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Training for Mountaineering: The Psychology of Risk and Fear
17.2k Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Steve House, Alyssa Clark and Alexa Hasman discuss the psychology of mountain sports particularly focusing on risk taking and fear. They dig into mental preparation, overcoming fear, dealing with doubt and the psychology behind risk taking. Steve shares personal anecdotes from his time as a professional climber at the sharp end of the sport, with Alyssa speaking about her experiences in ultra running, and Alexa explaining the science behind the how and why. They offer tools and advice on how to know when to listen and when to push beyond perceived boundaries. Buckle up for this mental journey and learn how to be your mental mountain best.
Visit us at uphillathlete.com or email us at coach@uphillathlete.com for more information on coaching, training groups, training plans and more.
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Transcript
Introduction to Uphill Athlete Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast, where our mission is to elevate and inspire all mountain athletes through education and celebration. My name is Steve House, and I will be your host today, along with Alisa Clark.
00:00:20
Speaker
We are thrilled to bring another one of our coaches to the podcast, Alexa Haspen. Alexa has been coaching ultra running since 2008, holds a master's in exercise science, as well as a master's in sports psychology, along with several U.S. certifications and is an accomplished ultra runner in her own right.
Psychology of Risk and Fear in Sports
00:00:39
Speaker
In this episode, we are briefly shifting gears away from the physiology of mountaineering to focus on the psychology of risk taking and fear.
00:00:50
Speaker
The mental component of mountaineering is as important, if not more important than the physical. As I wrote in training for the new alpinism, I said that it's 80% mental and 20% physical. Well, today, Alexa is here to help you to perform your mental best. Thanks for joining us today, Alexa. Thanks for having me. I think we've been looking forward to this episode for a while. I think it's going to be
00:01:19
Speaker
Great to have you on. Yeah, I'm excited to talk about all things risk taking and fear. So before we dig into our main topics of mental preparation, overcoming fear, dealing with doubt and the psychology of risk taking, I'd love to hear more about your background, Alexa, and then what drew you into focusing on the mind of an athlete.
Mental Preparation Techniques for Athletes
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. So I grew up around psychology and my mom is a therapist, so it was always a discussion in our household and something that always fascinated me. When I went to college, I got a bachelor's in psychology, knowing I wanted to work with athletes, but not knowing how to exactly tie that in quite yet.
00:02:06
Speaker
I've been coaching for a really long time and as I started to see that the psychology aspect was just as important as the physiological aspect, I decided to go back to school and pursue learning a little bit more about that side of things and how I could help my athletes perform on the mental side as well as the physical side.
00:02:29
Speaker
So how do you help your athletes prepare mentally? Like just run us through like, what are some of the tools in your toolbox? I mean, we talk a lot on this podcast about what physical preparation looks like. And we talk about things like setting a baseline, setting zones. Like it all seems very tangible compared to sports psychology. So,
00:02:55
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's why sports psychology can be a little bit intimidating because there isn't this, you can't see, it doesn't show up green on your training peaks, you know what I mean? It's not something that you can see physically, but some of the tools that we use are going to be visualization, breathing techniques,
00:03:18
Speaker
Of course, it's going to be very dependent on what the athlete is dealing with, whether it's fear, overcoming an injury, just preparing for a race is a big one or preparing for a big event, anything like that. The tools are going to be a little bit different, but there's a lot of tools that we can use that are really relevant to each of the issues that they're dealing with. Yeah, that's really interesting.
00:03:44
Speaker
I would like to hear more about how you help your athletes prepare specifically for a race or a big event. What are some of the things that you do and I can perhaps share some of the things that I learned at least anecdotally.
00:03:58
Speaker
Yeah, for race preparation, I really like visualization. So really spending time focusing on visualizing the positive aspects of the race, but also the negative aspects of the race or the event. It's really important to visualize, how am I going to tackle this situation when it's not going well? Just so that we can remain calm when things do go
00:04:25
Speaker
wrong during a race or an event, right? I also like to do visual preparation. So having them hang stuff around their houses on their mirrors, elevation maps with like little cues that tell them stuff like, hey, when I get to this climb, I'm going to tell myself this, or I'm going to reward myself with this. So giving little mental cues that sort of break down the race and give them something to look forward to.
00:04:51
Speaker
Those are two of my really big ones. And then breathing techniques, because there is a level of anxiety and fear going into any event. And so controlling that, I mean, it's important to have that anxiety and that fear because without it, there would be
00:05:08
Speaker
I think the performance would be a little different. I can't imagine going into a race not being anxious, right? That would be odd. But it's about controlling that anxiety and controlling that fear and using it to our advantage rather than letting it sort of take away from our performance.
Embracing Fear in Mountaineering
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, that makes so much sense. I mean, mankind has such a history of this. I mean, in my readings, I remember discovering that the samurai would meditate on their own deaths in all the different ways that they might die from Harry Carey to being slain in battle, to falling off a roof, to dying of old age. And in alpinism, I know that there was, you know,
00:05:54
Speaker
perhaps overly so, but there was often this kind of talk around talking about and thinking about the things that could go wrong that could kill you. And even so far, there's a famous British alpinist who once wrote in one of his articles that before every big climb, you have to just write yourself off.
