On June 3, 2017, Alex Honnold had the best day of his life. That day, he free soloed El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Free soloing is a form of climbing where the climber uses no ropes or safety gear.
El Capitan is one of the most challenging climbs in the world. It is a 3,000-foot granite monolith that towers over Yosemite Valley.
To put this in perspective, El Capitan is taller than the world’s tallest skyscraper, Burj Khalifa and about three times taller than The Shard in London.
Alex Honnold climbed it in a single 3-hour 56-minute push. Without a rope.
The BAFTA and Academy Award-winning documentary Free Solo depicts what many people consider one of the most remarkable athletic feats of all time.
Watching the film again this week, I reflected on risk, uncertainty, and differences in perception. Ultimately the story of Alex Honnold’s successful free solo ascent is a story of learning and mastery.
Stretching his zone of comfortable risk
The consequence of Honnold’s climb going wrong was ultimate. If you slip or miscalculate on El Capitan at 3k feet up, your death awaits you.
One comment from Fellow climber Tommy Caldwell struck a chord with me.
Imagine an Olympic gold medal-level athletic achievement … and if you don’t get that gold medal, you’re going to die.
Tommy Caldwell
It took years for him to prepare himself physically and psychologically. The film illustrates the meticulous preparation and rehearsal he committed to over seven years.
It’s about having a wide range of preparations, a wide range of experience. You build a broad comfort zone, basically. So that anything unforeseen will still hopefully fall within your comfort zone to some extent. I’ve consistently pushed myself in slightly different directions. If you think of your comfort zone as a bubble, just slowly push it in little directions each way. And then eventually it winds up with a pretty big bubble and then all you can really do is hope that whatever your objective is will still fit within your bubble.
Alex Honnold
This was no quick decision or lucky accomplishment. Honnold had mitigated and reduced the risks as much as possible. It was clear from the footage that risk analysis, management and strategy became an integral part of years of preparation.
Our Perception of His Risk
Watching the film is an emotional and visceral experience. We know Alex Honnold was successful and accomplished this incredible feat. Yet, still watching the final stages of his climb is excruciating.
From our point of view, the way he exposes his life to the risk of death is unfathomable. But that is our perception from a place of limited knowledge and experience.
People can be as scared as they want, but ultimately it doesn’t change the likelihood of me falling off. It doesn’t change the consequences of me falling off. I mean, no matter how scared everybody else is, it doesn’t change whether or not I can’t actually do the thing that I’m setting out to do. At a certain point, only I can know how prepared I am, how I feel for it. Ultimately nobody else has put that kind of time and preparation energy into it.
Alex Honnold
We project ourselves into the screen, into his climbing shoes, and it all seems unreasonable.
Visualising Success and Failure
Part of Honnold’s preparation was the use of visualisation. Back in issue 184 [Learning Zone Vs Performance Zone], we looked at some of the strategies elite athletes use, from sports psychology, to support their growth, development and performance.
Many of the world’s top athletes use visualisation techniques before a big event they’re mentally rehearsing it in their minds. This can increase motivation, build confidence and improve your performance. The more realistic this visualisation and preparation is, the more successful it will be. Athletes will think about the sounds they might hear – like the crowd. What they might smell – like freshly cut grass. And imagine what they are going to see. And how they might feel.
I appreciated an extension of this concept from Honnold’s reflections: negative visualisation to prepare his disposition and mental state for performance. He visualised a negative experience as much as a positive one.
the negative visualisation is important to do ahead of time, just so that in the actual moment, it doesn’t come up for the first time…the positive visualisation is easy because you just think like, oh, I’m going to feel great. I’m holding all these holds. The climbing is going to feel fluid and beautiful and fun. It’s going to be this incredible experience. But I think, you know, it’s important to balance that against the negative visualisation. Or even not the actual visualisation of falling to your death, but imagining what it would feel like to get into a position and suddenly hesitate or worry that your foot’s going to slip. To think through all those anxieties ahead of time. So they’re less likely to occur when it matters.
Alex Honnold
The need for negative consequence rehearsal may be unique to his sport and the El Capitan ascent, but it provokes us to reflect on the balanced preparation he invested in.
Your Talking Points
Apply these insights to our work in educational innovation with these provocations and questions.
- How do we better appreciate the differences in perception of our project?
- What new information and knowledge might mitigate the risks we face?
- Do we share the same understanding of the risks we identified?
- How do we rehearse the negative consequences of our project?
In the comments below let me know what resonates.