Alex Honnold Answers MORE Rock Climbing Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

i'm alex arnold and today i'll be answering your questions on twitter this is part two of climbing support [Music] first up from jordan harlow how do the really hardcore rock climbers that go on multi-day climbs go to the bathroom do they just go and hope no one down below gets hit so that is how people did multi-day climbs in the 60s and 70s way back in the day people would just go to the bathroom into like a brown paper bag and just throw it off the wall that is incredibly frowned upon now that is definitely not the way nowadays you pack everything out so when i go multi-day wall climbing i typically use my used water jugs basically you poop into a bag you bundle up the bag you can like duct tape it up so it's like a little sealed bundle and then you can leave it in like your used water jugs and then seal that up with tape and then you basically wind up with sort of jugs of waste dangling below your actual haul bags as you climb the wall and then when you get to the top you just like hike your waist out and throw it away in a dumpster next question is from kate warburton who asks doesn't a bunch of climbers climbing a mountain mess it up that's a fair question though it could also be applied to doane a bunch of hikers going outside and mess it up or don't a bunch of fisher people you know overtax the stream i would say that in terms of outdoor recreation climbing probably has a lower impact than many sports and there just aren't that many climbers though as climbers we aspire to leave no trace and to leave things how we find them so you know not to make a mess not to disturb anything climbers definitely aspire to to be good stewards to the environment aloha hawaii can you find what's wrong with their repelling technique seen in a physics textbook well first off they spelled repelling wrong so that's what's wrong with the question second off oh my god i can see what's wrong with that technique yeah the first problem is that there's a guy holding the other guy who's repelling and this is all very dangerous and they're both about to die but i do think that the point of this illustration is to show the forces and i think their forces are technically correct but everything else about the technique is a death trap next question comes from zack rudin he says i need help with my footwork it's friggin lousy who's got insights here and this is actually something i could talk a lot about because i think footwork is the most important thing in climbing your hands your arms should be just maintaining your balance like keeping you attached to the wall but your legs are would actually push you up as you climb the biggest beginner mistake with footwork is that they place their whole foot onto a hole the way you would if you're just like walking in street shoes they just kind of put the meat of their foot onto a hold but really you want to place the tip of your toe on that hole because that allows you to be a lot more precise in how you maneuver your foot afterwards because if you just put your whole foot flat against it you can't swivel and like turn your hip either way afterward you're just kind of locked into the position that you put it whereas if you place the tip of your toe then as you move higher you can swivel your foot around as you need to maintain your balance and next question from jeff ballard okay about to tackle each of these a rose move bat hang knee bar and bicycle who's got tips for jeffrey jeffrey just listed every sort of trick move in climbing like every sort of bizarre rarely used but very showy and sort of fun maneuver basically each of these moves is something you only use when nothing else works because typically when you're climbing you can just hold on to holds and sort of climb normally the way you imagine climbing where you like raise your feet and you stand up and you grab the next hole it's very rare that you have to use something like a bicycle which is what it's called when you push one foot one way and then toe hook with the other foot so you're basically applying counter pressure with one foot pushing and the other foot pulling to like squeeze the same hold the only time you really do that is when you're climbing in really steep caves and and roofs and things and there aren't any other footholds to use and you have to like squeeze the same foot together a rose move is what it's called when you take a hold and then you swing through underneath to the next hold and it's actually so named from a root in france called the rose le vampire that a man chipped he basically artificially created some pockets that like force that kind of movement and it like looks like a circus trick it's pretty cool a bat hang is when you hang upside down by your toes if you imagine like a bat hanging out of a crack a bat hang is a legitimate way to rest sometimes because if you find the right little thing to hook your feet on you can let go with your hands and rest your hands but it's rare that you want to dangle upside down by your toes intentionally knee bars are probably a more common way to rest when you're climbing a knee bar is kind of like a bat hang in that you wedge your knee against a hold but they're kind of like bat hangs it's just a way to take weight off of your hands next question comes from jamila williams says serious question what does a professional rock climber do like they work for a company or they just compete in competitions that is a fair question because professional climbers don't necessarily do that much no there are many different paths to being a professional climber some people do just compete in competitions and earn money from the winnings and then sort of support themselves that way most professional climbers make a living through sponsors so they have a contract with say equipment manufacturers or apparel manufacturers and then they get paid for a certain number of appearances a year so they show up at climbing festivals or events and they maybe give talks or show films teach clinics things like that they write books they write guidebooks and then a lot of professional climbers are also just guides so they take people common next question is from stanky hazel someone please show me a proper sloper technique i can't figure it out the sloper is like a very sloping hole that's something that you can't just like hold with your hands it's like brute hand strength isn't necessarily enough you need to engage your whole body to stay tight to the wall and then mostly you position your body in different ways to make the hole feel better for really bad slopers keep your your center of mass below it like stay underneath the hold more but i think a lot of being able to hold onto slopers has more to do with strength in your core and your shoulders and sort of like your whole body if you're reaching to some hold and it feels terrible you're like okay that's not a great hold but then if you shift your whole body to one side all of a sudden the hold feels a lot better because you can compress it between some other hole that you know you can engage in a different way it's not always that the the hold is the problem i mean oftentimes your body position is the problem next question comes from laura owen ansi help needed from the climbing community how should i improve jumping and dinos it's partly a question of confidence and partly i'm just not that bouncy i feel like she answered her own question if she is struggling with dynamic movement because she's not confident and not very bouncy those are two obvious ways to improve her her dynamic movement dinos or dynamic movements big jumps come from confidence and physical dynamicism