00:06:19
Speaker
That's almost an extreme like fatalistic viewpoint, right? Like he just has to he had to say no, I'm not coming back from this and that's how that's how he let go of
00:06:31
Speaker
his fear was by letting go of the expectation that he would actually live. That's one way to do it, right? It's hard to be afraid of life after the climb if you don't believe there will be one. That's probably not a healthy mechanism, to say the least. But I think it does illustrate that people have been
00:06:56
Speaker
searching for something like this for a long time and trying to figure out where this balance is.
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And with that, a lot of the studies with fear and mountaineering talk about how with the psychology of it, the mountaineers have to embrace the fear and make it sort of like their friend. And so that's a big aspect of dealing with the fear out there on the mountain is having it become more of like a part of them and creating this transformational process with the fear and using it. That makes a lot of sense.
00:07:34
Speaker
And I think that back to the point of visualizing, I think so often, I got a question a lot of the time of you visualize. And I always say yes, but probably not in the way that you think because most people visualize finish lines or they visualize, I'm going to feel so strong on this climb. I'm going to do this so well. And the trick is, is that you can almost negatively affect yourself if you have only visualized everything going right.
00:08:03
Speaker
as you just touched on. And so you have to visualize, like my coach spends a lot of time where he's like, okay, you're going to spend the next week, like 15 to 20 minutes a day minimum, thinking about things going badly and how you're going to deal with them. And that was a huge game changer for my running because I went from visualizing the glory to visualizing the hard work and visualizing how I was going to work through what went badly.
Risk-Taking as Personal Growth
00:08:31
Speaker
And then I was less surprised when it happened. And also, I think something we often do is we visualize, okay, even if we're working on visualizing negative thoughts, we don't visualize negative things happening until much further in the race. We're like, yeah, of course I feel badly at mile 100 of 200 miles. But what if you feel badly at mile 20? And that happens.
00:08:59
Speaker
Absolutely does. Yeah, and preparing for that so that when you're in that situation and that sort of panic comes over you, if you've had that background of visualizing it, you're able to calm yourself down and deal with that situation a little bit better.
00:09:16
Speaker
then you would be if you went into it and you're like, hey, I'm imagining myself crossing this finish line and I'm winning and I'm doing so strong and all this stuff. Imagine exactly imagine mile 20, like where it's hurting and it doesn't feel good.
00:09:31
Speaker
How am I going to handle that so that when that situation happens, because it will inevitably in mountaineering and in any sort of mountain sport, you're going to hit a low spot. How am I going to deal with that? How am I going to stay calm? And it's never going to look exactly like how you visualize it, but at least we'll give you the tools to say, I'm going to breathe. I'm going to take this one step at a time and I'm going to figure it out and I'm going to adapt to the situation.
00:09:58
Speaker
I feel like this would be a good moment to bring ourselves back to the two main subjects, which are risk taking and fear. And I want to come back to fear, but I think we should
00:10:10
Speaker
revisit and dive into and maybe start with risk-taking because that's the behavior that leads us into the theater, right? So maybe we should do this in sort of chronological order, if you will. Alexa, I would like to hear from you a little bit about what you've learned in the academic studies and work that you've done personally in your development about risk-taking behaviors in athletes.
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So risk taking is a trait that we all inhabit, mountaineering and extreme sports people more than others. Mountaineering obviously requires a level of risk and adventure seeking. And we found that in this population, the participants in the sport usually
00:11:01
Speaker
Consider this experience and the risk-taking as part of a life-affirming experience in a way of personal growth and that's why mountaineering and extreme sports participants do what they do is because Risk-taking is part of what helps them feel fulfilled and achieve personal growth. So that's what we're seeing in the studies is that psychologically
00:11:28
Speaker
mountaineering people experience risk taking as part of fulfilling sort of what they feel like they need to do.
Balancing Ambition and Respect in Extreme Sports
00:11:38
Speaker
It reminds me of the Viktor Frankl quote, suffering ceases to be suffering when it finds meaning.
00:11:46
Speaker
one of my favorite books of all time, Man's Search for Meaning, that perfectly sums it up. And I think anecdotally, I would say something quite similar, like the risk taking inherent in mountaineering, there's often been this conjecture, well, would it still be worthwhile if there wasn't risk involved? I was like, well, if there wasn't risk involved, it wouldn't be the activity that it is that would
00:12:15
Speaker
help us to realize personal growth. Yeah, absolutely.
00:12:21
Speaker
And I think a lot of people presume that these extreme sports and mountaineering that people don't experience fear or emotions like that the same. There's a lot of talk about the brain activity of climbers and stuff like that being different, but that's not necessarily true. I think that fear and that risk taking, or at least what the science says is that's the why behind what we do.
