let's hear it...

[kix]

never read that one in the check out line.

[billcoe]

The truth for me:

 

Climbing more. Working less.

 

Period.

 

Which I currently seem to have reversed.

[Stefan]

what single thing made the biggest difference in your climbing ability??

 

Stupidity.

[Lepton]

Two things accelerated my improvement. The first was having the opportunity to watch a good climber lead a hard route early in my career. What impressed me most was the tenacity that climber displayed, resting in a dubious position and working out the crux well above protection for over 30 minutes.

 

The second thing that really helped me understand that I could do harder climbs was to change my boulder training from doing laps on routes I had wired, to really concentrating my sessions on working on a problem until I could do it. As I increased the difficulty of boulder problems I worked on I was soon able to include harder problems in my warm ups, and expand my repetoire of moves.