Unleash Your UNTAPPED Potential: with Spencer Matthews (and Alex Honnold)

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1:52Hi, everyone. Welcome along to another episode of High performance how's things damien very good jake you good week yeah very good excellent have you untapped your potential this week i've been doing my absolute best to but i know a man that can help us achieve that absolutely you do because the reason why we mentioned untapped is because we're about to introduce you to the host of a new podcast from the team here at high performance how would you how would you describe the host of this show or one of the hosts of this show in one word? Driven. Oh, nice. Yeah, because when we were lucky enough to have him as a guest on High Performance, he was just on the cusp of doing an incredible achievement to make a difference to lots of people's lives.

2:33And he told us very much about the drive, the ambition, and the determination to do it. And they're all the great qualities that we're seeing on this new podcast. And the word I would use is inquisitive, because what I love about this guy is that he's done it himself, but now he's so interested in not just going further personally, but finding out how other people have gone further, not just for his benefit, but for the benefit of everyone listening. The show is called Untapped. The co-host is called Jake Quicken, and the host is called Spencer Matthews. How are you? Guys, wow. What an intro. Thank you.

3:04I feel great. I'm having, honestly, the time of my life building this show with your incredible team. I haven't had this much fun for almost as long as I can remember. Don't tell Vogue. No, I don't mean that. I mean in a business sense. I've always got to worry about that. Jake and I the other day were like, this is just like the best thing ever. It's like, we have kids. Yeah, yeah. So aside from having kids and beautiful wives, this is honestly the energy that we've, you know, because we also record in this studio, of course. and the energy is just, it's so high and we all just kind of love each other.

3:45As you guys know, we're using your team, of course, but I feel really privileged, lucky, delighted to be a part of this team. It's honestly, I can't tell you how much fun we're having. And what is it you enjoy so much about it then, Spence? It just, it feels really purposeful. Like it's the first time for me in podcasting that I kind of deeply care about the content that we put out. I want to make sure that it's thought provoking, accurate. And, you know, we're just learning a lot as well. We've got we've had the most incredible guests in already. We've been discussing fear with Alex Honnold and how fear can be useful and how fear can drive you forward and how not to shy away from it, which is something that I found just so interesting.

4:30Free Solo is one of my favorite films of all time, one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. So We've spoken to Sir Mo Farah, who was so surprisingly lighthearted and epic and full of humor. He fully tricked the two of us, by the way. He trips us up majorly in the middle of the episode. I just wasn't expecting it from him, so my guard was low. And we just had an incredible time. But also, I just think that it's a very special show. I deeply care about it. I'll never get bored of creating this style of content because it means so much to me personally. coming from where I came from to here and having that burning desire to grow and learn and have kind of thought-provoking conversations with incredible people is something that I can do for the rest of my life.

5:20And I think the response so far has been incredibly humbling, you know, and just even if you look at little things that I'm sure most people don't care about, chart position, you know, how many people are engaging with the show, DMs, you know, to us saying that people have been, you know, positively affected by the show already. It's our first week, you know, so more of that to come, hopefully. More incredible guests to come. But also just my relationship with Jake is really evolving, really developing. And I just love him. He's brilliant. Sorry to butt in, but I think that's the important point actually to make here because I think there'll be people listening to this going, well, hold on, I already get inspiring and interesting conversations from Jake and Damien on high performance.

5:59What, have you just done the same show again with two different people? I think yours and Jake's relationship and the tone of your show is what marks it out as different so for people that listen to our show and maybe they don't want to listen to it anymore and want to listen to yours who knows or maybe they want more or something different what is different about Untapped? Well firstly I love your show and I'm not I'm not sure we'll be cannibalizing each other's listeners I think that they offer two completely different things which is which is great. And, you know, I've come from a background in podcasting that was very entertainment-focused comedy.

