WHOOP Podcast - Living on the Edge with Alex Honnold

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

On this week’s episode, WHOOP Founder and CEO Will Ahmed is joined by rock climbing legend Alex Honnold. You probably know Alex from the incredible Netflix documentary Free Solo where Alex scaled the famous El Capitan mountain face. Alex joins us to discuss his next greatest challenge a route called, Bachelor Party, and it’s graded 9a/5.14d. This is going to be the most challenging climb of Alex’s career and he will be wearing WHOOP throughout his training and during the climb. Will and Alex discuss some major life updates from Alex (1:40), a day in the life for Alex (8:18), pulling back from free soloing (9:44), risk and consequence (12:56), dealing with negative thoughts (22:30), the flow state of climbing (25:24), how life has changed since becoming a father (29:44), getting nervous (32:15), Alex’s next challenge “The Road to 9a” (35:06), his hiking journal (48:21), and his role as a public figure (52:03).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the WOOP podcast, where we sit down with top athletes, researchers, scientists, and more to learn what the best in the world are doing to perform at their peak. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Woop, and we are on a mission to unlock human performance. Today, I am joined by rock climbing legend Alex Honnold. You probably know Alex from the incredible Netflix documentary. Henry Free Solo, where Alex scaled the famous El Capitan mountain face 3,000 feet in the air with no ropes. We caught up with Alex, as he's now a father of two, and he's got a new adventure ahead of him.

It will be the hardest climb he's ever done. Alex and I discuss what he's been up to lately. He just welcomes his second child. He's cycled from Colorado to Alaska. He's got a new National Geographic Series. how Alex views free soloing and consequence. This is pretty fascinating. He goes deep on the differences between risk and consequence,

how you should think about it in your own life. His new challenge and why he chose this route, the 9A climb, and improving throughout his climbing career. A lot of different mental models and ways to think about improving. He goes deep on his journal, everything that he does to improve performance.

If you a question, what's he answered on this podcast, email us, podcast to whoop.com, call us 508-443-4952. And without further ado, here's my conversation with rock climbing legend, Alex Honnold. Alex, welcome back to the Whoop podcast. Thanks for having me. So it's been a little while, and you just welcomed a new addition to the family. Two weeks now?

Indeed. Yeah, it's exactly two weeks. No, two weeks in a day. it's uh yeah we're just starting to settle in a little bit second child second child now what's an appropriate age for a kid to start fooling around with climbing oh i think so our first child it just turned two a day or two ago and you know i think two is is fine i mean basically as soon as a child has the mobility like the you know the physical skills to move around and walk and clam around things then, I mean, I mean, climbing is really an extension of crawling and walking and everything else. Now, you started sort of formally climbing when you were like 10 years old, right? Yeah, yeah, that's right.

But now actually watching my daughters growing up, I realized that a lot of what I was doing as a little kid is basically still climbing, you know, because it's climbing on trees, climbing on, like, I see my daughter opening drawers and then pulling herself up on the drawer to, like, peek at what's inside and things like that. and like using the little tiny, tiny edges on a, like basically putting her feet on anything to like clamber higher. And I'm sort of like, I mean, that is, that is climbing. Your sleep, it sounds like's gotten worse since adding two members to the family. Yeah, sleep's gotten harder. I think actually, I think the whoop actually said that I slept eight hours last night, which is kind of crazy with the newborn, but I went to bed at 8 p.m. and got up at 7 a.m. And so, and I took my sleep in a series of two hour naps basically like four two hour naps through the night so you're like it's not it's not bad you know it totally works and I'm functioning and I'm still I still feel pretty good

I'm going climbing after this and I'm hoping to climb pretty well but um you know it's a lot of work well that's certainly a good investment in time in bed if you're spending like over 10 hours in bed trying to get the same quality of sleep you used to get well that's I think it's the worst quality as well it's just the same number of hours but but uh it's just just tough when you wake up at like four in the morning and you have to like run to the kitchen and do something you know it's like like the other night I was like starting a load of laundry at like 2.30 in the morning and you're just kind of like this is this is not my normal sleep well one thing I remember from our last conversation is you get like an insane amount of

restorative sleep like over five hours if I remember correctly oh I don't know but yeah my my percentage of REM sleep is always really high basically every single day the whoop app says Like, you must be coming back from some deficit or something. I'm like, no, I just sleep well. I don't know. Well, what's amazing about that is the correlation to how your amygdala response. So, you know, your amygdala response is kind of like fight or flight. And when you get more restorative sleep, it actually suppresses that amygdala response.

So my theory is one of the reasons you're so calm in climbing under what would otherwise be in a pretty stressful or intense situations. is that you get so much restorative sleep every night. It kind of makes sense. When you strip away the science of that, and you just say, oh, when you sleep really well, you're more relaxed. I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. I think anybody would intuitively agree that if you get really good sleep all the time, you're going to feel pretty chill.

Yeah, well, and you get like an outlier level of restorative sleep relative to other people, and you do an outlier thing, which is, you know, climbing in high-consequent situations. It seems like you've been up to a lot in the last couple of years, and we're going to talk about this new climb you've got planned. What have been kind of the highlight reel for you? Well, in the last two years, I've done two expeditions for National Geographic that are TV things. One of those TV shows just came out. It's called the Arctic Ascent. It was on Nat Geo.

So both of those trips represented sort of six week to two-month trips like off-grid doing big adventures. The one I did this summer, actually, is sort of relevant for the whoop because we cycled from Colorado to Alaska and then climb mountains along the way and then climbed this cool thing in Alaska and, you know, learned about the forest and stuff as we went as a whole journey. But the, the whoop relevant part is that we freaking cycle 2,400 miles or something. And I'm not much of a cyclist. And yeah, yeah, I got crushed. And that was an example of seeing my numbers get worse and worse the whole summer. And I just was not recovering and I was getting worse. but you're kind of on you know you're signed up for the ride you're like doing it and I could see

myself just digging into a hole and it's taken a while to recover I feel like but anyway did did you find that that would affect your climbing like I would think your legs would be so much more tired than normal yeah but the climbing we were doing were like these giant adventures in the mountains anyway so it wasn't like performance limit rock climbing but we did so we had a bunch of days we tried to climb as much as we could on the whole journey but that meant like every random climbing gym in some podunk town in Wyoming or Montana or British Columbia or wherever and so and then obviously we went to the destination climbing areas like the Bugaboo's which is a famous park in

British Columbia where we climbed I think we did a thing did 12,000 feet of rock climbing in four days but like on big mountains you know it was a the weather got bad so we left and so we kind of condensed our whole trip down into this four day mission and we got completely crushed and then we hiked out and then we kept biking So we were like so tired all the time. But what I was going to say is that we saw we had a bunch of days where we rode say 100 miles from one town to the next. And then we would ride straight into the climbing gym and try to do a session. And we definitely completely saw any time you got off the bicycle and then tried to climb, you just weren't any good.