00:12:48
Speaker
what we do. Instead of it being we don't have that fear, it's the fear is what drives us to do what we do. And that's sort of what puts us on that mountain, right? Is that level of fear and risk taking? I was actually listening to a podcast the other day and it was saying that they were actually in an argument over can it be a true adventure if there isn't some risk involved. And
00:13:15
Speaker
someone was saying, Oh, you can have an adventure in your backyard. And the other person was saying, but if there isn't a risk of falling off the monkey bars, like, is it a true adventure? Which I thought was a really interesting question to think about and how the mindset of it. But I'd be curious to pose this question to you, Steve, is, do you feel that in some way, and this might be why the willingness to kind of overcome risk, because
00:13:45
Speaker
You've done money trips and pursued things that people would consider quite risky or dangerous And do you feel like there's almost some kind of higher calling? That this is what you're meant to do and that somehow that maybe Surpasses the level of risk or I'd just be curious like how you Manage the risk in your mind and like why is it worth it to you? Yeah, I would
00:14:14
Speaker
Yes, but I would reframe the question. I would say it's not a higher calling. It's just who I am. It's how I am in this world. And for me to not do these things that I've done. And honestly, it's also a moment in time. That's the other thing people have to realize. Yes, I did.
00:14:36
Speaker
insanely dangerous things in my climbing career. But that was a long time ago. And I don't do those things anymore. And I don't have literally zero drive to do anything even remotely. I'm almost the other way. I'm becoming the paranoid dad now. I was worried about people driving too fast on the highway. So I still think that there is, I still believe that there is truly value in
00:15:08
Speaker
transformational pursuit of adventure and yourself. And I think I would absolutely side with the person in the argument that believes that risk is a fundamental requirement of that. And I would also say that like, this is just how I have to show up and to, to suppress that is,
00:15:33
Speaker
to suppress who I actually am. So I wouldn't call it a higher calling. It's just, hey, this is how I was. I think this is actually one of the points I wanted to make today. I think that managing risk is very healthy in the sense that it teaches you a lot about, the mountains teach you generally a lot about
00:16:02
Speaker
who you actually are, not some imaginary version of yourself that's in a fairy tale or a superhero comic book, but who you actually are, which is incredibly powerful and incredibly strong and with incredible endurance, and also somebody who is really uncomfortable 20 miles into a 200 mile race sometimes. You're all of those things, and we are our flaws as well as our strengths. And for a lot of us,
00:16:32
Speaker
I think that it's important and transformational to come to accept our flaws and to come to accept that that's part of who we are. That's part of what makes us the way we are. And we don't have to be perfect. And we are, you know, it's, it goes back to self love, right? Like you have to be able to love yourself. And if you can't forgive yourself of your flaws, then you can't accomplish that. And,
00:17:01
Speaker
If you can't accomplish that through adventuring, then there are surely other avenues, probably meditation, probably therapy, probably lots of other things, but I think that it's probably one of the most widely available and probably one of the most widely used ways of self-actualization and self-realization.
Using Fear Productively
00:17:25
Speaker
Yeah, it exactly goes back to that life affirming. You know, that's why people take the risks. And also, one of the key personality traits that's different with people that participate in risk taking behaviors is that they are more motivated by personal achievement.
00:17:45
Speaker
rather than compared to the normal population. So it's a personal inward achievement that is more motivating to them than most people, right? So it's not that they're not doing it for external reasons. They're doing it to learn more about themselves and figure out who they are and really understand themselves from a really deep level. That makes a lot of sense. I'd be curious
00:18:14
Speaker
to know I've just, where does humility come into this? Because I think that there's an element of risk taking that perhaps is perceived as defiance in a way, where you're defying limits, where you're going after, in many ways, I mean, with what we do, the question of is this, is Mother Nature allowing us to do this? You know, are we pushing the limits of Mother Nature's
00:18:44
Speaker
are edges too much? Are we pushing our own limits too much? How do you both think that humility comes into play? And that kind of old mindset of conquering mountains that used to be such an important part and quite frankly, a part of colonialism and such, there's that drive. And now, how do we think of it with humility playing in?
00:19:14
Speaker
I think the best way we can deal with that is knowing that we're mortal, right? Like the mountain isn't going to care what's going to happen out there to us. And so using that humility that we are, we're just a human out there taking these risks, right? So we have to be humble knowing that in the end the mountain sort of drives what happens.
00:19:39
Speaker
I also think it's really important to understand the difference between risk taking and achieving something over at risk.
00:19:51
Speaker
When you're actually taking risk, you sometimes don't succeed. You sometimes turn around because you decide this is too dangerous or I think I'm going to die or my partner will die or I will get injured or my partner will get injured if I continue along this path. So it's important to understand
00:20:14
Speaker
from an outside view, but clearly from an inside view, which I think most people have, that this is actually a process. The engaging with risk, I've had plenty of days where I've gone out and started to lead up a hard pitch and backed off. That's happened lots of times. I have also had days where I didn't.
00:20:33
Speaker
feel I needed to. And I led the pitch. And I think that that's a big piece of what people get out of the experience. And I would be curious to hear how this works with runners. It becomes this, like, you're going
00:20:55
Speaker
You know, it's like you're trying to measure the weight of something, the weight of yourself, your centeredness. And by balancing on this edge, you can sense it really finely, really acutely, really sensitively. And then you can say like, oh yeah, this is not the day or this is the day. And that's what gives me humility, is that I have to bring humility to that moment.
