In 2008, Alex Honnold completed the first free-solo rock climbing ascent of Yosemite’s Half Dome, climbing the mountain’s 2000’ vertical face without a rope or other safety devices. At that point, he had committed nearly twenty years of his life to climbing. He was, without a doubt, “into” his craft. However, he decided to skip any serious preparation for the Half Dome climb, practicing the route with a rope just two days before his planned free-solo attempt. He hoped to bank on his decades of experience as a climber, rather than continue to prepare for the specific mission ahead. During the ascent, he ran into a tough section requiring a movement that he was not confident in performing. He froze and struggled to continue, but finally passed the obstacle and successfully finished. The climbing world lauded his accomplishment as a momentous achievement, but he viewed it differently. In a TED talk describing his climb, he stated, “I was unsatisfied…I knew that I’d gotten away with something. I didn’t want to be a lucky climber. I wanted to be a great climber.”

In 2017, he returned to Yosemite to attempt the first free-solo of El Capitan’s 3000’ rock wall. This time, he was determined to succeed through more than luck. He spent a year practicing the climb with a rope, breaking it into sections and repeating them until he knew each handhold by memory. During this time, he found a weak spot in his performance. To pass a part of the route, he needed to be able to reach out to a foothold with his leg, but found it to be difficult. To improve his flexibility for this move, he began a stretching routine which he completely daily for the year leading up to the climb. He went on to complete the climb smoothly and with much more confidence than at Half Dome.

Honnold worked everyday for a year to master a specific movement that he would perform just once on a single climb. He had nothing to gain, but his reputation and only his own life at stake. Donning an SCBA mask is a skill that we perform at every single fire and our speed and proficiency may mean the difference between life and death for the citizens we serve. Yet, how many of us take the time to practice this vital skill everyday, let alone every shift? The same may be said about stretching lines, forcing doors, throwing ladders, or performing searches. Lives literally hang in the balance of our ability to perform these skills quickly and flawlessly, but for various reasons we may fail to practice them regularly.

It is easy for us to fall into a rut where we begin to lean on luck rather than skill. Our state certification says that we are a firefighter, as does our job title and the badge on our uniform. We have shirts proclaiming our status on a fire department and maybe a sticker on our vehicle. However, none of these objects have any bearing on our actual skill level. We tout our years of service as a measure of our abilities, but it is the quality of the experiences during that time, and how we learned and grew from them, that truly matters. We slide to the side during training and don’t attend outside classes and conferences to avoid exposing our weaknesses. We feign proficiency so long that our ego allows us to believe our own charade. We go to fires and are successful, but are we skilled and performing well or are we just getting lucky?

Repetitive training aimed at attaining mastery, not just mediocrity, is the difference between competence and coincidence. A humble, honest, objective critique of our own performance, like Honnold’s, is the only way to expose our weaknesses, so that we may improve. We should strive to perform at our best for the citizens, our team, and our families at home. We must put forth the effort and action to achieve excellence, rather than rely on luck while hiding behind the facade of hollow words, excuses, and assumed capability. We don’t want to be lucky firefighters, we want to be great firefighters.