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I've read an article recently - someone actually scanned Honnold's brain and it turns out his amygdala does not respond in the usual way to inputs that in most
by Florin_Andrei 9y ago
I've read an article recently - someone actually scanned Honnold's brain and it turns out his amygdala does not respond in the usual way to inputs that in most people would elicit fear. In colloquial terms, he's "fearless".
If true, that would explain a lot.
- zzalpha 9y agoLink for those curious: http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-worlds-greatest-solo-climber http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-wor...
- jonny_eh 9y agoHonnold needs the following to do what he did: Absolute fearlessness, talent (most couldn't ever do what he did even with years of practice), and discipline (to train like crazy). People like Honnold are pretty rare.
- Florin_Andrei 9y agoI would also presume that from a physical perspective he must be above average in ways that matter for this sport.
- DoubleCribble 9y agoIndeed. Tall, skinny, gangly, and very big hands & fingers with incredible power. Imagine doing 10 sets of reps of pulls-ups but hanging on with only one finger at a time to get an idea. As if one-arm pull-ups weren't hard enough, pinky pull-ups are on a whole different level.
- mistermann 9y agoTen pull ups with one finger on only one arm?
- DoubleCribble 9y agoI can't find the video I want right now, but this has some nice visuals. Check out this climber planking around 0:39. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igYhX5xyprw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igYhX5xyprw
- jojoo 9y agomaybe it was a video from magnus mitboe? https://youtu.be/BEc5uVsM6bE?t=1m33s https://youtu.be/BEc5uVsM6bE?t=1m33s or the 80ies oldschool classic; wolfgang guellich in a german gameshow: https://youtu.be/rugoETlUAVI?t=22m47s https://youtu.be/rugoETlUAVI?t=22m47s
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y agoI won't call him gangly. He isn't even skinny in the sense most people assume (no muscle, stick figure). He seems to have a lot of lean muscle (http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/06/05/ap_17155772401614_custom-af740fc64b5b1082e8ee60ca2b865fe655c3ee4f-s1500-c85.jpg http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/06/05/ap_17155772401614...)
- DoubleCribble 9y agoNo? He looks gangly to me. gangly, adj., \ˈgaŋ-glē\ : long and thin [1] [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gangly https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gangly
- CamperBob2 9y agoWatch the '60 Minutes' interview with him that somebody else linked to in the thread. His fingers are the size of household water pipes. It would be rude to call him a mutant, but that's pretty much what he is, for better or worse.
- salesguy222 9y agoHe is in fact extremely lean, and his fingers have massive growths of connective tissue from all the years of thrashing up rocks dangling by his fingertips ^.^
- jojoo 9y agothere are actually a lot of people who can climb harder (on a rope) than alex honnold; he has done one 8c+; atm 350 people have done 9a or harder and a lot of people have done multiple 8c+ routes: http://escalade9.wifeo.com/par-nationalite.php http://escalade9.wifeo.com/par-nationalite.php i think what's so special about him are his mental abilities, not his physical.
- Rapzid 9y agoIn 2012 Alex solo'd Freerider, Watkins, and Half Dome in ~19 hours. He completed the Fitz Traverse with Tommy, who referred to him as the greatest climber of our generation(perhaps a bit of hyperbole, but still). He is the current speed record holder with Hans Florine for The Nose. Alex is the top ultramarathoner of rock climbing. Not only is his endurance of effort incredibly high, he is able to continually execute moves at an extremely high level with an almost non-existent error rate. He has admitted to feeling fear, and has mentioned that he free solo's stuff he feels very comfortable with. I'm positive his AMAZING physical abilities, particularly in the area of climbing endurance, are a contributing factor to his success in this area. It may be true that his grade is not as high as 350 other peoples, however I would say that dismissing his "physical abilities" as not so special is perhaps not so accurate.
- breatheoften 9y agoI think it's also worth pointing out how far out on the bell curve those 350 people with comparable or greater athletic climbing skills are as well. The modern day top tier or two of climbers are athletes with Olympian levels of talent/training.
- Babooster 9y agoAll those technically harder routes are like 50 metres high. Sure there are 350 people that could theoretically manage this climb technical skill-wise, but I'm also 100% certain none of those 350 would be able to accomplish this incredible feat endurance-wise or mentally for four hours and 1000+ meters and absolutely 0 mistakes, while I'm also certain that if Honnold puts his mind to it he will be able to climb those technically harder routes.
- georgemcbay 9y agoAnd: Luck (because shit happens). I don't mean for this to in any way diminish his amazing accomplishments, but no matter how well he trains and how disciplined he is, he is always one unexpected external event (failing hold, rock falling from above, just enough loose dirt) from complete failure.
- piptastic 9y agoI guess, but I am one external event away from dying on my drive to work too.
- Florin_Andrei 9y agoSure. Just a lot less probable.
- arcticfox 9y agoAlex only does dangerous free solos on rare occasions. He's certainly vastly more likely to die on one than the average person on the average day, but the fact that he only does it rarely is how he's still alive at all. Nobody really knows exactly what type of risk he's taking, but my rough guess is that he's probably on the order of ~10x an average mortality rate (which is 1.5% / yr among males his age). Whether that's insane or not is up to an individual. For me, it's a rare combination of crazy and rational, which I find fascinating.
- ghshephard 9y agoYour average mortality rate is off by 10x. Mortality rate for a 31 year old in the United States is 104/100,000 or 0.104%/year. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/mortfinal2007_worktable23r.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/mortfinal2007_worktable23r...
- arcticfox 9y agoAh, so that would make my estimate ~100x. Thanks
- vlasev 9y agoApparently, meditation can reduce the size of your amygdala [1], and this reduces your fear response, so yea. I'm not saying you can become like him, but you can make some headway in that direction. [1]: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/what-does-mindfulness-meditation-do-to-your-brain/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/what-does-mi...
- pcmonk 9y agoSounds like a bad idea to me. People like Alex have a pretty short life expectancy.
- komali2 9y agoBut what a life they lead. Considering you and I have a 100% chance of death anyway, I see the attraction.
- pcmonk 9y agoOh, I agree. I guess I'm saying that if you want to live that life, that's great, go shrink your amygdala. However, if you haven't chosen that, then a smaller amygdala may not help you live a better life.
- weaksauce 9y agoreducing the amygdala would be a win in stress and anxiety management though which would touch all aspects of life.
- vlasev 9y agoAnd that's the point. A lot of us walk around with certain fears that would be best to be put behind us. This kind of thing helps, indeed.
- vlasev 9y agoThis stuff is not so that you'd go out there and live a life like Alex. It's more of a, face some of your own irrational fears, sort of thing.
- semi-extrinsic 9y agoSomeone did the same with top downhill skier Aksel Lund Svindal last year, with the same conclusion. They also attached a pinhole camera inside his goggles to study eye movements, and found that he never blinks for the full 2 1/2 minutes of a race.
- rl3 9y agoI forget to blink at a healthy rate when playing unusually intense matches in certain RTS games. Usually my eyes dry out and I end up with smeared vision and halos around light sources until the eyes regain their moisture.
- eagletusk 9y agoI believe you are referring to this Nautilus article http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-worlds-greatest-solo-climber http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-wor...
- nerfhammer 9y agoDamasio reviews evidence that people that lose the ability to feel certain emotions make worse decisions. It seemingly simply doesn't occur to them to not do dangerous things and there are cases where it leads to systematically bad decisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis