Alex Honnold: Visualizing falling to my death | Trending Now

Alex Honnold on how he prepares for a climb by visualizing himself in all aspects of the climb, even death.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey guys, Graham here. It's Friday, which means we get
to share with you another one ofour most popular clips from a
past interview. This week.
Alex Honnold, The clip you're about to hear is trending right
now on our YouTube channel. Hope you enjoy.
I've read somewhere that you'll actually visualize falling to
your death. Well, I mean, I have thought

(00:22):
about it for sure. Like what?
Why? Because it'd be worse to have
never thought about that and then suddenly be in the position
and be like, holy shit, you know, like, it's better to think
through like every different side of something.
I mean, The thing is like, if the idea of falling to my death
is like insurmountable, like if I can't get past that fear, then
like, I probably shouldn't be upthere.

(00:43):
You know, you can't just like suppress that.
And then just like I mean, you have to accept like the whole
experience. Yeah, and what will you see when
you visualize falling? To your well, I mean, you'd
bounce off that ledge 20 meters below, you'd probably bounce off
the ledge 40 meters below that. Eventually you would just fall
to the ground and you'd be like dead.
And you'll literally. Well, I mean.
See yourself doing that. I mean, is that weird?

(01:04):
Do you not do that well? I'm not a pro climber either so.
No, but like, I mean, haven't you ever like when you're
driving, haven't you ever thought about, would it be like
just like veer into one of thoselittle divide things on a
highway and just like have your car explode or something?
Surely you've thought about it. Yeah, I mean, or like if you're
on a single lane freeway going super fast.
Detail is. I think it's important to like

(01:25):
to yeah, to actually think it all the way through.
Because The thing is there are alot of places with big wall.
I mean, people always think thatwith with soling big walls, like
if you fall, you die. And I mean, that is true on the
bulk of the wall. But there are a lot of places
where if you fell off, he'd probably land on the ledge right
below you. Or you could probably, if you
were thinking about it, you could probably grab something or
like, you know, if you're in a chimney system and you slip, I

(01:46):
mean, you can basically self arrest inside the chimney, which
I've done before, but not solingwith the rope on, you know.
So I mean, I think it's important to like think all that
stuff through. You know, like one of the big
solos that I did was was Half Dome and like technically the
hardest moves on the route or like on the fourth pitch, like
say 400 feet off the ground, it's like the hardest physical
sequence and it's above this bigledge thing that's kind of like

(02:08):
a picnic table or maybe like 2 picnic tables almost.
So I mean, if you fell off the hardest moves, you would almost
for sure land on the ledge and stick it.
So I mean, it actually takes a lot of the commitment out where
it's like if you fall off the hardest part, you're not going
to die probably though. I mean, there's quite a bit of
other hard climbing on the route, but you know, I mean, I
think it's important to know that kind of stuff.
So free soloing and, you know, climbing with or without a rope

(02:32):
is pretty much the same physically, you've said yeah,
but mentally explain why free soloing so much more
challenging. Well, it's kind of obvious,
right? Because if you fall off, you're
going to die since like obviously there's a lot more
like fear involved and like there's a lot more, there's more
second guessing or there's just more going on in your head.
Yeah, but you, I mean you said for the most part fear is kind

(02:52):
of out of it for you at. This point but the mate getting
the fear out of it is all like. I mean, I get for me, I'd be
scared. Yeah, but so, but like,
overcoming that fear is something that you go through
beforehand, like before soloing hopefully, you know, you like,
visualize, you deal with all those things.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't even know.
You just got to go try it, you know?

(03:15):
It's not happening today. Why is it important to avoid
getting your adrenaline going? Well, I mean, it's important to
avoid any kind of major fear response type thing just
because, I mean, you have like physiological changes, your
vision narrows, your breathing accelerates, you get you over
grip. Like, I mean, it happens a lot

(03:35):
of time when you're climbing with a rope, you'll be like
super, super scared and you likecan't see anything and you're
holding on super tight and you're like, Oh my God.
And then you get a piece of gearand you like clip your rope and
all of a sudden you're safe and you're like, oh, and you relax
and then you're like, oh, there's this other huge hold
right here that I should have grabbed but didn't see.
And then you're like, oh, and there's a foothold and suddenly
you're like way more relaxed. And so I mean, you want to stay
in that relaxed state the whole time.

(03:57):
But I think I've read before toothat you said it's not even good
to just get pumped for a climb. You mean like amped?
Up. Yeah, like amped up.
Yeah, again, because I feel likethat's a bit of a crush if you
just like, I mean, that's something that somebody that a
lot of people have done on smaller routes, like if you're
selling something, it's only like 30 or 40 meters, say like

(04:17):
100 and 150 feet high, you can get like all super psyched up
and then climb it and it'll takeyou like 4 or 5 minutes.
So you can kind of maintain thatlike artificial hive.
Like I'm so psyched. Here we go.
Yeah, you know, but like if you're climbing like a 2000 foot
wall, you can't just be like, here we go, you know, 'cause
like 5 minutes later you're like, Oh my God, I'm really
scared now or I'm like tired or whatever.

(04:37):
It's like, you know, you can't just like artificially amp
yourself up. You have to like have a nice
even, you know, like controlled.As always, thanks for listening.
To see more trending clips from my team, go to
youtube.com/graham Bensinger.