← Back to context

Comment by kqr

25 days ago

I suspect a lot of this is habituation due to repeated practise. As long as one climbs well within one's abilities, the actual level of danger is comparatively low. But the fear is still there and needs to be trained away.

13 comments

kqr

Reply
ahussain  25 days ago

They also did an MRI scan on Honnold and found that he doesn't have the usual fear response. It's not clear if this was trained away, or if it's something innate.

https://nautil.us/the-strange-brain-of-the-worlds-greatest-s...

  • magicalhippo  24 days ago

    I recall reading about a certain species of birds where, to impress the females, the males dives to the ground. The closer to the ground before they pull out of the dive the more impressive.

    The scientist found there was a gene encoding how daring a bird would be, mostly clustered in two groups IIRC. But there was a rare variant which made them much more fearless, causing them to go much lower than the others.

    However they only found birds with one copy of that variation. Turned out if a bird inherited the variant from both parents, they never pulled out of the dive and smacked into the ground, killing the bird.

    These crazy free solo climbs and similar reminds me of those birds.

xorvoid  25 days ago

This. Watching Honnold makes your palms go clamy and makes you uncomfortable because you imagine how terified you'd be in that position. But for an athlete like Honnold, the experience is more similar to just a "hard hike". Strenuous, but just work. It's just normalized because he does it so damn much. He really seriously is not gonna fall off that building, just like you're not gonna get seriously injured on a class 3 hike.

(Source: I'm also a climber. Not remotely close to Alex's level. But frequent exposure significantly changes how your brain processes these situations)

padjo  25 days ago

I don't think it required much training for Alex, I think he just has an under active amygdala or something