It's just so you're just too tired. It sounds like you've gotten used to just having camera crews around you. You know, I would think in some ways that would be distracting. But maybe ever since you did L-CAP, it's kind of like business as usual to have crews or No, no, I think, I mean, you're right that the filming free solo on all caps certainly changed my tolerance for that kind of thing. It makes it like much easier. Yeah. But, but like this expedition, you know, it was a two-month bike ride, but then since then I basically haven't filmed any of the thing. Oh, okay. I don't think. So I think really now my filming is more condensed

where it's like, oh, I'm doing a project for a month or two and you, you film it. You know, it's a full-on TV thing. It's super professional. And then when I'm not doing that, I do nothing. So like when I'm at home, I'm just climbing with my friends and doing my thing. What does a day in your life look like from when you wake up through the day, just when you're at home, normal day? Well, it totally depends on, a climbing day versus rest day. So I aspired a two on, one off, so two climbing days than a rest day. Okay. And so climbing day, like today will be a climbing day. So I woke up at like 630-ish because our toddlers was babbling. I, you know, got her out of bed eventually, uh, basically like bustled around the kitchen, like took care of the house, you know, like did the dishwasher, took out the

compos, like, to, you know, fed my daughter breakfast. I basically like managed, um, especially because my wife is recovering from, from the delivery of our second daughter. So she's, she's a little bit MIA right now, you know, and then we're chatting. And then as soon as we're done chatting, I'll hop in the car, I'll drive to the cliff and I'll go try my project a couple times. And then, yeah, then come home, do dinner and go to bed, basically. like you know put the kids to bed and deal but and when you do your own project from a climb standpoint you're often using ropes yeah almost yeah basically always i haven't done any high-end sewing that i care about in i don't know a year or two or something i think now i guess

last year i did this giant traverse thing but um but it's pretty easy in a way i mean it was it was a difficult thing to do but the but the free selling was relatively easy So it was like this huge adventure I did last year, but it doesn't count as like elite soloing. And why have you pulled back on free soloing? Well, it's not even that I pulled back. Part of it is because I live in Las Vegas, which is incredible year-round climbing. But I've soldered most of the things that matter around here over the last, you know, 15 years I've been coming here in the winter's things. So I've done most of the things that I care about.

And then, I don't know, like last year, there's a hard. hard route near my home here in in Red Rock that I wanted to solo. I was like, oh, that'd be cool to do. And then I tried it a few times and kind of did some of the prep work. And I was like, realistically, this isn't that cool. Like the rock's pretty friable. So like the risk is higher because things could just randomly break. And it's kind of cool, but it's not that cool. I'm kind of like, you know, if it was really cool, I would have done it 10 years ago. But instead it's like, I'm kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel a little bit where I'm like, oh, I did the classics. And I've done like the obvious combinations of classics. And I've done like a traverse of the

entire range. You know, I've done like all the things that really cry out to me. And so I don't know, if I live somewhere with different things to solo, I'd probably be more interested. But I just don't think you need to push that nonstop just for the sake of pushing. You know, it's like you want to do the things that matter to you, but you don't have to do everything. Well, that makes a lot of sense. I remember though when we first spoke, like you really romanticized to me how it felt to do free soloing you know you talked about like the level of focus and flow that you felt in that state when you really like locked in and it sounds like you don't feel like I'm necessarily calling to that all the time you don't you don't feel like you have to do that it is so fun like I love

I love souling I love easy soling but it's just one I mean also the time that you spend soloing is time that you're not spending training or doing other types of climbing that are harder and arguably better for your overall performance as a rock climber like basically easy soloing is kind of a waste of your time from a training perspective it'd be like if uh if if like an elite cyclist was going out on their BMX bike and just like playing at the park and you'd be like yeah it's super fun but like it's not going to help you win the tour de france or whatever you know yeah or I don't know, or it'd be like an Olympic skier, like going and doing groomers with their family or something. And they're like, yeah, I mean, it's a super fun day of skiing, but it's not going

to help you with anything sports specific. And that's kind of how easy soloing feels to me, where I'm like, yeah, it's so fun. But it's kind of a waste of time. And especially now as a dad, I just don't have that much free time to just go out and then cruise around and solo easy routes. And so, you know, like I know I'm going to do a lot more of that in my life because that's the kind of thing you do when you're an old person and it's so fun and you know i was like i imagine me as a 65 year climbing in shorts and no shirt for half the year around around Vegas just like cruising on easy peaks just like having a nice time like that'll be amazing but that's just not the that's not the season that i'm in right now you also seem like someone who has this very deeply calibrated sense

of of like risk reward and what you also described as consequence talk a little bit more about that. Well, I mean, which part of it? Well, as I understand it, you, you don't think a lot of soloing is risky, even though people label it to you as risky. You just think it's high consequence. Yeah. Which is to say that something goes wrong, obviously the impact could be death. Yeah, no, I mean, that's exactly it. And some of this is semantics, like how you, how you define the terms and, you know, like how you use your dictionary. But I think everybody says that free soloing is super risky, you're kind of like, well, it's hard to actually evaluate the risk because you don't really know the likelihood of me falling off a route like that. And

most of the things that I'm free-soling are quite easy for me relative to my overall ability as a climber. And so the likelihood of falling off is incredibly low. Though the consequence is obviously, as you said, death, if you do fall off, so the consequences are really high. And to me, that's one of the things I kind of like about free-soling is that the consequences are always high, but ideally the risk is quite low like you feel very in control the the chance of actually falling off is you know preferably close to zero like you know it feels like zero i mean obviously it's always non-zero because you could get hit by lightning or whatever but while you're up there you feel like it's zero and so that's kind of the joy of climbing where it's like you know that you know it almost

