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

hello i'm alex arnold and this is climbing support with wired [Music] question from david sandal sandel perhaps what's your favorite type of climbing hold pinch crimp slope slab heel hook tow hook jam or drop knee drop some of those aren't even climbing holds but who cares he just named all kinds of fancy climbing words and i will show you how to do all these fancy techniques on a climbing gym wall check it out pinches are as you would expect just pinching with your hand crimps it means like an edge that you then bring your thumb over your fingers and pull really hard slopes or just anything you know where your hand is sort of open a heel hook isn't really a hold either but it's just something you can put your heel on toe hooking is something that you hook your toe on pretty straight forward jamming is just any time you put your hands or your feet or even your elbow or whatever else into a crevice and jam it into place uh knee dropping brits call it an egyptian you know because you turn all hieroglyphic style you know i like pinches i like big limestone i like tufas that's like a type of limestone pinch but i like gram salt like so you know i kind of like it all it really depends on how clean the rock is and how aesthetic the line is and how how flowy the climbing is question from glenn holland why are yellow holes always the little crimpy suckers or the slimy slopers that is a fair question i don't know why the yellow holes always suck it's like always the little little fierce little guys i don't know why but somebody decided the yellow would be hard and it is here's a question from queen cooking have you climbed cracks i found gloves made for crack climbing interested in different opinions some considered to be cheating you've got to have pain you don't have to endure pain if you don't want to gloves protect against rock abrasion i think what she's getting at is that a lot of people think that it's cheating to use crack gloves but i think i naturally have kind of thick skin and so it's not as big an issue for me i do actually think for beginners it's probably better to use crack gloves or tape or something to protect their hands and learn good technique to begin with i'm going to show you how to crack climb in the gym which basically just means very carefully good technique in crack climbing is putting your hand into the crack locking it into place and then not having it slide or move nothing like passing blood stains next to the crack you know that you're doing it right people tear holes in their skin when their hand slides out of the crack or if it gives but if you can place it in and exert enough pressure in the one spot it won't cut your skin unless you slide out of the jam next question from jay do all rock climbers live in vans hashtag free solo no so not all rock climbers live in vans and i lived in a tent with a bicycle for a while before and i didn't have a car for a while but i think that living in a van is definitely a nice way to live as a rock climber because it allows you a lot of the comfort of a home but with the flexibility of traveling non-stop to get to good climbing areas and follow good weather but no i mean a lot of climbers live out of the back of trucks some live out a friend of mine who's a professional climber lived out of a honda civic for many years which is pretty scrappy but uh but he did just fine next question from mike ball anyone have advice on how to keep my forearms from filling with blood and losing my grip during hashtag bouldering or hashtag rock climbing what he's asking is how do you keep from getting pumped when you climb the only real way to do that is just to to build up more fitness and if you are in the middle of a climb and you find that your arms are really really pumped then you kind of just have to find a hole that's big enough for you to recover on so i'll show you now in a climbing gym how i would recover which is basically just finding a big hole and hanging from it one-handed sort of relax the other hand just let your muscles relax some people find like shaking it helps other people find that just letting it dangle helps or just taking deep breaths if you've never practiced resting then you won't be able to recover even on a really big hole question hey alex you climbed el capita he forgot the end i want to know how you just remain focused rather than being afraid of the height i mean he really wants to know how i climbed el capitan he should just watch the film free solo because it's a pretty pretty good coverage of the two years of practice and preparation and training that i put into actually climbing it i don't know there's a lot to unpack in that question but i mean i think in general it's easy to remain focused when your life is on the line you know question from nicole van den brook once you got to the top question mark how did you get down question mark another easier path for abseiling and how did the whole crew get there so fast and no water drinks on the whole climb of free solo basically she wants to know about the logistics of freestyling cap to get down from the top el cap you can walk down the side and then you do a little bit of repelling at the end of it so the whole crew hiked up that way yeah it's funny how did the crew get there so fast they would probably argue that it took him a long time i mean it takes a couple hours to walk up there and it's very hard work and they have heavy backpacks on it's you know feels like a lot of toil and there were water drinks on the climb i stashed water and food in two places on the route both big natural ledges one a thousand feet off the ground and the other one about 2000 feet off the ground so kind of broke the route into thirds so i was able to relax in a couple places it's just not shown in the film because you know it's a 90 minute documentary that covers two years of my life so it's hard to show everything question from dominic alex if you can remember i'd love to know the mystery meal you cooked in free solo i know consider eggs spicy canned chili spinach and some crunchy vegetable i can't be the only one who wants to try it best documentary mystery meal i think the meal that he's referring to was was sort of an egg scramble i think i did sweet potatoes and maybe an onion sort of grilled them up and then added eggs and then probably well apparently canned chili and maybe spinach on top as well but basically it's just me mixing all the vegetables in my van together and adding some eggs and making it delicious question from dave barker how do rock climbers get their ropes back when coming down must cost them a fortune i don't totally even know where to start with that so um so normally you climb up to an anchor it's a fixed anchor on the wall there are carabiners or chains or something attached to the wall permanently and then you just lower back down from those and when you get to the ground you just untie your knot you pull the rope back down everything comes down it's no problem your ropes don't really cost a fortune typically you know your rope will last for years and you use it over and over from beachchicken.etsy am going into a rock climbing today it should be very interesting what does one wear rock climbing need advice i think you can wear anything i mean wear exercise clothes wear yoga clothes where pajamas you know whatever's comfortable if you wear tight jeans you might not be able to put your feet where you need to i'm joining a rock climbing gym any advice on equipment to get just basics i think you basically need shoes harness and chalk bag and a belay device and then eventually maybe a rope or depending on the gym even just shoes in a chalk bag would be enough or if you're feeling really cheap just shoes and then borrow other people's chalk climbing shoes affect your performance as a climber more than any other piece of equipment here's a question from your girl katie how does one get over the fear of falling when bouldering i fell once and almost busted my leg so now i'm afraid to boulder without being worried about falling tips i think that that to feel comfortable falling you have to trust that you're not going to get hurt when you fall and i think that that trust needs to be built up over time now i'm going to show how i fall in a bouldering gym which honestly i don't know if it's the best way but i have been falling this way for 20 years and you know i generally don't get hurt so we'll see you know there are a few basics in how to fall well while bowling landing on your feet ideally and then sort of rolling backward dispersing the force not putting your hands behind you not landing too crooked or anything but i think that if you have some kind of an accident you know it takes a while to build confidence back up after that so i think that an obvious way would be to sort of start small take very small falls you know fall with a lot of control and sort of build back up but know that the gym is made for you to be safe so you should be okay that said i have broke my arm in the gym how do rock climbers get the ropes tied to the top so they can use the ropes to climb things i ponder i'm curious what other things they ponder so most rock climbers don't get the rope tied to the top most climbers climb from the bottom and they clip the rope into protection as they go so sometimes they carry equipment with them and place it in the cracks sometimes the equipment's already in situ and they just have to clip it but one way or another people normally start from the bottom and then climb upward and clip in as they go and so it's kind of up to them to make sure that they stay safe alex honold is a god and psychopath all in one he's on some transcendental level type chisel i'll just edit that how does he do that what happens if he sneezes on the cliff i don't even know where to go with that so if i sneeze on the cliff i fall to my death you know so i just make sure that my sinuses are totally clear before i climb every time no that's i don't know i mean if you sneeze you sneeze i don't know it's like when you're driving on the highway if you sneeze are you instantly going to die it's like probably not you just stay straight and sneeze i don't think i'm on any transcendental level stuff we'll just i don't think he quite gets it here's a question from a dude whose name i can't read but he asks how many pull-ups can an elite rock climber bang out i think that's a very wide range i think that most climbers can probably do you know at least 20 pull-ups maybe but i know a few professional climbers who you know can't do that many pull-ups i can only do a handful but they have freakishly strong fingers and that's kind of enough to hang onto the rock and then they also have really good technique i'll do a few pull-ups on a bowling wall just to show that i can do them so i'm going to bet that i can do at least 10. really the number of pull-ups you can do doesn't necessarily correlate to how well you can climb but i'm definitely not maxing out because i'd rather save my energy for actual climbing question from dan what's a good beginner guide to hangboard training do you still use them hashtag rock climbing i think as a beginner you probably shouldn't worry about hang boarding that much if you just started climbing having really strong arms and strong fingers isn't really the most important thing you want to focus on your footwork you want to work on technique you want to learn how to move your body well and i think that hang boarding becomes more of a useful training tool as you get more advanced in climbing but i think if you're a beginner and you really want to train on hangboard then you should focus on bodyweight hangs and start very gently question from the atheist officiant alexander any chance you will be in tokyo for the 2020 games wife and i are having a great conversation about the different types of climbing how gym is different than rock we want to hear your thoughts on olympic climbing so there is a chance that i'll be in tokyo for the 20 20 games not competing however maybe doing some commentating or talking about it because i really want to watch but it is true that the gym climbing and olympic style climbing is fundamentally different than rock climbing particularly on big walls like in yosemite so the people who are currently qualifying for the olympics and will be competing in the olympics are for the most part teenagers and in the way that olympic level gymnasts are mostly from the age of say 15 to maybe 21 or something so by that standard i'm way over the hill and i'm yeah i'm way past my prime timing-wise the people who are going to be winning the olympics are focused on training in the gym but to climb something like el capitan you spend all your time outside adventuring and hiking it's just totally different arenas here's one of elon musk have you reached out to alex honold about a climbing trip to mars and so just in case elon's listening to this i would love to go you just say the word this is climate support with wired i hope you learned something and thanks for watching

Channel: WIRED

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

Id: kDUeh8nyLT0

Length: 10min 35sec (635 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 26 2019