The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

by Steven Kotler

cognitive imperative

life is long and we’re all scared and, in flow, at least for a little while, we’re not.

Travis Rice

Art of Flight.

Jeremy J...

D...

course, Jones joined him for part of the trip. Of course, they went to hunt for spines.

paradigm shifts

These steep slopes are dotted with protrusions—huge cliffs, knobby rollovers, bus-size boulders.

They also collapse underfoot, so you’re riding mini-avalanches and dodging slough slides.

Selkirk Mountains,

Revelstoke, British Columbia.

break in the clouds, and off in the distance, a spine wall.

peak exactly opposite from where snowboarding legend

Craig Kelly

Frank Gambalie

Shane McConkey

Miles D...

Jeremy...

“At the root of all fear is separation” he says. “That’s especially true for mortal fears. But in flow, that’s gone completely.

nebulous

Dean Potter

fast followers.

barometer

Doug Ammons—

Strength is among the most baseline of all performance measures and we humans can get stronger simply by thinking hard about it.

accelerating chunking

visualization is an essential flow hack: it shortens struggle.

causes of flow is transient hypofrontality—

“EEG studies of adolescents show their normal brain-wave pattern is much closer to the alpha wave/theta wave borderline that is baseline flow.

autotelic

Roger Bannister’s

quantify ATP (adenosine triphosphate—essentially cellular energy)

Neural feedback—

Devices capable of working in action and adventure sports’ environments are only a year or two away

(Travis Pastrana

biomechatronics

Alex Honnold.

Peter Croft

Dean Potter.

On September 6, 2008—after a day spent sitting in his van and visualizing the climb—Honnold hiked to the base of Half Dome, set fingers to stone and pulled upward.

“But I remember that corner. I almost flipped off the wall. That got my attention.”

dihedral.

crux

“When Felix walked off the project,” says Walshe, “it was the darkest moment in his life. But a phobia—that’s deeply rooted fear. To face that, to come back, to trust strangers with his life, to put himself back into position to do something no one else had ever conceived of? I’ve seen plenty of astounding feats of human performance, but emotionally, Felix’s journey is the farthest I’ve ever seen an athlete come.”

Imagine having twenty-five miles of fall time to work with. Talk about possibilities for seeing lines. Talk about the potential for creative innovation. Baumgartner touched down in the desert, but sooner or later isn’t

someone going to try to land on a ski slope? How long then until we turn the space dive into the first stage of a double ski-BASE? How long until it gets stranger than that?

We’ll need intrinsic motivation and incredible cooperation.

inculcated

But what those naked spread-eagles represent a relentless challenging of the status quo, an everlasting belief in our own possibility, a playful excellence in the face of mortal consequences, well,