How to Set & Achieve Massive Goals | Alex Honnold

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Alex Honold. Alex Honold is a professional rock. climber.

He's best known for successfully free soloing, meaning climbing with no ropes or latching on of any kind, El Capitan, also called El Cap, which is a nearly 3,000 foot climb in Yosemite National Park. It was also, of course, the topic and focus of the incredible movie Free Solo, which if you haven't seen, you absolutely should watch. I've wanted to talk to Alex for a long time now. I'm not a rock climber, I've tried it a few times, but I've been extremely curious to understand Alex's mental frame around learning and training and his broader philosophy on life. My interest stems from the fact that Alex's free solo of LCAP and his other climbs make him one of the most accomplished and innovative athletes in all of history.

And of course, the free solo of LCAP is extremely high risk and high consequence. Today we discuss how to envision and make progress towards your goals and how to merge the demands of daily work and family life with incremental training for spectacularly big or long challenges of any kind. Alex makes clear that it's essential and possible to build your capacity to exert effort and how to do that in a regimented way so as to bring seemingly impossible goals within your reach. We also discuss how coming to terms with one's own mortality is actually one of the best motivators for building a great life, and why most people hide from that reality and as a result end up living much smaller lives than they otherwise would. We also discussed training, literally what to do to build strength and endurance, not just for sake of rock climbing, but just generally, and that takes us into discussions about weight training, bodyweight training, running, hiking, and a bunch of other things that you can apply.

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