feels that you're getting away with something even though that makes it sound too like too edgy and risk takey but you're kind of like oh i know that this is you know very high consequence and yet i feel totally in control while I do it. Yeah, it's fascinating. The reason it's fascinating for probably everyone listening to this is that it's very hard to put yourself in your shoes or put myself in your shoes and say that under those circumstances, I would feel completely in control, even if I were a great climber. Well, I don't know. I mean, I think that there are a lot of things that the average person does that are high consequences, like say driving on the interstate of high speeds in a rainstorm, let's say. You know, it's like to the average person, you don't even think

twice about that. Or, I mean, you know, you live in Boston. I'm sure it snows a lot of the year and you're like driving in the blizzards. You're driving in the snow. It's icy roads. And yet, you know, you've spent years doing that and you feel totally comfortable. And I suspect that a lot of the time you're not even using full focus while you do it. You know, it's like you're, you know, people are thinking about other things, distracted. They're just, they're just kind of doing it because they're used to it. And you're kind of like, well, that's a relatively high consequence activity. you know, and yet you feel very in control and it feels low risk as you do it. Yes, although you don't actually sense the consequence.

You know what I mean? Well, that's, that's, yeah, that's the difference, though, is that the consequences are still there. You know, it's like when you're driving 80 on the interstate, like next to a guardrail, it's like it's still going to be a big deal if you catastrophically wreck, but you're right that you can sort of externalize it. Like you just put it to the side, you don't think about it. You're like, whatever. you're right that with free soloing it's a little more immediate and it's like more in your

face because you look down and you're like oh my god like if i let go i'm going to die but the thing is if you're driving if you let go you're also going to die a lot of the time people just don't think about it as much well would you say that you feel the consequence when you're free souling or you don't feel the consequence. Oh, no, you feel the, you feel the consequence for sure. I mean, you know, obviously you're trying not to think about it all the time because it doesn't hope your performance to constantly be thinking like, if I fall, I die. If I, like, that's not really your mantra, you know, but, uh, but, but no, I mean, you always feel it. It's like, it's, I mean, it's right there. It is fundamentally scary, you know, it's like, even, even though I do it well and

and I feel comfortable while I do it, and I love doing it. It's still like dangling on the side of a cliff is still pretty full on. You know, it's like, you look around and you're like, oh, wow, this is great thing. But I think therein lies the difference. Like, you feel the consequence in that moment. I think anyone else in that circumstance would definitely feel the consequence, whereas there's a lot of these things that people go about in their daily lives that you may accurately call risky or of high consequence, but people don't feel the consequence.

overcoming fear sets in or a need to overcome fear sets in when you feel that consequence. Yeah, I agree that there's a bigger psychological hurdle when you're aware of like how scary and difficult something is and all that. But actually, I think that that you're right that there's kind of a mismatch there. I mean, I think that the public in general does a poor job of evaluating risk and even determining when they're taking when they're taking risk. And I think that with free-souling, it's so visual and obvious. It's like so viscerally scary. You know, people see that and like, that's dangerous.

But you're like living a sedentary lifestyle also dangerous over a long time horizon. You know, like driving, like going out partying every weekend, you know, like the classic like, I'm going to go to the bar on the weekend and party for a bit and then drive home slightly buzzed. You're like, that is also incredibly risky for yourself and others. And yet most people see that as just kind of. normal. And so I feel like a lot of normal activities are just as risky, really, but nobody really stops to think about them in the same way. I agree with that. I think that you also, though,

really sit with this question of risk and consequence if I understand it. Like when you did El Cap, for example, you actually visualized a lot of things that could go wrong. You visualized the consequence being death like you you went there didn't you yeah yeah and i think that's super important because if you haven't gone there then you run the risk of being up in the position and suddenly thinking about it for the first time like there are a lot of places on el cap where actually i mean okay this is all like uh what do we call trigger warning this is all like sort of graphic but so most of el cap is is less than vertical i mean even though it looks like this insane vertical wall and parts of it are 90 degrees or greater but but but

But at least a third to two thirds of it is less than 90 degrees, like less than strictly vertical, meaning that if you fall off of it, you're basically going to bounce down the wall. And so when people fall off mountains like that, it's horrendous. You know, because I mean, the human body is basically like a bag of fluids, like a water balloon. And when it bounces off rocks, it really high speeds and really big distances, it basically like pops like a balloon. And so it's all terrible things. And so thinking about falling off El Cap, you know, depending on where you're falling, you're bouncing off a ton of horrendous stuff on the way down.

Like it's not some clean like, oh, I fell off and I died. It's like I fell and I had seven seconds of like screaming as I bounced my way down this slab like, you know, until eventually you hit something hard enough and it sends you out like a kicker, you know, kind of like a ramp. And then you go shooting out into the forest crashing through the trees and you basically pop like a balloon. And it's like this horrendous like your bones come out of the bed. Like it's all, it's all really like it's horrible.

But the thing is if you've never thought about that at all, you don't. want to be up in that position and suddenly have the realization for the first time where you're like, man, if I slipped here, I think I would bounce off that ledge down below there and then I would just slide down that horrible thing and then bounce off that other thing. I would be, you know, like, you don't want to think about that for the first time when you're in the position. You want to have already thought about it and sort of set it aside, be like, okay, I know that the consequences are truly terrible. And I'm choosing to do this despite those because I think I can mitigate the risk it well enough so fascinating i mean that sorry that's all kind of a horrible aside but but that's the

thing is people like oh he fell off the cliff and he died but you're like it's not that clean it's not that simple it's like it's actually horrible to fall off a clip like that i i'm glad i'm glad you went there because you just illustrated how deeply you had visualized like what the consequence was like you know i think there's this like um in a way like misperception of your great which is like well he doesn't feel fear he's not a like he's sort of oblivious to how risky this is you know and risky being you know sort of a pop culture definition of risky versus yours but you what makes it so fascinating is you're so deeply aware of it and you still take it on and I think that's just super badass well to me I think that's almost the only way that you can

do some of these kinds of things like with free-selling I'll cap, it took me almost four hours to free solar the wall. And if you're doing something that's challenging for four hours, no matter how focused you are, no matter how fired up you are, you're just going to have sort of cracks in your like lapses and concentration and things like that. Like doubts are going to creep in. Other things are going to creep in. Like you just can't be 100% focused on anything for four hours. Like even, you know, Buddhist monks or like snipers or whoever, like nobody can really be 100% for four hours without having like random little thoughts slept in or whatever else.

