Alex Honnold: Visualizing falling to my death | Trending Now

0:00Get your tickets now for the Dog Stars. It's no surprise how fast civilization can disappear. Out there, just kill or be killed. Jacob Alordi. There are people out there. They need our help. Josh Brolin.

0:16Alex Honnold:Shoot first and inquire afterwards. Margaret Qualley. Okay, tough guy. And Guy Pearce. Arm up! The Dog Stars. Directed by Ridley Scott. In theaters August 28th. Get tickets now. Rated R. Under 17, not admitted without parents. Hey guys, Graham here. It's Friday, which means we get to share with you another one of our 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 read somewhere that you'll actually visualize falling to your death. Well, I mean, I have thought about it for sure. Like what?

0:54Alex Honnold:Why? Why? Because it'd be worse to have never thought about that and then suddenly be in the position and be like, holy sh**, 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 up there. 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 death? 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 you'll literally well i mean see yourself doing that i mean is that weird 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 what it'd be like just like veer into one of those little divide things on a highway and just like have your car explode or something i've really thought about it yeah i mean or like if you're on a single lane freeway going super fast As much detail as...

1:53I think it's important to, like, to, yeah, to actually think it all the way through.

1:57Alex Honnold:Because the thing is, there are a lot of places with big walls. I mean, people always think that with soloing 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, you'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 mean, you can basically self-arrest inside the chimney. Which I've done before, but not soloing with a rope on. You know, so I mean, I think it's important to like think all that stuff through.

2:25Alex Honnold:You know, like one of the big solos that I did was half dome. And like technically the hardest moves on the route are like on the fourth pitch, like say 400 feet off the ground, is like the hardest physical sequence. And it's above this big ledge thing that's kind of like a picnic table or maybe like two 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 um 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 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 so it's 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 fears kind of out of it for you at yeah but the mate getting the fear out of it is all like I mean I guess 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 It's not happening today.

3:48Why is it important to avoid getting your adrenaline going?

3:53Alex Honnold: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, you know, your vision narrows, your breathing accelerates, like you get, you over grip, like, I mean, it happens a lot of time when you're climbing with a rope, you'll be like super, super scared, and you like can't see anything and you're holding on super tight and you're like, oh my god, and then you get a piece of gear in and 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 but I think I've read before too that you've said it's not even good to just get pumped for a climb you mean like amped up yeah like amped up um yeah again because I feel like that's a bit of a crutch if If you just like, I mean, that's something that somebody that a lot of people have done on smaller routes.

4:44Alex Honnold:Like if you're soloing something, it's only like 30 or 40 meters, say like 100 and 150 feet high. You can get like all super psyched up and then climb it and it'll take you like four or five minutes. So you can kind of maintain that like artificial high of 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, because like five minutes later, you're like, oh, my God, I'm really scared now. Or I'm like tired or whatever. 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 control.

5:15Alex Honnold:As always, thanks for listening. To see more trending clips from my team, go to youtube.com slash Graham Bensinger.