How extreme athletes like Alex Honnold keep their cool
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What mental strategies do extreme athletes use to perform under pressure?
Hey, it's Flora, and you're listening to Science Friday. Elite athletes, of course, spend a lot of time training their bodies for super strength, endurance, coordination, precision. But what about their brains? Can psychology help athletes achieve peak performance? That's what we're diving into today, the mental side of sports. We have psychologist Dr. Jessica Bartley, who works with the world's top athletes as the senior director of psychological services for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. Welcome, Jessica.
Nice to be here. Thank you.
How does Alex Honnold balance mental and physical aspects of climbing?
And we have an athlete whose life depends on getting his mind right before he does his thing. You might have caught him scaling a skyscraper live on TV earlier this year.
American Alex Honnold reached for the top this weekend, climbing a 101-story skyscraper in Taipei without ropes or protective gear.
Alex Honnold, professional climber and host of the Planet Visionaries podcast. Alex, welcome to Science Friday.
Thanks for having me.
Okay. It's easy to fixate on the physical side of climbing, I think because it looks so miraculous to, you know, schlubs like me, but how much of your sport is mental?
I don't know. I sometimes say it's kind of 50-50.
What role does fear play in climbing and how do athletes manage it?
I mean, especially if you include the mental side, if that includes technique and sort of execution, like how you climb. But certainly there's a big component to managing fear and there's a lot that goes into it. So, I mean, I think climbing more than most sports has a big psychological component.
Yes. I mean, Jessica, do you work with athletes like Alex?
Yeah, I mean, at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. So that's going to be U.S. soccer, U.S. badminton, like you name the sport, it kind of falls under our portfolio.
How do Olympic athletes handle performance anxiety?
Climbing is now an Olympic sport, so technically you should be working with climbers now.
Exactly, we do, we do. They're based out of Salt Lake. There's some here in Colorado with us. But yeah, we've got a lot of different sports, and we have become really like a standard in most of the athletes' support systems.
I mean, Alex, do you have a mental trainer?
No. I mean, to be fair, climbing has only very recently become an Olympic sport. And it's always historically been quite a fringe activity. And so there wasn't a lot of even athletic training.
What psychological techniques help athletes improve their performance?
I mean, that's beginning to change. And there's definitely a lot more support for climbing now than there was when I started. But hardly anybody has any kind of mental coaching, let alone physical. You know, it's all up and coming.
Well, what do you do for yourself then? I mean, how do you train yourself to do this sport?
Well, personally, it's just been practice over time. I mean, I've been climbing basically five days a week for 30 years. So you just, you know, it's a lot of practice. But I've also read a lot of books about, you know, peak performance.
How does visualization impact an athlete's performance?
And, you know, basically I read a ton of self-help type, like anything around performance and, you know, living your best life, all those kinds of things. And then you try to pick up, you know, one useful lesson per book you read, basically.
Give me one specific example of a useful lesson, a technique that you use to overcome fear or stay locked in or whatever it is.
I mean, as a climber, you kind of develop all the things that you're used to using. I mean, you get scared and then you take a deep breath. You compose yourself. You kind of pull it back together. I mean, with climbing specifically, there's a high degree of rationalism that goes into it, just trying to evaluate, am I actually in danger? Is it appropriate to be scared right now? Should I be scared or not?
What are the implications of medication for athletes during competition?
things like that. I mean, I don't know if that applies to all sports, but the thing with climbing is that you often are actually in danger. And so there are times when, when you should back down, you should bail, you know, the weather is turning and like you are actually in a bad situation. And so you should act on your fear. And then there are other times where your fear is unfounded and you should ignore it and you should just, you know, achieve or whatever.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What mental strategies do extreme athletes use to perform under pressure?
0:03–0:39
2
How does Alex Honnold balance mental and physical aspects of climbing?
0:39–1:23
3
What role does fear play in climbing and how do athletes manage it?
1:23–1:56
4
How do Olympic athletes handle performance anxiety?
1:56–2:29
5
What psychological techniques help athletes improve their performance?
2:29–3:00
6
How does visualization impact an athlete's performance?
3:00–3:38
7
What are the implications of medication for athletes during competition?
3:38–4:21
8
How can lessons from elite athletes apply to everyday challenges?
4:21–23:51
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from Science Friday
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