And so to me, that just means that if you know that you're going to have thoughts arising during the whole experience, you just have to have dealt with them ahead of time, basically. And so in that moment, like when you're doing a climb like L-CAP or let's talk about L-CAP specifically, and that thought comes into your mind that's like, wow, this is really higher, I would bounce from here. Like, what was your process for dismissing it? Well, actually, so that's kind of my whole point, I think, is that those thoughts don't really come up if you've already thought about them and dealt with them.

Okay. Like, I found, at least for me, when I was free-selling-all-cap, you know, I certainly had thoughts arising and sometimes even negative thoughts. Like, I specifically remember down low on the root. Actually, I was just talking about how most of it's relatively low angle. The first section that gets a little bit more vertical where you're more on your arms and less on your feet. I remember my forearm's getting pumped for the first time on the route and being a little bit afraid. I was like, oh, my God, I'm getting pumped. But the thing is, you know,

then I was like, oh, no, this is totally normal. Like, I should be getting pumped here. It's kind of like when you get pumped in your warmups, you know, where you're like, oh, yeah, like, of course I'm getting pumped because I'm warming up. This is the, this is all part of the process. But, you know, I certainly had a moment of like, oh, this is kind of scary. Like, I guess my point is that the thoughts do arise and then you just have to kind of manage them but I guess with with some thoughts you try to do that stuff ahead of time like the visualizing terrible things that falling to your death I think if you've already thought all that stuff through then I just find that it doesn't come up during the during the event itself you know I mean you've already kind of like

dealt with that so for four hours you'd actually never really thought about it no I didn't think about falling or like, you know, where I would bounce and where I would hit things and stuff like that. It's all kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of graphic, you know, to be thinking about when you're up there. Well, I did think about like the birds. And, you know, I had for a huge section of the wall, I was feeling, you know, I was pretty euphoric for a lot of. I was like, oh, this is so amazing. I'm doing this thing. I feel incredible. And a lot of the climbing is relatively easy. So you can, you can have a good time while you're doing it. And I remember thinking a lot about partners, people that I'd worked with the, worked with on the route. And just, you know, I was grateful for

my partners. I'm like, oh, I'm so glad that this person took the time and helped me figure out this section or, you know, like, there are key parts of the roots where I'd learned specific things from specific people. Yeah, that's cool. Like, yeah, like, there's this one section that, uh, that I'd worked kind of quite a lot and hadn't quite found a way that I liked. And then I was talking to one of my friends about it. And he was like, why don't you use that big holdout left? And I was like, because I've been up there a lot and I'd worked on it with a rope and I'd swung around. I'd look for everything. And he was like, oh, there's this big jug out to the left. Like, you can skip that whole part. And I was like,

no and then I went up there and like lo and behold there was a big jug out of the left I just had never noticed it never seen it and I was kind of like oh this is why it helps to talk to your friends about this stuff sometimes because like occasionally you just have blind spots where you're like oh I just didn't see this obvious solution and you know I took my buddy chatting with me to figure it out is there a certain I mean I want to use the word spaciness that can slip in when you're doing something like this that you're so good at or so comfortable maybe it's also a difference between ropes versus no ropes. But just listening to you talk about your partners and being grateful for things, like, I'm thinking about, okay, I don't know, you go on a long run or something

maybe more trivial. And, and, you know, you might be thinking about something completely different for a while because you're just so used to running. Will you find that there's times when you're climbing that you're not actually thinking all that much about climbing? Oh, yeah, totally. No, no. It is doing it. Yeah, it is just like running in that if you're running at a moderate level or moderate intensity, you can think about, you can plan out your lunch, you can think about your friends, you can think about that thing that that guy said that kind of made you upset, like whatever, you know, you can think about life. And climbing, free-soling is exactly the same at moderate to low intensity. I mean, when it starts to get high intensity, then just like

with running, those kinds of thoughts drop away and you have to just do the thing that you're doing. But when it's low intensity, yeah, you just think about, you know, you watch the birds, you like look at the sun, tracking across the valley, you look at the trees, you just you know, you're just, you're just living. Low, and low intensity means what in this context? Easier? Yeah, easier. I mean, for anybody that knows climbing grades, for me, that means kind of like 10b and

under or maybe 10C in under, which is kind of like moderate climbing grades. You know, it doesn't always correspond directly with a grade like that, with a rating, but it kind of does, you know, with styles. And so for me, sort of mid 510 and under feels in control and casual enough that I can sort of think about other things and just have a good time while I do it, kind of like trust my body to just climb it without having to think about it much. Yeah, it's still kind of, I mean, it's still amazing though, because it's, it really demonstrates how much you've evolved past like feeling the consequence that you're in, right, that you can even sort of space out during it

or just let your body do. But in some ways, that's, that's the joy of free souling. And you know, you don't meet that many soloists, really, at the high end, but there are a fair number of people who go soloing after work and things like that, especially in places like Yosemite or, you know, there are a few little hubs for places like that around the country. The thing, it is very meditative. It allows you to just sort of relax and zone out in a way and kind of let your body just move. And there are definitely people that go soloing every day after work, you know, things like that where they can just go do 1,000 feet of easy climbing.

