Rock climbing is getting a lot more popular.

There is indoor gyms like this one

opening all around the country,

and in 2020, for the first time,

it will be an official sport at the Olympics,

made up of three events.

The first is lead climbing.

That's scaling a tall wall using a rope

that you use to anchor yourself along a route

that changes from competition to competition.

The second is bouldering.

No rope this time because it's closer to the ground

but the problems are physically

and mentally a lot more demanding.

Like lead climbing, the routes change

from competition to competition.

And the third is speed climbing,

which is exactly what it sounds like.

Climb a 15 meter wall as fast as you possibly can.

Here's the twist, unlike lead climbing and bouldering

the route stays the same every single time.

The holds, like this one, are standardized

and they're in the exact same position

and the exact same place along the route

whether you're climbing today,

a year from now, in the US, or abroad.

The fastest time ever recorded

on a speed wall is 5.48 seconds.

But could that time go down?

[Announcer] New world record!

Today, we're gonna look at why climbing a speed wall

in five seconds flat is almost impossible.

[upbeat music]

To find out what it takes I climbed

with one of the fastest American speed climbers.

Okay.

Talked big wall speed climbing with Alex Honnold.

Yeah it's funny, 'cause when you're speed climbing

big walls you don't think about your lactate threshold,

you just do it over and over and just it improves.

[Robbie] And the physics of flying up

the equivalent of a four story building with a biomechanist.

Climbing fast, in and of itself, isn't exactly new.

People have been racing each other up walls

since at least the 1940s.

But the standardized route that we'll see

for speed climbing in the Olympics

has only been around for a few years.

The very fastest climber, Iranian Reza Alipour,

set the world record at 5.48 seconds in 2017.

But not even a decade earlier

the record was in the mid six second range.

Today, that's how long it takes

this 16-year-old champion to sprint up the wall.

So we're here today at Earth Treks Gym

in Englewood, Colorado.

We're gonna do some speed climbing

and with us today to help us out

is two-time national champion Jordan Fishman.

You have a couple of records in speed climbing, right?

Yeah. Alright, he's very

fast at it and also with us is Alex Honnold.

He is a speed climber of a different sort,

he works on bigger walls.

And you've actually never climbed this either, right?

I have never climbed a speed wall.

Awesome, this is gonna be great.

Alright, I haven't either I am super nervous.

Now let's try this.

I went first.

It's so exciting.

Let's just say that I did not set any records.

And he's off like a rocket. [laughing]

It took me more than a minute to get up the wall.

Okay, one minute 15 seconds.

Huh, alright Alex's turn.

Then it was Honnold's turn.

Not surprisingly, he was much faster.

He made it to the top in just under 30 seconds.

29 seconds, I feel all winded and kinda shaky.

So the progression was 75 seconds, 29.5 seconds.

Let's see it Jordan.

Even with a couple of missteps

he scrambled up the wall in eight and a half seconds.

Just a walk in the park.

I know, it's pretty classic though

that with mistakes and as a warmup

it's still eight and a half seconds.

Just for comparison, here is a shot

of each of us on our first climbs.

As you can see, I'm picking my way slowly up the wall,

figuring out the holds as I go.

To be totally honest, my main focus here

is on not falling, so I'm being very deliberate

with my movements and as a result climbing very slowly.

Now take a look at Honnold, here in the middle.

Like me, he's climbing this route for the very first time

so he's figuring it out as he goes,

but he's still much faster.

In the time it takes me to reach the top

Honnold could have climbed this route two and a half times.

And a lot of that has to do with his strength and confidence

but also, pay attention to his footwork.

To move fast he's using not just the holds on the wall

but the wall itself.

Climbers call this smearing and on the speed wall

it spares them from looking down to find footholds,

saving them valuable time.

And then there's Fishman on the far right.

He knows this route by heart so he's relying

on explosive strength and muscle memory

to blast himself up the wall.

Like Honnold, he's also smearing his feet.

He's moving so fast that he stumbles

a couple of times, but even with those missteps

he still soars up this wall.

In the time it takes me to climb it once,

Fishman could have climbed it and tagged the buzzer

at the top nearly nine times.

I was obviously the slowest.

It took me 75 seconds to complete the run.

Alex was a lot faster then I was.

He took just under 30 seconds to complete it.

And Jordan you took about, let's see that's

eight and a half seconds to run through that

as a warmup run. A few slips too, yeah.

And you missed a couple holds.