00:21:24
Speaker
Because if I bring arrogance to that moment, I'll kill myself. So you have to have humility. And that humility is going to carry back into the rest of your life. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really profound thing to hear. I'm just kind of absorbing that.
00:21:53
Speaker
that is really, and I'm not saying a trail running doesn't have its risk, but I do think that that's a big difference between the two sports is that for us, the difference is like, I'm probably not going to die. Like, yes, you could. But when we go out on a trail run, you're probably not going to die. And so in many ways, I think it's almost harder to make that decision. I think it's easier to just say,
00:22:22
Speaker
Oh, you know, it's today's not the day. We're not going to do it. Go in, grab a cup of hot chocolate and go on. And I think, go ahead, see. Well, I think, I think the trick is that you have to decide that, that for me, it was like, I actually remember the moment because it happened this year where I realized, well, it happened last year. And then it really like so preferred this year was that there was a moment I was running the,
00:22:52
Speaker
Pinhodi Trail, which is 350 miles. I was trying to set a new FKT and I was in really deep pain. I mean, my shins were killing me. I was so tired, you know, they're running for over 200 miles. And I, my desire to succeed and to fulfill who I am was so strong that it did not matter how much pain I was in.
00:23:21
Speaker
It did not matter how tired I was. And there was this switch, like flip, where I went from not even being able to like screaming in pain, getting shoes put on my feet, to running. And it's like mountaineering I think is a much more acute moment in many ways where it's like, I will die if I don't make this move.
00:23:43
Speaker
or, you know, make this good decision. Whereas trail running, it's more like, here's the moment where I go from, you know, almost saving yourself or kind of being like, Oh, well, you know, everyone has DNFs, everyone has things to, it's almost like fulfilling to me, it's like fulfilling what I might be, might be capable of.
00:24:10
Speaker
And it took realizing that I was tired of sabotaging myself and tired of letting go, letting go into that moment or like letting that moment win that I wanted to take that. But it is deep humility where it's like you have to, I was so bare in that moment. And so like everything was taken away from me and it's so raw to be able to make the decision to keep going.
00:24:40
Speaker
That's kind of an interesting difference where it's like, I'm not going to die, but also it almost feels like it is life or death in that moment to me because it's like becoming who I'm supposed to be. Sorry, that was a long story.
00:24:58
Speaker
No, don't apologize. That was amazing. And I think it's true, but I would say let's not overblow the risk of mountaineering. Not every decision is life and death. A lot of them are just like, oh, I fall down and hurt my ankle real bad.
00:25:13
Speaker
But I would argue that the risk to runners is far worse. It's social humiliation. Oh, she DNF'd? Man, didn't she win that race? For me, if I was on an expedition and I didn't go climbing, I just didn't talk to anybody when I went home.
00:25:37
Speaker
Like nobody knew, like nobody had any idea what happened or what didn't happen, only me. And so that risk I think for especially known runners or runners trying to build a career is immense and that pressure is immense and
Personality Traits and Risk in Sports
00:25:57
Speaker
that risk is huge.
00:26:01
Speaker
Yeah, and especially because if you do push through something, you do risk damaging your ability to run in the future, right? So you have to serve in that situation way, well, is this going to be worth it long-term or in the next three months? Is this finish line worth not being able to do this sport in the near future or potentially long-term?
00:26:31
Speaker
And sometimes, you know, personal achievement, that drive for that is more powerful than the need to preserve our bodies. And, and sometimes it's not. So I'd be curious to learn to how and do in psychology is like differentiate social risk versus like physical risk, I guess.
00:27:00
Speaker
Yeah, well, so in psychology, we have this innate need to socially thrive because in the beginning of time, you know, if you didn't fit into the social community around you, you didn't have the resources or you could be killed, right? So we have this innate
00:27:23
Speaker
thing inside of us that says that we need to socially conform. So that pressure is extreme. And so it's social risk sort of can drive us also in that achievement, right? It's similar to that physical risk. It's a very
00:27:40
Speaker
It's also risk-taking, right? But it's just looking at the risk-taking in a different way. It's conforming to the social norms and taking a risk of like, hey, am I going to ruin my reputation? Are people going to be talking about me? Are people going to be saying I'm a horrible athlete? Whatever that may be to you, that is a social risk-taking for that person. And so some people may experience risk-taking stronger in that social aspect, and some might experience it more in the physical aspect.
00:28:07
Speaker
But either way, to that person, it presents a danger and a fear to them, right? So no matter what, that risk is valid to that person. And I think engaging in any of these forms of risk
00:28:23
Speaker
helps people to develop a high pain tolerance, for lack of a better word, a high risk tolerance, a high tolerance for discomfort. And, you know, I think that you touched on it already, Elisa, this is a double-edged sword. There's on one hand, you can achieve great things, but on the other hand, you know, you actually both touched on it, you could
00:28:46
Speaker
damage yourself and you could not be able to run in the future. I know climbers who are metabolically and medically completely messed up because they starved themselves for so long to stay light and various others.
