This is bizarre, I can’t imagine what you’re thinking. The entire issue in doing it without protection is to be able to execute all the moves that you have rehearsed equally calmly when the slightest mistake now means death.
I don’t know if I have ever disagreed with a statement more than I disagree with this one.
mmm
They did win, but I don’t think Honnold was there.
He was right there on the stage, over to the right.
nm
OK, he is great at managing fear, but can he teach you how to do it? I don’t think so.
He isn’t anything like me because I stay away from dangerous situations as much as possible. He doesn’t. I suspect his fear level has never been like a normal person’s.
Wow, that’s pretty harsh. Well, what did you learn about managing fear on a useful level? Say you get stuck up in a dark alley one night. Are you going to practice it again with actors and a fake gun next time. Until you get it right?
Ok, the problem was that you didn’t explain what you meant very well in your prior post. I understand what you’re saying now - I agree that he’s wired differently and that it’s not as though the average person can learn how to do that. Still, the TED talk is not necessarily meant to be a lesson in learning how to do something yourself. It’s still interesting to try to understand how his mind works.
OK thanks. If you saw a TED talk entitled “playing beautiful piano”.
Would you expect to hear beautiful piano music being played or would you expect to learn something about how to play piano beautifully?
By the time the camera panned over to him, he was on the ceiling…
Practice isn’t directly about managing fear. And it wouldn’t be “next time”, it would be “ahead of time”.
But yes, you practice something that you are going to have to do under stress in non- or less-stressful situations until you can do it without thinking about it. Under stress, people tend to do the first thing they think of. If you have practiced something - rock climbing, getting stuck up in an alley, etc. - until you do the right thing unthinkingly, the first thing that occurs to you will tend to be the right thing.
If you are up on a rock face half a mile in the air, or someone is coming at you with a knife, it is too late to decide what to do. You have to know already, and then you just do it automatically.
So “managing fear” is done by practicing until you don’t freeze up or panic - you do what you have practiced a million times under safe conditions in the hopes that it will work in the unsafe situation.
Visualization also helps. You imagine as vividly as you can what it will feel like in the unsafe situation while you are practicing in the safe situation. Imagine as hard as you can, for instance, what climbing without ropes will feel like, even when you are climbing with ropes.
The samurai used to make a big deal of the Zen meditation thing, where they would practice calming themselves down so that they didn’t panic under the massive adrenaline dump that occurs when someone is trying to kill you for real.
Managing your state of arousal is an important skill in high-stress situations. You certainly don’t want to be placid - you need the accelerated motor performance that comes with elevated rates of fear, but you don’t want panic. As my beloved sensei used to say - ‘Fire and fear - good servants, bad masters’.
Regards,
Shodan
So while Honnold free soloed El Cap the easy way with no assassins present, you could free solo El Cap and win a knife fight halfway up?
Hello, my name is Alex Honrold. You killed my father, prepare to die.
Only if prepared.
Regards,
Batman
Only the Most Interesting Man in the World could do that.
I will think about that. Thanks.
Of course, you can’t overthink it. That would be disastrous. You must think about it exactly the right amount, an amount that Shodan can teach you if you subscribe to his newsletter.
I don’t know why his name shouldn’t be changed, by popular vote, to Alex Hold On.
I just rewatched it. Two thoughts:
(1) I wasn’t wrong in my recall that the investigation into his relationship with his girlfriend just gets too much… creepy and voyeuristic. The scene where she’s cutting his hair and they are doing all these intense close-ups… I’m just thinking of the “Ghost” pottery wheel scene and cringing.
(2) The worst moment for me: His climbing moves all look perfect to me, so although of course it’s ridiculously scary to me, I don’t really have a good sense of how hard it really is for him. But if anyone understands the true risk in what he’s doing it’s Tommy Caldwell. Tommy’s surely an ice man too, so when they are talking to Tommy before the climb and he has a moment where he’s fighting back tears that just hits me in the gut.
ETA: I had forgotten that there’s one moment where Jimmy Chin refers to him as “Spock”.
Having just watched Free Solo, I’m more convinced Honnold is a sociopath. The way he interacts with his girlfriend or the way he reacts when friends die, or talks about his own death make me think that could be an underlying thing with him. His lack of emotions isn’t just restricted to his climbing, he seems to lack them in personal relationships too. He doesn’t seem to have emotions or emotional attachments in general.
Which again, not all sociopaths are horrible people. There are pro-social sociopaths or sociopaths who aren’t destroying lives. But it would explain a lot.