And they're not pushing themselves physically. it's like it's relaxing it's you know it's cathartic whatever it's like a nice release and you're like oh i moved it was relaxing it was good and in those circumstances is the consequence still very high well the consequence is still death if you fall off okay yeah but it's just it's easy enough that that the likelihood of falling off feels like zero though of course it never actually is zero but you know but it feels like it yeah fascinating so that's the same thing where like every time you get in a car you feel like your likelihood of catastrophically wrecking is zero even though it obviously isn't because there's always a chance

that this is going to be the one drive where you freaking kill yourself and your family or something. But it feels like it's zero every time. Yeah. No, I mean, hearing you describe your four hours on L-Cap and never actually having the thought of death seep in, to me, it speaks to your preparation and your visualization. That's because of year, like literally years of imagine, falling to my death off the wall. Yeah, yeah, which is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because I spent

let's see, so I sold it in 2017. I spent two years working on it and I'd started thinking about it in 2009. So it'd been six years before that of wanting to free solo cap, but not really quite having the hoodspa to like start working on it yet. And so those six years, basically each one of those six years represented me wanting to do something and looking at it and being like, no, I would definitely fall to my death. That is way too scary. You know, like that. just too much. So there were literally years of thinking that it was out of the question. And then two years of direct training on it in which I spent a lot of time thinking about. I don't know. I mean, one of the things with all this like visualizing horrible things on the wall,

I mean, the reality is that people have fallen off El Cap. I mean, occasionally things happen and rokes get cut and like terrible accidents occur. And so I mean, I know people who have fallen off the wall like that. And so it's not totally abstract. I mean, you are sort of visualizing things that have happened to others and you're like, that's all, it's all pretty heavy. Yeah, that's intense. Has being a father changed your calculation of risk at all? So that's like one of the most common questions I get now because I've been doing all this PR for this National Geographic TV show that just came out and like literally every mainstream journalist is like, oh, you know, now that your father has that changed your perception of risk?

And the long answer is that I don't know. I mean, so the simple is that, you know, I never wanted to die climbing before. I still don't want to die climbing. So great. Yeah. Yeah. So basically, no, I hasn't changed that much. But what it really has changed is the way I spend my time climbing. And, you know, because I'm now choosing goals and objectives and sort of the things to climb that are closer to home, they get me home in time for dinner, that, you know, that allow me to be here for breakfast. So I'm just choosing objectives that are fundamentally less risky. And so I think I'm taking quite a bit less. risk right now anyway than, you know, I maybe was a few years ago. But I don't know if it's

necessarily, and then you kind of wonder how much is chicken in the egg, you know, like once you're intentionally taking less risk for a while, does that change your tolerance for risk? I mean, it probably does a little bit, though I suspect that I would easily be able to tap right back into whatever I need if I had a goal that I cared about in terms of risk taking. I don't know. It seems like it hasn't meaningfully. And I think it's in part because you, already took that calculation quite seriously or more seriously than people who give you credit for yeah and probably more seriously than almost anybody i mean i've probably spent more time visualizing death and mayhem and hardship and like general terrible things than practically

anybody you know like when's the last time somebody really thought about their own death that much yeah no i believe it and and you don't you don't come across to me at all as a daredevil which is like the that's probably a category you get put into unfairly yeah yeah no i think yeah people assume i'm extreme risk taker and i'm sure i have a higher tolerance for risk than average but i definitely am not like a go for it daredevil i went uh i went uh go-karting with some friends once and i drive pretty fast and i was kind of like oh i'm going to be like a great go-car driver you know i sort of thought of myself like i'll be like a race car driver i'm like a big risk take her it turns out I completely suck. So I was like, oh, this is pretty scary. It's like,

these little things are like really low and really fast and I don't really know how to drive that well. And so I was like, oh my God, I'm a horrendous, you know. Yeah, and you do you do get nervous doing other things. Like, I remember you don't have the tech talk and you were a little nervous during the TED talk I noticed. Oh, I was so, I mean, that was the most scared I've ever been in like it in public for sure. I forgot a whole paragraph at the end of my TED talk. I just blanked one paragraph totally it's not but you have to understand how fascinating and unrelatable that seems to people that you would be more nervous talking about the experience of climbing 3,000 feet without a rope than actually doing it right yeah I know you're saying it's like a

fast it's just a fascinating human psychology but I think there are probably a lot of people who are more afraid of public speaking than they are deaf you know it's like public speaking is is one of the scariest things and especially at the TED conference conference where you're speaking in front of all these like fancy rich people, you know, you're like, oh, there's Steven Spielberg or something. He's sitting right there. It's like all these fancy people. But the thing is you're not allowed to actually speak to them because you're really speaking directly into the camera because it's all for the YouTube, like for the recording. And so basically you just have to deliver this recording on camera in front of important people. And I was like,

this is literally everything I'm bad at. Because the only reason I'm okay with public speaking is because you develop rapport with the audience where you sort of joke with them, you chat with them, You know, you make eye contact with people. But in that case, you're not really allowed to speak to the people exactly because you really have to just deliver your lines. And memorizing is hard for me. Delivering lines is hard for everything about it. I was like, oh, my God, I'm so bad at this.

Anyways, it was a good learning opportunity because it was so hard for me. Well, I'm glad you shared that because it just shows that everyone has these different spheres of comfort and confidence and presence. And for you, that's one category that's not, whereas most people might assume that you would just feel so comfortable in that environment because you've trained yourself to have no fear. Yeah, if I had to do it again, I would feel markedly better because I gave that talk. And then after the talk, actually, the free solo film came out. And then I did the film tour and I did a bajillion public events back to back for a year.

And now I'm much less scared of speaking in public. And it is just kind of one of those things if you practice something enough, you feel better. And I mean, I've certainly learned that with climbing. It's like you do it a lot. and eventually it's not that scary. What's up, folks, if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health, performance, fitness, you may really enjoy getting a whoop.

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Back to the guests. Let's talk about the road to 9A. What does that mean? So 9A is a French grade. It's basically a climbing grade that represents 14D in American grades, which is just an arbitrary grade. But it's kind of the cutoff for truly elite hard climbing. I don't know.

I mean, it's hard to say what's like an appropriate benchmark? Oh, it'd be like a four-minute mile, let's say. Okay. It's maybe, like, I think running has maybe moved a little bit past that, but it's kind of like an obvious benchmark that represents elite performance at a sport. And what makes something 9A? Like, what goes into that rate? It's totally subjective.

So climbing grades are determined by the community. So when somebody does the first ascent of a route, they just say how hard they think it is. And then anybody else that does it gets their opinion. and eventually public consensus will settle a grade at whatever seems like the appropriate grade. But it's basically just like a ranking system that the community uses. And is it based on slope, grade, and how fast it's done, or is it just? No, it has to do with how hard it feels to do it. Like, basically, like, how difficult it is for your muscles.

