Alex Honnold: My extreme childhood

so how early did you start climbing um I mean I started climbing in the gym when the first gym opened in Sacramento I think I was 10 or 11 maybe 11 what did you enjoy but I just I've always I mean so even before the gym opened I was like climbing on trees and buildings and like climbing on the roof and like playing on things I loved like swinging on the on monkey bars all that kind of stuff I mean I was just like typical kid playing around it was just kind of above and beyond what most I mean it was just like in a more extreme version of typical kid plugged around because it's the same like I was playing all the same stuff but I was just probably taking it a few steps further yeah you know like oh yeah I remember like hiding on the roof of the school like you know things like that just random the end then once the gym open I love the movement I just love like yeah I love the movement of climbing that's always been like the core of it what's your earliest climbing memory I remember like my home gym like the original gym the open in Sacramento has a bunch of routes I carved into the the walls are like sort of plaster and they have like carved roots in the walls it's like normally you know they changed the roots around because it's holds that you screw on but the ones that are carving the wall are like permanent plaster hmm and so a lot of those roots like I still could go in and climb a couple of them blindfolded I'm then I'm like 10 years but I just like know every single move on a lot of those roots because I climbed them like many times a day for my entire childhood what and so like in some ways that kind of like muscle memory type thing is like what I remember most of like my early gym experiences I mean I could easily like draw out the sequence for like half the things not old gym it's like yes it's classic family life and upbringing I you know your friend told me the household you grew up in there really wasn't a lot of love your dad was sleeping on the couch you know most nights he said your mom was kind of frosty and distant in his perspective it just didn't seem like your parents really wanted to be parents how did that affect you no I'm frosting cold so I don't know no I mean I don't know I mean and that might be a bit you know he's like given too much on one side a little bit but I don't know I mean the thing is like when you're kid that all seems normal so you just think that that's like the way things it's not until you're adult that you're like oh wow it seemed like my family seems like a little bit different than than than the typical but you know it's all it's all worked out well well I mean what do you think is an adult though look as an adult I think that my parents probably should have gotten divorced and we were like little kids and they would have led like happier more well-adjusted lives I think that they just did a little bit too much of the like stay together for the kids type of thing and they just weren't like personally fulfilled and like personally happy in there it's funny they got they got divorced after I graduated high school it was like the classic you know stay together until the kids leave and then and then be done and like for the year the year after they divorce they were both like so much cooler to be around and so much happier and like nicer people and I was like dude you guys should have done this like 15 years ago it was like this or maybe 10 years ago but it's so much nicer but then my dad unfortunately died the next year and so then like never really got to see like him as the normal like a lot of my older cousins and stuff talk about how cool my dad was when he was young but like I only knew him is like an older guy who's like not that happy you know it's kind of too bad I never got to see him is like you know his own person you went through a period like a year that seemed like it must have been really tough because I think it was the day before you were moving into college your grandpa passes away then I think you find out around that time that your parents are divorcing and then within a year of that your dad dies of the heart attack how difficult was that period for you to go through both my grandparents and my father all died within like the end of high school being in college okay put on yeah I mean I guess it was hard but but it's one of the things were like when you're going through it it just you know that's just that's just life I know especially as a teenager I was like all angst full-on anything anyway so it's like I don't know and the whole and tied up with all the other family like we just weren't like close in the way some families are and so it didn't feel yeah I don't know it's weird well somebody told me that at the time it didn't really seem like you were struggling with anything and you were just normal Alex but then somebody told me that the the 20 year old Alex didn't really realize what he lost when his dad passed away but the 30 year old Alex knows very clearly yeah I think that's actually kind of fair is it I think it was nineteen year old Alex didn't really appreciate like what I lost when my dad died and then yeah as an adult I'm like oh that's kind of a bummer yeah but I mean that's yeah I mean that's being a kid is like not fully appreciating things not quite understanding at all like I mean you just don't have I I didn't have like the proper framework to put it all in for more clips from this interview visit Graham bensinger com

Channel: Graham Bensinger

Views: 135,975

Keywords: alex honnold childhood, alex honnold parents, extreme childhood, Alex Honnold extreme, alex honnold interview, Alex Honnold, Graham Bensinger, introduction to climbing

Id: OKKWNdqIvnA

Length: 5min 4sec (304 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 18 2016