go for the next hold. The next one is a jug. There’s always another jug somewhere — if not the next one, then the one after. And then just hope for the best, expect the worst.

Klemen Bečan offers climbing coaching through Rockbusters, including group trips and personalized instruction at destinations across Europe. You can explore Rockbusters trips on the Adventurtle app.