So, you know, like 9A could be in a huge overhanging cave or it could be on a less than vertical wall. and the styles would feel completely different because in a huge cave you're going to have big holds but your whole body weight is going to be hanging off of them whereas if you're on a less than vertical wall you're going to have like matchstick sized edges you know like like a quarter glued to the wall that you're trying to hold on to and stand on you know so it could be like completely different styles in terms of the size of the holds and the distances between the holds but it'll all like basically you just know all of climbing is built on grades like this and you just have a good internal sense of like Well, that's harder than other things that I've done, but easier than other things that I've tried.

So it must sit here on the ranking system. Well, if I'm looking at the scale correctly, you know, it's got like 8A is super expert, 8B is elite. That goes up to 8C plus. And then 9A is super elite. And then the only grade above 9A and B is 9C, and it just has written next to it, aliens. Aliens is actually on the scale here.

So this is just below alien. Yeah, yeah, sort of. So 9C right now represents the limit of what any human is done. I think they're two in the world, perhaps, and two different people have sort of done them. It basically represents like the very edge. It's like the world record for performance right now. Wow. And 9b represents, I don't know, there may be like 30 people in the world who have climbed 9B.

And so that's very hard. 9A, like a lot of people climb 9b. A now. And there are a lot of like 14 year olds that climb 9A, but they're probably all like national champions and things for their respective. You know, they're all they're all somebody. Like they're they're great climbers. But there are there are a lot like I mean a lot of people comment now. So it's not exactly like that. That's why I think it's kind of comparable to a four minute mile or or I don't know running well enough. Maybe it's more like a 350 mile or something like that where you're like it's elite. Yeah. How many people would you say can do 9A or above in the world? Oh, I mean, if you say historically, like, I mean, under 1,000 ever. Okay. That's still a very small percentage of humans. Yeah, it's super small. It's super small. But it's, but it's not like only one person in the world has done it. You know, like lots of people climb 9a now. But like in the U.S., they're probably like, actually when I was about to say 50. And then I was like, actually, you know, if I started to count, it's probably like 25 or something. I don't know. But yeah. So this is a small, a very small population of all. ultra elite, or super elite, I should say, climbing. Yeah, so the reason that it matters to me is that it's a hard grade. But for me, it represents a sort of departure from the types of climbing that I'm used to,

which is sort of these big adventure routes. Like, I mean, to put it in perspective, so climbing L-Cap, the route that I free-sull it on L-C is only 7C on that scale, or maybe 7C plus. So that's like way down, you know, like, it's hard. Yeah, it's expert. It's hard for sure. But it's very far from 9A. You know what I mean?

It's a and, you know, I spend most of my time like on expeditions and on adventures and things like that. And you're climbing routes that are sort of in the sevens. And so for me to climb in the eights and potentially into the nines, you're like, oh, that's hard. And it sounds like the climb itself is 90 feet. Yeah, something like that. I don't know. It's a single pitch. So you think of it as just like you climb from the ground to an arbitrary point where the root ends. In this case, the root that I'm trying climbs out a big cave. And as soon as you turn the lip of the cave and you're on sort of a vertical wall above the cave, then the root ends because you've kind of made it through the difficulties. And then from there, you lower back down to the ground. And I think that's an important. That's kind of the main distinction here is that when you're sport climbing, you go to a big cliff and then you spend the whole day basically post up like having a picnic at the base of the cliff. And, you know, you try the root, you eat a snack, you chill for an hour, you try the root again, you have another snack, you chill for a bit, you try the root again. And that's your whole day.

It's just going, trying something hard, lowering back to the ground and then staying at your base camp, like your picnic area. So you're not like climbing some giant wall. I mean, people often think of climbing as like going up a mountain. But in this case, you're going to the base of a mountain and then you're just climbing one hard piece of rock over and over. And you're doing it over and over because you want to practice doing it at a fast pace or what? What's the end goal here? So the end goal is called red pointing a route, which is when you successfully climb it from bottom to top without falling off and without using the rope or, you know, pulling on gear for assistance or anything. So you're using just your hands and your feet and you still have safety gear, but you're not using that gear to help you get up the wall at all.

Like you're getting up with just your hands and feet. And so each time you try a route, like so for me, I generally try this route and I climb, say, three quarters of the way up it. and then my arms get too fatigued and I fall off a specific move. And so I try to refine that move as much as I can. I try to like learn the intricacies of it. I try to build fitness so that I can not get too fatigued by the time I get there. You know, like you employ different strategies, you employ different techniques, but ultimately you're just trying to successfully climb from the bottom at the top.

So you actually haven't done it yet. You haven't done it from bottom to top yet. Right now you're just training in different areas of it to be able to be successful at it. Yeah. So I've been, uh, what you've been. call one hanging like basically i've been doing it with one fall in the middle and so in various places like sometimes i go from the bottom to three quarters height and then i fall off and then i can pull back on using the rope and then go from there to the top and you're like oh it's close you know

if i could just eliminate this one fall then i would do it and then i've also had times where i've slipped at the very bottom like say at one quarter height and then i'm like oh confound it and so i rest a minute on the rope and then i can go from there to the top and do the upper three quarters is one long thing. And so I've done, you know, one hang in like big overlapping pieces. And I'm kind of like, oh, I know that I can basically climb this whole thing, but I just haven't actually done it as one as as one go. And when you fall, how far do you fall? Well, depends on when what you clip last, you know, but generally you just, you know, you're clipping your rope into into gear the whole time as you go. So you generally fall on like 10 or no more than 15, 20 feet. The thing is if you fall,

If you fall really far, then you're just dangling in space on the end of a rope. And so then you basically just have to come down because it's really hard to get back up the rope to get back to the wall. Right. And so if you're trying to constantly practice and refine things, you don't really want to fall that far because then you just can't get back to work on it more. I'm curious what the feeling of falling is for you. Oh, you don't even notice. You're so, you're just trying really, really hard. And then it's like falling into a pool or something.

Climbing ropes are stretchy and, and, uh, elastic and so you basically just like slump onto this thing is super soft it's gentle you don't even notice really what you're struggling against is failure because you're like oh i failed again it's like nobody nobody cares about falling they care about failing okay so there's no like split second oh i'm dying moment it's just it's totally normal you don't notice feel falling yeah actually so so fun little anecdotes since we're talking about this route that i've been trying for so So the other day, so I told you I got this crazy stomach bug with my daughter and I was like had diarrhea and vomiting for two days and it was like dying.