[laughing]

Alright, but that's a huge difference

and I feel like a lot of it boils down

to the style with which we were climbing it.

Like I was being a lot more delicate about it.

Alex you were smearing a lot, so you were

just putting your foot directly on the wall.

I was trying to but obviously,

there was a lot of room for improvement.

[Robbie] So why were you doing that?

Just so I didn't have to think

about the footholds as much.

Basically so I could focus on

just making big moves between the handholds.

Alright, and then you just blazed through it,

eight and a half seconds.

So how do you trim off 20 seconds?

Well part of it is that he didn't have to think

about anything 'cause he knows exactly what to do,

so his body's just executing without thinking about it.

Yeah, that's the other thing.

This is the first time I've ever done it,

this is the first time Alex has ever done it

so there's nothing for us to do but improve, right?

That's the spirit. Yeah.

How did you get faster.

For one, knowing the route helps

and knowing the holds, like where you have to grab them

and when you hae to grab them.

Just thinking takes time off.

So, by doing that you can get faster

and that also helps with your feet

because you know where to place them

so you don't have to think about that either.

[Robbie] As you might expect, the start is crucial.

If you have a bad start it can kinda ruin your run

'cause as you push off, you have to carry that momentum

all the way up through the entire route.

So, if you don't get as fast to the start

typically your run isn't as fast

even if you can catch up speed.

[Robbie] What Fishman and many other elite

speed climbers do is bypass an entire hold.

You wanna go foot and hand at the same time.

So you get back, you generate

and as you pull, you push off with this foot, cut--

And you go both hands to the second--

And then you catch like this

and then you kinda start to barn door

but you want to carry the barn door through.

And then fly upward.

And then fly upward, exactly.

[Robbie] The move is now called the Reza

for the Iranian climber who has used it

to slash the record up the 15 meter wall to 5.48 seconds.

It just shaves so much time off

and it almost makes you flow better

through the next three or four moves

'cause you're better setup there already.

[Robbie] But the Reza is not easy.

I struggled, so did Honnold.

But even without the Reza start, did we get faster?

We each went again to find out.

Yeah nice, that's really good.

[Robbie] I shaved 40 seconds off my first time,

running it in 35 seconds.

Honnold took five seconds off, doing a 24.5 second run.

And Fishman, Fishman crushed it, 6.62 seconds.

And your record is 6.38. Yep.

Right?

So that's crazy and that's like,

you were saying on just any given day--

Yeah, I feel like your record could be a lot lower.

'Cause if at any random morning,

we're not even that warmed up.

I mean we just showed up and did a little climbing.

Most days I'll average anywhere from

like 6.5 or 6.8 or nine.

But it all just depends on the run and the day I'm having.

And so, would you consider that a good run?

Yeah, I think-- Like, surprisingly good?

Yeah, and 50's the average for me.

I think for like some I warm to.

And how many of those do you have in you on a given day?

Sometimes I'll do two runs a day,

sometimes I'll do eight or nine, but yeah.

Yeah, but it doesn't take many and you're cooked, right?

Yeah, oh yeah. [laughs]

It's funny to think that doing six seconds of exesion

six times and you're done for the day.

Yeah [laughs]. You're like, man I worked

out for 45 seconds today and it's like tough work.

Totally anaerobic, right?

And what you're doing is much more aerobic.

Yeah, what I'm doing is completely aerobic.

[Robbie] 'Cause basically what you're doing

is basically a marathon and you're doing a sprint.

Many people know Honnold as the subject of Free Solo,

the 2018 documentary about his rope-less assent

of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

But he's also set a number of speed records in the park.

Including the 3,000 foot Nose route of El Cap

which he scaled with Tommy Caldwell in record time in 2018.

This footage of the record climb

comes from an upcoming film from Real Rock.

It takes most people multiple days

to complete that climb, but Honnold and Caldwell

did it in just under two hours.

Speed climbing outdoors is more about precision

and smoothness then it is about being sloppy and fast.

Which is part of the reason why

people aren't climbing The Nose in minutes.

Right. [laughing]

Yeah, yeah, that's the reason why

it takes a couple hours to climb

pretty much most big walls outside.

[Robbie] Could you apply indoor speed

climbing tactics to big walls?

Not exactly.

When you think about the speed wall indoors

is that there's absolutely no risk,

so you can be as free as you want, you can take risks.

But outdoors, if you take risks

you could potentially die on some of them.

[Robbie] And the climbing style is completely different.

I went to Diablo Rock Gym in Concord, California

to talk with Hans Florine.

