Honnold has done the most difficult and dangerous thing any rock climber has ever accomplished: He free-climbed Yosemite’s El Capitan.
He didn’t just get out of bed one morning and decide to do it, he praciced climbing it roped-up and with assitance, taking each ‘pitch’ by itself, rehearsing the lowest-risk way to do it, and memorizing the route. He spent years preparing and months of actual time on the rock selecting and memorizing the route.
Climbing a skyscraper where every floor is the same was child’s play to him.
They’ve MRI’d his head. His amygdala doesn’t work. The amygdala recognizes what’s a threat and compels us to react. And his literally doesn’t work. It shows up on the MRI as a blank spot. Literally NO activity. So he can be purely analytical about what he does.
He also recognizes that just about everybody that does what he does eventually dies. He has slowed down on the real hard stuff since he got married and had a daughter. INHO he is simply the best there is, but also not a fool.
For anyone who has never seen him work, here is a good short video of his work https://youtu.be/tnRoda7Ke2w?si=yEp03U-8saLquGob