00:29:01
Speaker
such stories exist within climbing. And yes, they had extreme self-control to live on a handful of potatoes every day for a number of years, but they ultimately damaged their bodies that now don't function. So you've got to be a little careful with this
00:29:22
Speaker
disability that we develop that it is, you know, you, you can use this for self-control, but you can also use it to override the pain of being out of alignment in some way, whether that's mentally or physically. Yeah. And sorry, I'm like going off on tangents, but this came to mind is that how does being able to
00:29:51
Speaker
manage risk or even being drawn to risk. Because I think if we anecdotally look at the people who are pursuing mountaineering or the extremes of sports, we often think of them as almost outsiders or misfits in a way. I mean, there's almost pride in being that way. And do you think that there's an element of
00:30:18
Speaker
personality type that also causes or can cause a disjointedness with society and like relating to other people. Because I find sometimes when I come back from a really hard race, or I feel like I've had this experience, I have a hard time relating to other people where it's like, I don't understand how to come back or like be apart. And so I'd just be curious, like, is that something that you inherently
00:30:48
Speaker
have maybe if you have this personality trait or is that a like nature versus nurture kind of thing?
00:30:57
Speaker
Well, it's both. We definitely have those personality traits, and that's what makes us who we are, and it puts us in the situations. However, people don't necessarily have those personality traits pursue the things that we do, and that would be on the nurture side of things. But yes, we have different personality types that sort of drive us to do these sports, and that would be
00:31:21
Speaker
extroversion to some extent, neuroticism, risk taking, adventure seeking, all of those things are personality traits that are really common in the extreme sports world that aren't as common in the other athletic
Fear's Role in Decision-Making
00:31:39
Speaker
endeavors or non-athletes out there.
00:31:43
Speaker
So that's what sort of separates us psychologically, but then it's also how we use those out in the field, right? So people could have that personality trait and they could utilize it or, I don't know, some other thing that's not adventure seeking and that could fulfill that personality need. We just choose to do it in the mountains and that's how we deal with our personality. I remember
00:32:10
Speaker
dawning on me when I was in my mid 20s that basically the narrative that all the men, mostly men, and a few women had around their lives was that something along the lines of, if I hadn't found climbing, I would have been a drug dealer. I would have been a criminal. I would have been in a gang. I would have, you know,
00:32:36
Speaker
And I was kind of looking at, at one point I kind of looked around like, wait, all these people are coming from these really fringe. And I felt like I just kind of came from like a quote unquote normal middle-class upbringing. And I was like, wow, this is really a fringe.
00:32:52
Speaker
community. I had that and then I've talked to different people like you talked to Yvon Chouinard or you know Royal Robbins when he was alive and you talk about the characters or around climbing even longer ago like in the 50s. I mean these people were basically we would call them homeless people now like we would call them you know misfits. They would be
00:33:16
Speaker
Yes, they were climbing and they were achieving, but to the outside and to the rest of the world, they were kind of no good losers. You talked to Yvon Chouinard. He spent a summer living in a trash incinerator that he cleaned out.
00:33:42
Speaker
He spent another summer living off of dented cans of cat food that he bought at the damaged canned goods store. This is the guy who has achieved incredible things in his lifetime, but this is who he was.
00:33:59
Speaker
He didn't have money for a car. He was hitchhiking back to California and got thrown in jail and spent nights in jail. These are the people that are engaging in these behaviors. These are also the same people that are building a company like Patagonia. So I think that there's a connection, honestly, between these behaviors in climbing and I think there's
00:34:26
Speaker
an entrepreneurial side too. Yeah. I think it's like an extremism and like everything that we do, you know, we take everything to like that top level because we're always trying to achieve that personal achievement. That's our ultimate goal. And entrepreneurship does that for us and so do mountains, right? So in both ways we're achieving personally there. And that's what is our driving force.
00:34:56
Speaker
Yeah, I spent some time guiding in the Tetons and I was guiding there one summer, I think it was the summer of 2000 or 2001 and one of these characters was working for XM Mountain Guides at the time was an
00:35:10
Speaker
a climber named Chuck Pratt. And Chuck was one of the, you know, there's Pratt crack. I mean, he did all kinds of incredible free climbing feats, you know, back in the fifties that are still considered hard routes today. And he would teach the basic climbing courses. He would teach people how to tie into the knot, how to tie into the rope with figure eight and basically belay in the very basic thing. And he used to entertain himself. He had these
00:35:37
Speaker
funny little quizzes that he would make up for people. And I remember working with him one day, and I would always get a kick out of his questions. And one day he said, which of the four first ascensionists of the North American wall is not a millionaire today? And I mean, these people just started climbing that morning. Like they have no idea what
00:35:59
Speaker
any of these words mean, right? But like I do, like I'm doing it in my head, like, okay, you know, North American wall, first to say, okay, that was Yvon Chouinard, Royal Robbins, Tom Frost, Chuck Pratt. Well, obviously it's Chuck Pratt, he's the only one that's not a millionaire today.
00:36:16
Speaker
That's the same. That, I think, is something about these personalities, too. They can win channel correctly, be successful, too. And not that that is predetermined, but I think this sort of tolerance for pain, discomfort, hard work, these are the same things that make people successful in lots of different ways, lots of different walks of life.
00:36:46
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. Well, I think that we should switch a little bit of gears and go along to risk good old friend fear and talk about fear for a little bit. But I guess Alexa, I'd love to hear like, what is fear? And how do we differentiate fear we should listen to versus fear that we should rationalize, as we just heard Steve
00:37:14
Speaker
was saying that there's sometimes where he took the lead and it went great and there was sometimes that you backed off. I'd love to hear more of the science behind fear itself.
00:37:30
Speaker
Fear is a completely natural response to a perceived threat. So when we experience fear, that emotion triggers the sympathetic nervous system, which releases hormones of norepinephrine and epinephrine. And those sort of put our body into a fight or flight response. So that's what we experience with sweaty palms. Those sort of typical fear responses.
00:37:56
Speaker
A lot can happen when we experience fear. We can freeze up. We're more likely to get ourselves hurt or in dangerous situations. We can also make rash decisions. Fear can be limiting for a lot of athletes. Fear stops them from starting or going past a certain point, especially if they experience a catastrophic or traumatic event. It can be hard to come back from that or even just like an injury. So to push past that fear and determining whether we should or not,
00:38:23
Speaker
That's really up to that individual situation, right? We can't sort of determine, well, once we hit this sort of fear response, that's when we need to stop and back out, right? It's going to be taking the time to, one, get used to fear, deal with the fear,
00:38:44
Speaker
and look at it rationally or as rationally as we can in the situation and say, hey, is this going to be something that's going to be detrimental in the future or is it not? Like that's how we're going to rationalize it, right? So is this thing that I'm experiencing catastrophic or is it not catastrophic?
00:39:01
Speaker
Because no matter what, our body is going to experience that fear response because our hormones are being triggered, right? So how do we use that fear and how do we determine whether it's life-threatening or not or potentially body-damaging? And that's going to be sort of assessing the situation and going from there.
00:39:20
Speaker
When I was teaching basic mountaineering courses back in the 90s, we used to sum it up by telling people there are three steps in the process of evaluating risk. First of all, what is the chance that I'm going to fall? Second, what is the consequence of me falling? And third, how honestly did I answer questions one and two? And I think that that simple three-step kind of mnemonic or memory
00:39:50
Speaker
trick kind of can be applied to a huge range of situations to try to understand if the fear is something that you should rationalize, whether rationalize a way like, okay, I'm not going to fall. So even though it's death, if I do fall, I'm not going to fall. And so I can cross here.
00:40:14
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that one of the big things is staying calm in that moment, right? Learning to control that fear is one of the biggest aspects of that. Because if we have this experience of fear and we cannot control it, it can put us in a very dangerous situation. So like I said, you could freeze up, you could be just putting yourself in a really bad situation. So using the fear,
00:40:43
Speaker
to sort of determine the situation is gonna be really important in calming down, using breathing, assessing the situation. Is this a moment where I'm just really scared and I can get past it? Or is this a moment where it's like, I'm really scared because this is a real perceived threat to my wellbeing?
00:41:06
Speaker
I've written and talked about this a lot in the past, but I did quite a bit of meditation and meditation courses and meditation practice when I was climbing actively. And I did two things that I think helped with what you bring up, Alexa. One is a key lesson of meditation is there are three layers to a moment. As it was explained to me,
00:41:35
Speaker
the initial experience, there's your awareness of the experience, and then there's a third one, which is your story about the experience that comes later. But as it pertains to what we're talking about, there's this
00:41:53
Speaker
Meditation allowed me to stretch that moment in time out. The interval between the experience and the awareness of the experience and essentially slow that down is how my experience of it was. And simultaneously, the mechanism I would actually use was breath and breathe into that moment to stretch it out.
00:42:19
Speaker
And it would be a big belly, inhale, exhale, sometimes multiples. And I would really like, it's very much like the same process when you're...
00:42:35
Speaker
been sitting in a meditation for a long time and you've been through like all kinds of physical discomfort and your legs are numb and like all of those things and then somehow like something happens and you just feel like rooted and grounded and powerful and you know you're having this kind of experience and and that's the kind of experience I was essentially channeling in those
00:43:02
Speaker
And it's this whole experience of stretching time, of slowing time, of breathing into it, of creating
00:43:15
Speaker
a space where I can make a decision, where I can choose my reaction rather than have my reaction be chosen for me. Like, oh, I'm scared. This is happening. My foot is slipped. My gear is bad. I think this slope might avalanche. What is my next step? What am I going to do now? And choosing that, not just like reacting.
00:43:36
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And breathing helps us to calm down that sympathetic nervous system, which is what controls that hormone response and that fear response. So breathing is really important in those situations and slowing down and assessing what's going on. My climbing partners used to actually kind of make fun of me for that. They'd say, oh, we can tell when it gets hard up there because we can hear you breathing from down here. Well, you were doing it right, though.