It's tough so I usually will go after

the footholds on the sides.

[Robbie] Florine literally wrote the book

on speed climbing big walls.

And has owned The Nose record numerous times.

He was a speed climbing star in the 90s,

but he's still really fast.

This is the first ever world championship

speed climbing cup.

Ching, ching, ching yeah, fully drinkable.

[Robbie] He's in his 50s and last year

broke both his legs and both his ankles falling on El Cap.

He still beat me up the wall, twice.

Then he showed me what it's like to climb on El Cap.

Climb in there to rest the outside of my hand--

[Robbie] Sort of.

We went to the gym's crack wall

which simulates the fissure granite

that you find on much of The Nose route

and requires a completely different style of climbing.

[Hans] Remember, just rotate your hand

or your wrist and find where

it's most comfortable or least painful.

[Robbie] It only took me three, four minutes, right?

But then again that's only 30 feet so.

Yeah, 3,000 feet on El Cap,

you do 99 more laps and this would be a really long show.

But that would be doing The Nose

in a day at the gym, right?

[Robbie] And then there's the weight

of all the safety equipment you have to take.

You've got this extra added weight.

This is probably 11, 12, 13 pounds

and that's about what you'd carry

if you were just gonna climb The Nose

of El Cap in a single day.

[Robbie] Still, experienced climbers like Florine

and Honnold, think the time for a classic route

like The Nose could still be brought down.

And we thought it was kinda like the marathon,

that it would get close to two hours,

but then it turns out it actually wasn't that hard

to break two hours, it's not like the marathon.

It'll probably go do to 120.

I think that if you applied the climbing pace

that's used on an indoor climbing wall

to El Cap, I mean yeah, you could do it in half an hour.

[laughing] But, it's just hard to imagine

climbing that quickly while still

placing protection and clipping the rope

and managing all the other systems.

[Robbie] But the speed wall is pure climbing.

Could it get any faster?

The start is clearly key, but there's

more elements to the climb than that.

So I called up French researcher Pierre Legreneur.

And I once was a first term general

[mumbling] in France in 1989.

And now I'm working biomechanics in climbing.

[Robbie] Legreneur has studied speed climbing data

and found that the fastest athletes

optimize their route to the top.

[Robbie] Take a look at this graph

based on Legreneur's research.

The blue line is the path that a climber's

center of mass takes from the bottom

of the climb to the top.

The red lines are the furthest

that a climber's center of mass moves left to right.

The straighter the blue line and the narrower

the red ones, the faster an athlete can climb.

That is exactly what Reza did

when he eliminated that fourth handhold.

[Robbie] Here's video of Reza in 2013.

As you can see, he makes this big arc

going to the fourth hold.

Here he is again in 2017.

This time pulling off his signature move.

It straightens the curve and makes him considerably faster.

But not all people use the Reza.

It requires a lot of strength and coordination

and there's another variable as well.

That's the texture of the wall itself.

So the holds might not change,

their position might not change,

but some walls are super rough, which is good.

And others are super slick, which can make it

really hard to get your shoe on it

and get yourself that push you need to move up the wall.

[Robbie] Fishman coached Honnold and I

through some other tricks of the wall

and in the end we both got a lot faster.

I notched a run in just under 30 seconds

and Honnold pulled one off in 22.3 seconds.

Neither of us ever completed the Reza

and I struggled with the dynos,

big leaps from one hold to another.

Legreneur thinks that one of the ways

for climbers to go faster, is to eliminate

as many dynos as possible from their climbs.

Let's face it, those big dynamic moves

might look awesome in bouldering,

but that doesn't make them fast on the speed wall.

Here's a chart of climbing velocity up the speed wall.

It's constantly rising and falling

as the athletes progress up the climb.

But the greatest variations come from dynos.

[Robbie] Find a way to maintain contact

through that same sequence of holds

and climbers could go even faster.

Legreneur thinks that with other optimizations

the ultimate time in this already fast sport

could drop by a lot.

So about a whole second faster.

[Pierre] Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Robbie] Those resources could go

to studying ways to maximize climbing power.

Although, after seeing Fishman's training routine,

it's hard to imagine this sport

getting any burlier then it already is.

That's absurd.

But with more athletes and coaches

working on the wall, more variations

like the Reza might be found to smooth

and speedup the path.

But until all of those things happen

just keep in mind that what elite climbers are doing

on the speed wall and on big walls like El Cap,

is already almost impossible. [rock music]