6:34You know, I realize I'm not a professional comedian, but that was what, you know, the aim of the shows were to make you laugh, to lighten up your day a bit. We came at this with a far more serious edge, you know, for people to untap potential that they're sat on, push themselves further, sign up to that first 5k, 10k, half marathon, marathon, whatever that might be, to really make you understand that your boundaries, you know, are perceptions. And we're going to take you through interesting ways of breaking down those perceptions so that you can do more whilst learning from incredible people. But it's turned out to be quite a lot more fun than I had originally anticipated.

7:17And I think Jake does an incredible job with that. Jake is that, Jake in many ways, he's a fantastic co-host, but he's also the listener. You know, he'll top and tail the episodes with me. We'll break down stuff for you. You know, we'll take away from the episode as hopefully you guys are as well. But we just, we're just having a really, like we haven't lost that entertainment edge, if you know what I mean. And I think part of me in the desert when I came up with this idea was, you know, I want to do this deep, meaningful, moving content instead of trying to make people laugh. And we've ended up with this really beautiful mix of both.

7:54And I think that's unique in this space. I think, you know, we touch on big, powerful topics, whilst having a really lighthearted, fun time with each other and our guests, you know, we've had some pretty serious people in here, who've been in tears laughing. and you know it wasn't you know these things are taking shape right now and everything is growing and changing and it's it's funny it's just not it's not fully how i expected it but i'm really pleasantly surprised but somebody like we've made reference at the start that incredible 30 marathons in 30 days that you did across the desert last summer in summer 2024 you're somebody that seems to be tapping into your potential so it's interesting that you say so far you're learning as well.

8:40What's been the biggest lesson that you've taken from your guests so far? I loved Alex Honnold's take on, and we've only had two episodes out so far, by the way. So we've got Alex Honnold, I think this is airing on Friday. We've got Mo Farah dropping on Monday. But from the Alex Honnold episode, I loved his description of biting things off in manageable chunks. Because, you know, it's easy to watch Free Solo and go, that guy's mad. Like, you know, I can never do something like that. I cannot believe he's scaling something three times the size of the Eiffel Tower with no ropes that's vertical. How's he doing that?

9:15And we brought that up with him, and he just said, well, I've been free soloing my entire life. I would go on a trail walk and go slightly off the trail and climb a small boulder. I've been climbing trees since I was a kid with no ropes. I'd climb on top of the garden shed and whatever, and so over 30 years, it's not his appetite for risk that's increased. It's his capability that has brought him to a place where he's able to do difficult things because he's harnessed skill and his capability to be able to do it without it feeling like this monster risk. You know, like he's climbed El Cap for 10 years with ropes.

9:52So he knew that he could climb it without ropes. You know, we don't see that in the film. His take on failure was exceptional as well. He just said, you know, climbing, you only ever reference the time where you successfully climb the thing. you know for the two years that you fall off it over and over and over again you know that is constant failing but I climb it once with no ropes and everybody knows me as that guy from Free Solo who climbed El Cap with no ropes but he failed for two years in the lead-up to that and I think you can you can take that as a lesson in in anything really can't you all right let's do it then let you have a clip of the Alex Arnold conversation here is Alex talking to both Spencer and Jake.

10:34Oh, and don't forget, you can also get a special bonus episode right now on why Spencer and Jake started the podcast, which is live on the Untappd feed. But here is a little clip of them talking to Alex. Can you take us back to the morning where you decided to go for your free solo attempt of El Cap? You've obviously climbed it several times before with rope. did it feel any different to you? You know, how did you feel that morning? Was it any different to a normal morning for you? It wasn't that different. And it's not as if I woke up that morning and decided that morning. It was like I had decided two years ago, almost when I started down this path of working on the project and working toward it.

11:19And so that morning in some ways just represented the end of this long, long road. And I had done a lot of things to ensure that I could be on autopilot that morning. like I'd already packed my bag I'd already pre laid out my breakfast like everything you know my shoe everything is out like the clothes I was going to wear everything is pre-decided so that I could just wake up and make no decisions and just do what I had planned to do over the last you know a couple weeks and I mean really like my whole sort of quest you know I don't know if you want to call it but like my whole journey had like come to a head basically you know I'd done all the prep I'd ticked all the boxes I'd done the things I had to do and the season was getting on so it's getting hotter.