I've made plans to go outdoors because I hadn't tried this project in like a month or so because I've been kind of sucking and my numbers have been bad and I've just been kind of, I don't know, like feeling kind of unwell for a while. And I was like making negative progress on it. It was sort of demoralized. So I was like, uh, I just want to go back up there and revisit this project to see how it feels, but I was super sick. And I was kind of like, well, I can at least go try the moves.

I wasn't expecting to do it, but I figured I could at least sample it and see how it feels. And this friend went up and he was going to film on a rope. Like basically this guy was hanging on a rope from the end of the route and he was going to film a little bit. It's kind of like, oh, it's a good day for it because I'm sucking anyway. You know, I'm sick. I'm just anyway, long story short, I miraculously was like suddenly doing the route to the point where I was like, I don't know why. I don't know how it happened that way, but I was like doing it. and had completely forgotten that there was anybody filming hanging there.

And so I fell off at the highest point I've ever made it, basically, which is like three quarters of the way up the route. But had I made it a little bit past that, I basically would have been above this filmer to the point where like, had I fallen higher, I probably would have landed on this guy. But I'd like totally forgotten that he was there, didn't know it. You know, because I was like so in the zone. I'm just doing this thing.

And I'm fighting as hard as I can. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. And I'm like trying. And then when I fall off, I suddenly realize like, oh, good thing I didn't do it. I would have freaking killed this guy. I was like, oh, geez.

So it seems like this for you is, and it's sort of weird to say this because I feel like you're the most well-known climber on the planet. But for you, it's like it's to take your climbing status or overall performance to another level. Yeah, well, for me, it basically, I just want to feel something I haven't felt in climbing before. You know, like I want to do something that I wasn't able to do before. I've been climbing almost 30 years.

And I just want to feel like I'm making some progress or doing something new or, you know, achieving something I couldn't be for. And this particular route, I tried in the past. I've tried a handful of different years and just never quite been able to do it. And this year, I feel good. I mean, you know, we'll see if I do it. But it's just nice to feel some progress in your climbing, like to feel like you're improving in some way. Yeah. I mean, to me it feels like you must be improving.

And isn't it a sport that you can keep getting better at for the rest of your life? or is there sort of a tipping point from an age standpoint? No, there's a tipping point for age for sure. I mean, I think that climbing is much more forgiving than most sports because it's relatively low impact and, you know, it's not like American football or something where you're just not going to play like that long. Three years. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Or even like the NBA or something where it's just like so hard on your body. I mean, climbing, you can climb at a high level for a long time. But realistically, you're just going to be stronger as a 24th. year old dude than as a 44 year old dude you know it's just that's that's just physiology you know and climbing does have a really technical side to it and so it's not just pure muscles so you can't keep improving through your 40s or even 50s but that said I mean you're never going to I don't know you know it's like if you manage to improve into your 50s then really what that's saying is that you

probably could have been even better in your 20s had you employed smarter training strategies and different tactics and whatever you know yeah there's an ask to it where I wonder, like, can you be training your mind or your body be more efficient, more comfortable in the moment, these sorts of things that takes years of practice? No, for sure. You can keep improving for sure. And there are a lot of stories of people who have done their hardest climbs in their 50s or even their 60s sometimes. But I think that that's less likely to occur for somebody like me who's been training and trying as hard as I can since I was 10, you know, because it's like, it's not as if through my 20s, I was, I was a slouch.

You know, it's like, I maybe wasn't training as efficiently and training as well, and I wasn't as smart about it, didn't have the right strategies, whatever, but I was trying really freaking hard all the time through my 20s. So I was pretty strong, you know, and so I probably have less room for improvement than, than some climbers, you know, because some people get into climbing in their 20s and then slowly improve into their 50s and 60s, and that's amazing. that's great but in my case when you start at 10 and you try your very hardest from the very beginning you're like well you know i've already got a lot of the improvements i could and you've pretty much approached it like a professional athlete your whole career yeah maybe without quite the

the knowledge and but yeah i've always taken it relatively seriously and always tried my hardest that's for sure are you still doing the journaling yeah yeah in various forms like i have a note on my phone that I keep all the time. Then I have my climbing journal, so I keep track of the actual climbing. So you can go back three and a half weeks, three and a half years ago, like, and you can find the specific climb you did on that day. I can go back to 2005 and tell you what I climbed on what day. That's pretty amazing practice.

Yeah. Yeah. I like it, though, because otherwise I would just forget. And do you find that it's something you ever look back on, or do you find that it's more just therapeutic and reflective? to do it every day. No, no, all the time. So, like, this weekend, I'm going to go to a cliff with a friend of mine who's also

a new dad. And so the two of us are going to go to this random cliff that actually I went to during COVID. And I remember I did almost everything on the wall except for this one combination of a couple of routes. And I just don't quite remember which the combination it was. Like, was it this route going into that one or was it the other direction? Or, you know, basically, I just want to go do the one route that I didn't do before.

So I'll look back in my journal and I'll see, you know, what I did there before. But, you know, I haven't been there since 2020, I don't think. So I'll just look it up. And so if I were reading your journal, it would almost be like a treasure map. Like, you know, I did this exact route and, you know, this, like, it's a very specific. Yeah, it's very specific. It's just names of roots, grades of roots, and occasionally times or, you know, things like that. Okay.

So it's not like I felt like this. I really appreciate the sun, you know. No, that type of stuff goes into my training journal, which is now like a note on my phone generally. and there I normally keep like diet ideas or notes like sleep stuff occasionally my weight things like that just general like more like big picture fitness trends what would be an example of something relating to sleep well like didn't sleep enough or like stay up too late you know or like like I've always liked doing dark chocolate after dinner has always been kind of like my treat but I think in the last little while I've kind of decided that I think it keeps me up I think you know maybe the caffeine

chocolate or or maybe because I eat really dark chocolate. I don't think of caffeine affecting me that much. I don't drink coffee. I don't really think about tea much. I don't think of caffeine as being a big thing for me. But I do think the dark chocolate just maybe keeps me up more than it should, which is a bummer because I like it as my dessert. But, you know, that's the kind of stuff I keep track of in a training journal.

