Alex Honnold

You know, actually, I think even in the film, there's some quotes from me saying autopilot and things like, you know, I'm aspiring to be on autopilot.

So I'm aspiring to not be thinking too much about it.

And that's, for me at least, why it required so much practice was to be able to just do something almost by rote, you know, through repetition, just to do the thing that you've practiced without...

having to think about it.

Cause I think once you start thinking about it too much, you're just more prone to not just make errors, but just like get to get caught up in your own mind.

And I don't know.

I mean, the aspiration was just to do the thing, like no thinking about it, no hesitation, you know, no emotional, uh, you know, affect around it and to just do it.

Yeah, I've actually never been asked something quite like that.

In some ways...

I mean, the kinesthetic aspect is maybe the whole thing.

Like, I mean, it is kind of like dancing or something where you are just flowing over stone.

I mean, obviously, you're looking around and you're looking at your footholds and you're sort of placing your feet correctly that way.

But really, you're just doing sequences.

You're just flowing like your body is moving.

I mean, I think when you climb well and particularly when you rehearse something and you know the climb really well, it feels like jogging or swimming or sort of other elemental movement patterns where it's just like your body doing what it's meant to do.

And it feels great.

You know, it's like it's really nice.

For me personally, that's maybe my favorite moment in climbing is when you surprise yourself.

Um, and this isn't so much with free soloing because with free soloing, you don't want to be surprised, but, uh, but with, uh, but with a rope on, you know, you have moments all the time where you're sure you're about to fall because you're, you know, up against your physical limits or whatever.

And then you stick a move that you were sure you weren't going to.