Mental Training and Performance in Sports
00:44:06
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, I was also the one leading the hard pitches. So, so yeah, I was doing it right. So I guess one last thing I'll touch on with this, um, and then maybe a little bit about doubt and then wrap it up. But, uh, people talk a lot about like that gut feeling where it's like, you think something's going to happen or, um, like, Oh, I listened to my gut and that was the right call.
00:44:34
Speaker
Or maybe it wasn't, but I'd be curious if there is a psychological component of what that gut feeling is. And Steve, like first he walks in and then to Steve, like when's been a moment where you listened to your gut and it was correct? And maybe a moment where you're like, um, I should have gone. Like that was silly.
00:44:56
Speaker
So yeah, definitely it's intuition and and that's your body is is perceiving a threat that you're not necessarily aware of right and so There's a body's response to our environment and we don't always know why we have that fear response But that's sort of what that intuition is. It's our body is experiencing a fear response For a reason we're not sure why our body knows why but we don't know why right so
00:45:25
Speaker
That is why we experience that sort of gut feeling. And that's our intuition telling us, hey, something isn't right right now. Yeah, I concur. And I would say that actually this falls into the category of the third layer of the experience, which is the story you're telling yourself. And I don't mean to say that you can control the story or change the story. Your experience of this intuition is the story.
00:45:55
Speaker
And in that sense, I mean this in the sense that every story has a context. And the context of this story, of the layer of experience, of the moment, which in this case is intuition,
00:46:19
Speaker
is the context of what you're going to do. Are you feeling this and you're about to launch onto a big dangerous climb? Are you feeling this and you're about to run a race? Are you going to go skiing and the avalanche conditions are a little sketchy? It sort of goes back to those three questions. What are the chances of something happening?
00:46:45
Speaker
are the consequences and how honestly did I answer those? And often I think intuition is your signal that something is wrong on number three, that you're maybe not listening to and not telling yourself the truth because something is out of alignment. And this is where I think that I just see so many parallels between
00:47:10
Speaker
meditation practice and the sports mountain sports that we practice where your job is to be present and to understand and to experience as much of what is in front of you and around you and what you're in the moment you're in.
00:47:31
Speaker
climbing, running, sleeping as you can. And that's basically all that meditation teaches us to do. I think that's wise words. So going off of that, the last thing I want to kind of touch on is taking this, and I think that oftentimes fear is spurred by doubt.
00:48:01
Speaker
And so how does an athlete deal with doubt? And with doubt, there's kind of two parts. I feel like that there's doubt that comes from perhaps improper training where, you know, you really shouldn't be out there because you maybe just aren't ready yet or haven't put in the work. Um, and then I think probably the more common one is athletes dealing with a lack of self-efficacy where they're doubting themselves because
00:48:31
Speaker
there is a lack of confidence or almost a fear of, well, a big fear of failure. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on doubt and then just kind of maybe how do we deal with that?
00:48:47
Speaker
So doubt is completely natural. And in fact, some studies have shown that it is beneficial for performance because it forces the athlete to have this perceived need to try harder. And so that can be a performance boosting aspect of doubt. However, having self-confidence is more beneficial to performance because the athlete feels confident in what they are doing.
00:49:13
Speaker
So doubt can go either way, but it is a totally normal and completely natural thing to be feeling. Again, like it would be just like with fear, I think doubt is one of those emotions and feelings that we have that would be sort of odd to not feel before we go into a performance, right? So there's a few really good ways that athlete can deal with doubt. And one of my favorite ways is to like,
00:49:37
Speaker
we have these things that we say in our head, like these negative thoughts when we're dealing with doubt. And the best way to deal with that is to just put a full stop on it and literally tell ourselves when we're having that thought like, Oh, I can't do this climb. I can't continue. Stop and then say something positive. Right. So, yes, this looks really hard, but I've done this. I've trained for this. Refrain it in a positive way or like,
00:50:07
Speaker
I'm not trained enough to do this. Stop. I remember when I did my last training run or my last training climb, I'm completely ready for this. So it's stopping those negative thoughts and putting a positive affirmation in place of it. That's going to be beneficial when dealing with doubt. Yeah, I think that, you know,
00:50:31
Speaker
The moment of doubt on a climb is literally like the most precious moment of the whole experience. And I tie this back to uphill athletes and what uphill athletes do and when we are uphill athletes in a sense, that it's at that moment of doubt. And it's also at that moment of realization that we're going to overcome it. And Alexa, you just gave us the tools to help us overcome it.
00:51:00
Speaker
people need to know that that's completely normal and everybody has that. And if you can, my mechanism for that is to do something that slows the time down enough that I make the decision to continue, whatever that is. There are sometimes hundreds of those moments, little ones, but there's almost always one big one.
00:51:30
Speaker
where it's really just totally hanging in the balance. And this is, to me, one of the lessons I learned when I was in my 20s, I had the great luck and honor to climb with almost exclusively climbing partners who are a lot older than I was. They're all at least one generation older than I was. And this is something that I noticed that they did is when we got to that moment of doubt,
00:51:59
Speaker
would stop and address the problem. So in climbing it was often like, okay, let's get out the stove. Let's brew up. And at first you're like, wait, what? Like we're going to make, we're going to drink tea. You're going to be kidding me. Like everything's, everything's going wrong. It's like, no, let's slow it down. Let's make, we're dehydrated. We haven't eaten. We, you know, we, you know, it's, it's going to get dark anyway. We have headlamps, you know, let's collect ourselves. Let's slow it down.
