Alex Honnold

You find the thing you love to do, go hard.

Basically, learn some skills, get good at something.

What do you like to do?

I mean, that's kind of the thing for me, especially with climbing, is, like, if someone had told me, like, you're going to train climbing for the rest of your life, I'd be like, oh, that sounds like kind of a grind.

Because, I mean, it is hard work.

You're, like, hiking uphill with a heavy backpack, and it's cold, and it's windy.

It's, like, it's basically physically uncomfortable.

I mean, being a professional rock climber means that you're physically uncomfortable.

All the time, like often, you know, like it's, you know, it's hard.

But if you're doing it because you freaking love doing it, it doesn't feel very hard.

And so, I mean, I think the key for a kid is find the thing that doesn't feel like hard work.

I mean, yeah, I had like a healthy intimidation.

I mean, like my first season in Yosemite, the first time seeing El Cap as a climber, I was 19, and it looks impossible.

It looks completely insane.

I was like, that's so big.

But then, you know, within a couple seasons, you know, I climbed some bigger walls, learned how to climb, and then...

A friend and I had the sort of season goal, like we were going to climb Yosemite all season with the aspiration at the end to climb El Cap in a day.

So basically there was this long progression on El Cap specifically where it's like you go from just trying to get up it to trying to get up it faster to trying to get up it with just your hands and feet, still using protection.

But basically there's like all these steps you can take.

And so over a bunch of seasons, you know, I climbed El Cap like 60 times, different routes, all these different things.