11:58And so I kind of knew that there were only, you know, maximum another week or two that it was possible that season. And then I have to wait till the next year. And, you know, then it's a whole thing to sort of maintain that fitness and maintain that psych for a whole nother year. In the film, you give it a couple of hours, I think, and you start one morning and it doesn't feel right to you. So you stop. What was it that made you stop? Yeah, so that attempt actually was six months before that was in the fall, like in late autumn. And so the conditions were entirely different in that it was much colder.

12:31But also that time of year, the sun is much lower in the sky. So the wall actually gets more sun and it gets sun earlier. So that means you have to start much earlier to avoid, you know, anyway, it's complicated, but just has to do with sun shade on the wall. And so, so it meant that I was starting in the dark and it was really quite cold and I'd injured my ankle earlier that season. So I couldn't, and my one ankle was still quite swollen. And so my foot was swollen in the shoe. And so I couldn't really feel my foot and it was just too cold. And, uh, basically I climbed up to a section of wall that relies on, uh, it's like the free blast labs.

13:02It's kind of dramatic part of the film, but there are no holds on it, like no handholds. So you're just trusting your life to balancing on the tips of your toes as you like walk across this smooth blank wall. And if you can't feel your feet, it's just, you're just like, no, like, you know, basically I got up there and it wasn't even some drawn out decision. it was just like no I can't I'm not doing this like this is not right and you know yeah and at the time it felt like a big failure you know I felt like I'd climbed a couple hundred feet and then just couldn't do it and gave up but the reality was that the the springtime is a much better season for that anyway because the way the sunshade is you can start basically the temperatures are higher but you're in the shade longer so it's like more stable conditions it's like less of a variance in temperature and so you know climbing in the autumn just like wasn't ideal anyway but because there was the film crew I was like trying to make it happen because you're just like oh you feel the pressure of like all these people and they're all kind of waiting for you even though they're not actually putting pressure on you but you just feel that you know you put it on yourself really this is going to be mad question but do you feel fear because as I've got older I can't even get on my shed roof without being a little bit scared of how high it is and then you just go and do El Cap.

14:13Like, it's nothing. Is that fear inside you? Do you harness it in a total different way to a normal person? Do you think, you must get asked all the time, like, do you have fear? Because I can't get my head around what you achieved. It's just incredible because the fear that I would have on the shed roof. Yeah, yeah. No, so I definitely feel fear. I mean, I don't want to die. I mean, like yesterday, my friend and I set up this rappel line down this thousand foot, like a 300 meter cliff. And, you know, we're standing on the top of the cliff and we put in an anchor and we're kind of like, oh, the anchor is not amazing.

14:49Or like, should we, you know, and basically we backed it up a bunch of different ways at first because we're sort of like, let's make sure this is really safe. You know, and you're like looking at stepping over the edge of this abyss. You know, you're about to like jump off this cliff basically. And you're kind of like, let's make sure this anchor is really good. It's like, no, we definitely feel fear. Right. You can imagine the whole anchor ripping. You can imagine everything just plummeting to your death off this cliff. And you're like, I don't want that. I feel that. So my question to you, though, is when you talk about feeling fear on the shed, I mean, in some ways, is that not a more...

15:22Because I feel that a little bit. As a kid, I would jump off roofs all the time and jump off the tops of things. Except now, I'm almost 40. And one of my ankles hurts a little bit more sometimes. And like my knees are a little creakier and, you know, it's like I still could jump off a roof if I have to, but I really don't want to because I'm like, I just think it's going to take a toll. And so I think for what you're saying, you know, being afraid on the shed, like maybe that's a well justified fear because you don't want to take that impact like the type of hit that you used to. Do you have any advice for people listening who are, you know, looking to push themselves outside of their comfort zone for maybe the first time, who, you know, are hopefully listening to this, wanting to explore parts of their life that they haven't explored, wanting to be more adventurous, maybe, you know, explore that dangerous side that maybe they've been hiding from for a while?