like the bounciness that you have so some of it is the springiness and like the amount of power that you can generate like how much can you actually jump some of it is the confidence to believe that you can jump to a hole and actually catch it and not swing off and hurt yourself you know i think that confidence gets developed through practice you know if you do a bunch of dinos you're going to have some confidence that you can't actually do them and then the bounciness is just a matter of plyometrics and stuff i can can you can you jump can you can you catch things you know how powerful are you michael torres 45 so rock climbing is harder on my shoulders than i thought it would be any suggestions to minimize injuries that's a good question climbing is relatively hard on your shoulders or it can be because it's an overhead sport so you're like loading your shoulders in a fairly vulnerable position all the time you can minimize injuries by focusing on technique it's you know sort of building up to it over time you know strengthening your shoulder joints as you go try not to like shock load your shoulder focusing on form like how you engage your shoulders like keeping your shoulders down and low not hunching too much so you don't don't scrunch the joint and also just maintaining mobility flexibility like stretching doing opposition stuff making sure you're all balanced there's a lot to maintaining healthy shoulders question from explore it says climbers what's a good but cheap entry-level climbing shoe good for all types of climbing that's actually not the best question for me because i haven't used an entry level shoe since i was about 11 i think well depending on how serious you are about climbing i think you outgrow entry level shoes relatively quickly most entry level shoes are just cheaper but they're also typically flatter which makes it more comfortable on your foot like elite high performance shoes are often more curved and hook-shaped more like a talon so that you can pull with your toe basically climbing shoes are all built for specific tasks like they do different things you know it's like a different arrow in the quiver it's like you want the right arrow for the right task yeah so the shoe i have here is um this is like a high performance ratio you see it's ultra soft so you can bend down it's also sort of naturally hook-shaped it's downturned it's asymmetrical where the shoe curves around to put all the weight on the big toe this is my go-to gym shoe this is what i use for climbing indoors and for for climbing like training on boards basically this is like a very high performance sock that puts all of your weight onto the tip of your big toe another question from stanky hazel i just turned 30 and i'm climbing better than ever but when should i expect to feel my body slow down i want to age gracefully on the wall like a mountain goat not like some old worn out chicken tumbling down like a fool there's a lot to unpack in there it concerns me that they're worried about aging at 30 because i'm 36 now so i'm sort of like wow i feel like i'm climbing better than ever and i'm doing well so hopefully they can make it at least six more years before they begin their steady decline i would say that climbing has more longevity than most sports just because it's relatively low impact on your body so you can be climbing an elite level into your 40s 50s 60s for example actually in town here i've been climbing with a professor who has a full-time job who's climbing 514 so like climbing at an elite level as a 61 year old ethan whitehill is bouldering just rock climbing where they charge you more and give you less safety equipment that's not far off because if you go to a bouldering gym in a lot of cities they do charge you a lot and they give you nothing but bouldering gyms are very fun i think he's being facetious but you know it's kind of clever next question comes from a do now imagine later please help should i eat this 20-piece mcnuggets before climbing stones and josh retreat what are climber's diets like you should not eat a 20-piece chick mcnugget before going climbing in general you shouldn't eat it at all because it's gross but i would say most climbers are relatively mindful of their diet next question comes from msr gear for mountain climbers what's your favorite season for climbing and why almost everybody likes the autumn you know fall people call it a sentember or a rocktober things like that basically uh when conditions start to get a little bit cooler but it's also dry nowadays september is kind of too hot in the western u.s so it's kind of drifting into november and and december even but yeah basically the the fall is is ideal for climbing conditions pali migo i wonder who first tested those tents the mountain climbers sleep in hacked into the side of a mountain a wager they were insane most of the big equipment manufacturers were founded by climbers who were manufacturing the gear for their own use companies like the north face and patagonia and mountain hardwear they were all established by climbers who were making the gear that they needed to go on climbing trips i would say that that they tested their own gear you know nowadays most of that gear is tested by athletes so for me as a north face athlete i get a lot of prototype north face gear and then use it in all kinds of crazy places like i went on climbing exhibition antarctica where we used a whole new kit of gear and we're like well we survived antarctica i guess it works okay it's probably all right for brooklyn if you can make it through antarctica next question is from townswitcher what does it take to ascend the hardest climb in the world takes very strong fingers from jake ireland how does a climber approach climbing different types of rock kind of a broad question but i think the simple way is you just practice on a lot of different types of rocks so you sport climb on limestone you climb big walls on granite and sandstone is sort of like a fun in between and then of course you can find all kinds of other sorts of rock around the world but those are the the main kinds that you spend most of your time climbing on the next question comes from max lotkin a sea of tsars and he asks where do you see the future of rock climbing in 2040. it's kind of hard to imagine because if i think of climbing in the year 2000 versus where it is right now it's hard to imagine what another 20 years we'll do i think one of the things that i'm interested in in the sort of future of climbing is in the next 20 years will equipment manufacturers sort of upped the level a little bit so far i don't think there have been any big incentives to make cutting edge futuristic you know ultra light gear just because there's not that big a market for it but with climbing in the olympics now and people competing at a much higher level i wonder if there will be more money in the sport like there will be greater incentives to create sort of futuristic gear and i think that'd be pretty cool you know harnesses that are basically like mesh bags you know things that are ultra ultra light those are all the questions hope you guys learned something until next time

Channel: WIRED

Views: 658,008

Keywords: alex honnold, alex honnold advice, alex honnold climbing, alex honnold free solo, alex honnold how to rock climb, alex honnold rock climber, alex honnold rock climbing, alex honnold tech support, alex honnold tech support climbing, alex honnold wired, alex honnold wired tech support, climbing support, innovation, ott tech support, rock climbing tech support, science & technology, tech support, wired, wired tech support

Id: JdMQdxFGKB4

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2022