Alex Honnold

It's like certainly, I mean, I think it's better than most other fitness modalities.

You know, it's like, oh, why do CrossFit when you go rock climbing?

It's way cooler.

There are probably certain aspects you wouldn't want to do alone for safety reasons, but... I think when people ask, like, what do you worry about with climbing culture and all that kind of stuff, like with the Olympics and the...

mainstream appeal kind of like you know if somebody wants to be a climber and only go to the climbing gym in a in a major city for their entire life like that's great like if they just want to climb plastic the rest of life that's still better than going to crossfit or doing whatever else i'm like that's cool like you don't have to go climb el cap to be a climber i'm kind of like people can do whatever they want and i think i think that's great for the sport and and you are seeing standards rise

There's a little bit, not that much, but climbers often, like competition climbing, like bouldering, which is in the Olympics, has definitely taken a slight turn towards parkour-ish sorts of moves, like big run and jumps and like crazy swings and things like that.

And so some old school climbers complain that it's like gotten a little too jumpy, that type of bouldering.

But I'm kind of into it.

I mean, it's, I don't know, this is all very like inside baseball.

Like how do you separate, like basically the highest level competitors are all very, very strong.

So then how do you separate them?

these different competitors who are all climbing at an elite level.

And one of the ways is complicated movement like that, like running jumps and coordination and things like that.

So I don't know.

I mean, I think it's cool.

Um, I've actually met like a couple of professional parkour athletes who also climb, uh, and they are really good at very particular sorts of things where you're like, it's, I mean, it's amazing to see.

amazing ambassador for the sport as it's gone through its various like you know peaks and valleys now in the olympics so i think climbing and sports like skateboarding and surfing have a lot in common in this way subculture but then also gets popular yeah with the kind of niche and then they become kind of mainstream but then even once they're mainstream they're still kind of cool you know like skateboarding it's like definitely not like full punk rock anymore but you're like it's pretty cool you know like skateboarding still

and it's not that common still you know and that's the thing with climbing is i'm kind of like yeah climbing is growing it's becoming more mainstream it's just never going to be you know soccer or something you know what i mean like it's always going to be slightly niche slightly countercultural because it's just you know it's just a smaller thing like it's just not playing basketball or something yeah i'm intrigued by um the training aspects and some of the fitness aspects i agree that it

Climbing is great for that.

Yeah, isn't that – I've always thought that's just a correlation.