16:16You know, do you have anything, any advice to people? I mean my advice would be to start small basically like so I mean I think the thing about big adventures I don't even know like I have so much to say about this I don't even know where to start and so you know because you look at something like freestalling or cap and you're like that's psycho how could you ever do that that's insane like it must be totally different but the thing is if you looked at where I started as a as a kid climbing in the gym you'd be like that's totally normal you know you have a rope you're just going to the climbing gym with your family and you're just like climbing for fun.

16:50And so, you know, for me, you know, it's like a 30 year journey from, from one to the other. And it's all about the, the small incremental steps, like slowly broadening your comfort zone until your comfort zone includes things that you never could have imagined before. And so I think for somebody who's living a truly sedentary sort of unadventurous life, they shouldn't look at it as I need to go have big adventures. They should look at is I'm going to do something slightly different tomorrow than what I did today. Or like, I'm going to do something just slightly more challenging. Like, you know, and because you don't want to set huge challenges for yourself, because basically, if you're too far outside your comfort zone, then it's slightly traumatic, and you wind up having bad experiences where you're like, it was so scary, I never want to do that again.

17:34But the key is to build confidence, basically, to do something that's just a tiny bit harder, a tiny bit different, not even necessarily harder all the time, but different in some ways that you feel comfortable with a wider range of of experiences like it just i mean it's a lifelong pursuit to consistently push yourself in some slightly challenging way like just something that's just new for you in in any way is worth doing would you say you've failed a lot in your life because the importance of failure can be quite a good thing i think failure makes you stronger and would you say you've failed a lot yeah well so i mean that's an interesting question because in climbing you're generally working on a project like you're trying to climb something you're trying to free climb something let's say, and you typically fail on all the time until you do it once.

18:20And then the one time you succeed, then you never do it again. And you move on to the next thing that's challenging for you. And then you fail on that nonstop. And so, you know, like with the film free solo, you could say that I was failing at free soloing all cap for the two years that I was working on it. And then I successfully did it once, which was a four hour climb. And then I moved on to another two years of failing on some other project. And so, you know, in a way climbing is just nonstop failure. But the thing is, you just don't frame it in that way. Because like, to me, it's only failure if you give up on it forever and sort of walk away from it unfinished.

18:51But you sort of expect to consistently not succeed in something. But as long as you're still trying, you haven't actually failed. You're just, you know, learning, you're practicing, you're whatever, you're building fitness. And then eventually you'll succeed on it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think it's a different approach to success and failure. Yeah, I think that's very important for people listening to know that it's actually all right to fail because that's when you're learning like you said you you consistently was failing in a way a climbing way um we're learning yeah yeah that's the thing is i wouldn't even call it failing you're just like it's all just the process you're just doing the thing and eventually you're going to succeed at it hopefully but you know in the meantime you're just yeah you're just doing it you're going climbing you know it's like yeah i mean you're or you're you're working on whatever it is.

19:38But I think that's a tough thing though, with other sports, like zero sum sports, where you either win or you lose, because then I think it's harder to wrap your head around like, oh, I failed, you know, like I trained for months and then this other guy punched me in the face and I blacked out and I lost, you know, you're like, that sucks. Like, that's a real failure. Like, I don't know. Like, I think that would be much harder to deal with. But I think most other things in life, you know, even if you're like trying to start a business or get a new job, there's no real failure unless you give up it's like you just keep doing the thing and you know eventually you succeed at it that's so interesting to see climbing as more of a journey than anything else then because there isn't there isn't that there isn't that opportunity to be beaten by someone you can only really be beaten by yourself beaten by the mountain all the time yeah you know it's like i mean that's but that's the thing is you're just going out having adventures pushing yourself challenging yourself like trying to learn new things and then every once in a while having these beautiful transcendent experiences where you're like, oh, like I did something that I couldn't have imagined doing in the past.

20:39So there you go. Follow Untapped right now, wherever you get your podcasts and find out what your untapped potential might be.

21:01Thank you.

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