Well, as someone who probably doesn't consume, it sounds like, you know, consume caffeine, alcohol, these different things. Like your body's probably finely tuned, so to speak, and very sensitive. to something like chocolate. Yeah, it's hard to know. Dude, it's funny. So the last, like this winter during Christmas, I used a continuous glucose monitor for the first time,

just like playing with it because I was like, oh, you know, I play with all this random fitness stuff, I may as well kind of learn. And I feel like I learned a few things. Overall, it's kind of like whatever. Actually, fittingly, I'd already canceled my subscription

and like sort of canceled the thing, so I was just going to try it for six weeks or so and learn a bit and then call it good. But fittingly, the rope wound of ripping the device off the back of my arm because like when you're climbing you know it's like easy for the rope to like tangling stuff and uh and anyway got ripped off by rope and i was just kind of like okay well that's a clear sign that this is not for me long term i was like ouchy you know it's just like ripped it out but um do you do you believe in

signs more broadly like you know if it's all of a sudden a little rainy or something or you know no not in general i'm very unsupertious and and not at all spiritual and like uh no i don't really believe in signs and you're not religious either no no not at all it's fascinating no just just what you see is what you get you know yeah the world just is yeah it's funny i don't feel the need to ascribe meaning to things like that you're just kind of like yeah i mean it's just we just live in a world and that's the way it is you don't think that much about your role as a rock climber and your public celebrity now or things of that nature I mean, maybe a little bit.

I mean, I do feel a little bit more of an obligation to do something useful with myself because I've been given this opportunity, sort of in the way that I would like anybody that has a big opportunity to do something useful with it. Right. You know, but that's not, you know, that's not particular to me necessarily. I just kind of feel like anybody, I mean, and that kind of extends to anybody with enough wealth, you know, like sort of has an obligation to try to use it to do something positive in the world.

Yeah, I agree with that. And it sounds like you feel more of like a calling towards that, given the status that you've achieved in the last decade. Yeah, though, I mean, I think I've always sort of ascribe to that. Mostly because, and I see this pretty clearly because I've been lucky enough to do what I want to do my entire life, which is rock climb. Right. And, you know, no amount of success or fame or wealth or any of those things changes the fact that I want to spend my days rock climbing. And I'm going to, you know, go climbing in a minute here. And so, you know, you're kind of like, well, once you achieve any of those sorts of things, like, what is the point of that?

It's like it doesn't change your day to day at all. It doesn't change like my time with my family. I'm sort of like, oh, you may as well use that in a way that's this positive. So, I mean, in my case, I donate like a third of my income to the foundation that I started a long time ago and support solar projects and do different things. And I don't know. I'm sort of like, and it's not like my life is any worse for it. you know, I've been donating a third of my income for, for a decade, and I'm sort of like, I'm still living exactly the way I want to live, doing the things I want to do. I'm kind of like,

and at least I've had some positive impact in the world. Kind of like, why wouldn't you do that, you know? I kind of feel like everybody should do that. Well, you get to spend, it seems like, you know, if someone added a billion dollars to your bank account, it wouldn't materially change how you'd live your life tomorrow, right? No, it wouldn't change a thing. Which is probably more unusual than common. I don't know. I wonder because I think more people are happy with the way they live than, I mean,

I think a lot of people, if they suddenly had a billion dollars, like, yeah, they might buy a slightly nicer house. They might, you know, like update their car, a couple things like that. But after a couple purchases, the fundamentals of their life would often stay similar. You know, it's like, yeah, maybe they would travel a little bit more. go on that cruise they always wanted. But I think a lot of people are living a life that they want. You know, and people often think like, oh, the grass is greener on the other side. Like something else would be better.

But you're kind of like, oh, if you're surrounded by friends and family and you're having a good time with your kids and you're, you know, have a good community, it's like, that's kind of all you need in life. If you have hobbies that you care about. I think that's true, but I don't think most people internalize it. And I don't think, and certainly not on the level you have, which is why I think you have a very healthy relationship. to money and fame and status and these sorts of... Well, this all circles back to the risk-taking stuff and, like, thinking about risk and danger. You know, it's like, I think if a lot of people spent more time

reflecting on their own death that a lot of these kinds of issues would play with it. Like, if you spend a lot of time reflecting on your own death, you just don't need to buy a megayot. I'm just going to put that out there. You know what I mean? Like, if you're really thinking about what it's going to feel like when you die, you're not like, oh, I really need that

handbag or like that thing like that i don't know like the shnell bag or what's like a classy yeah that's a good you know you're like that that shit just does not matter when you think of think about it in the context of your death where can folks find you now what's what's something that's coming out soon it sounds like you got a show coming out yeah show just came out on uh on national geographic uh arctic ascent with alex honald is just uh it's this cool expedition in greenland it was it was amazing trip actually um but that's out it's three episodes and then i think there'll be another show like that next year with this expedition I was talking about going to Alaska. And then we'll hopefully do more things like that in the future, but we'll see.

And then otherwise, you know, find me on social, do all the, all the normal things. Well, look, Alex, we've got to let you get to this, to this big climb today that you're doing. But it's been awesome having you on, and I hope we can do it again soon. Yeah, no, it's a pleasure chatting and enjoy your day. I'll see how it goes to. In theory, my number is great today. I feel good. I'm like, you know, it could be my day.

But then you just never know because it's a, it's kind of cold and humid outside because it's stormed yesterday. So that's the kind of thing where even when all the conditions, like all your physiological conditions line up, sometimes nature just doesn't line up. And you're kind of like, well, it's just too cold to climb or whatever else. So we'll see. You always just have to go with an open heart, you know, and just see what the day gives you. Try your best. That's a good attitude. All right.

Well, good luck. And we'll talk soon. Yeah, good to see you. Well, good chatting. Big thank you to Alex Honnold for giving us another lens into his. mindset and psyche as he prepares for another legendary client. If you enjoyed this episode of the WOOP podcast, please leave a rating or review. Check us out on social at WOOP at Will Ahmed. If you have a question was he answered on the podcast, email us podcast at WOOP.com. Call us 508-4434349.2. If you're

thinking about joining WOOP, you can visit our website to sign up for a 30-day free trial membership. And new members can use the code W-I-L to get a $60 credit on W-W-A accessories. That's a wrap folks. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the Woof podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green.