00:52:30
Speaker
And then we're going to make a decision. And that's how the, that's how the good decisions were made. You're just, you just completely, you choose your response. And this is so important in so many ways of life too, in so many areas of life where you just need to create a little space so you can choose consciously and wisely, hopefully like the right response. And you know, that's what, that's what overcoming doubt is about.
00:52:57
Speaker
is also trusting and knowing that gives you self-confidence, self-efficacy when you know that when whatever happens goes wrong, that you're going to be able to make the right decision because that's what you do. I think for me, honestly, it's like also becomes this is, I've noticed in my, I mean, speaking as an 52 year old, but there was a period in my life where like,
00:53:27
Speaker
I loved that so much I would go out of my way to create it subconsciously in all ways of my life because I thrived in that kind of crisis. So I wanted to have a crisis all the time. And now I realize, okay, yeah, I can leverage my strength in crises. I'm good at managing crises, but I don't want to be in crisis all the time. And I don't want those around me to be
00:53:50
Speaker
crisis all the time. So then, you know, you learn to, again, make a conscious choice. And this is, this is just to say that it's, it's not like a straight line from beginning to end, right? This is the path of life and it's crooked and winding and you make you compensate, overcompensate, you backtrack, you reconsider, you do things differently. And yeah.
00:54:13
Speaker
Yeah, and it all sort of ties together, right? Doubt ties into fear, fear ties into risk-taking, and all of it ties into inevitably our need to achieve and to have that self-discovery and that personal achievement and affirmation in our life. And I say that that achievement isn't achievement for anyone. Again, it's just us showing up as who we are.
00:54:42
Speaker
And before the achievement, people didn't see us for that because we hadn't done it. You know, I was no different the day before I climbed on your part about that. It was the day after, but the day after people saw me completely differently. It's a funny sensation. I, yeah, I've been there a couple of times. You're like, now everyone sees me like I bet I'm the same person. I just, I'm colder, like loss of weight right now.
00:55:13
Speaker
But yeah, but everyone sees you differently. It's a very strange thing. Well, there's a bit of an important difference between who you know you are and who other people think you are. And it's part of the process of realizing that it doesn't matter what other people think you are.
00:55:30
Speaker
You're just going to show up as you show up and be who you are. And you have agency and power and strength and resilience. And you will manifest those things and, you know, probably change the world for the better if you do it. Yeah. Well, with that also Alexa, that was a beautiful wrap up of connecting all of the pieces. So thank you. Thanks for that.
00:55:58
Speaker
I guess any last things you'd like to touch on in this podcast? I think that just knowing that mental training is, like we sort of said in the beginning, just as important as that physical aspect.
Episode Wrap-Up
00:56:14
Speaker
So reiterating the fact that athletes really need to spend a time focusing on those mental skills.
00:56:21
Speaker
to help them overcome obstacles and also just to overall improve their performance. So it's not only just dealing with fear and risk-taking, but also just being the best athlete that we can be through not only our physical abilities, but through our mental abilities as well.
00:56:39
Speaker
And I would add that the way you do that is by training physically because the physical journey is what takes you on the mental journey. You can't have the mental journey on the couch. You have to go out and you have to strive and you have to work, you have to train, you have to climb, you have to run.
00:56:57
Speaker
That's what takes you on the mental journey. Your body takes you there. And so, you know, this is so core to uphill athlete and what we all do in all our sports, whether there's snow sports or rock climbing or alpinism or ultra running, it doesn't matter, like adventure racing. These are all just pretexts for going on a mental journey.
00:57:20
Speaker
and coming back as someone different and someone transformed. These are, I think that we should be proud as a community that we are undertaking bold and brave and transformational journeys as in our lives. Like we are making our lives, we're building our lives around these kinds of heroic journeys and that's really something cool and I think we should really all be proud of that. Absolutely.
00:57:48
Speaker
Thank you both so much. This has been so much fun to dig into this, and I'm sure we will have many more episodes touching on mental coaching and the mental component of sports. Look out for that, I guess. Thank you for listening to the uphill athlete podcast. It really helps us if you rate, review, and subscribe.
00:58:15
Speaker
on any of the major podcast platforms. You can also check out our training plans, coaching, and we have a couple of training groups starting up in January. You can see all of that at uphillathlete.com. Once again, I just wanted to say thank you, Alexa, for your work as a coach at uphill athlete, your writing, and for being on the podcast today. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. It was my pleasure.
00:58:46
Speaker
It's not just one, but a community. Together we are uphill athlete. Today's uphill athlete podcast was produced by Alyssa Clark. Our mixing engineer is Tim McLean, and our theme song was written and produced by Chase Clark. We'd love to hear from you, so write to us at coach at uphillathlete.com. I'm your host, Steve House. Go simply, climb, ski, and ride well. Thank you for listening.