The Psychology of Pushing the Limits

[shoredivr]

Going back into the past, there were always some who were warriors, or explorers, and it was perhaps more commonplace. People died in all kinds of ways pushing limits. Perhaps it is so unusual and newsworthy now here in the first world because we are so insulated from death and afraid of it. People here for the most part die tucked away in an institution, so there is an illusion it only happens to others.

 

[nadwidny]

Agnes is one who had me thinking along those lines when she died. IIRC, her web site before she died focused on one of several previous times she almost died. It was almost as if she thrived on coming as close to death as she could. She talked about being the only person banned from diving in areas on two continents, bans earned through risky behavior. It seemed as if she thrived on coming close to death.

And if you go through posts here on SB and elsewhere like TDS there were people feeding that by saying things like "You are so good", "You remind me of me when I was younger", "You remind me of Sheck", "What you are doing is great"...

The ego is a dangerous thing.

 

[boulderjohn]

And if you go through posts here on SB and elsewhere like TDS there were people feeding that by saying things like "You are so good", "You remind me of me when I was younger", "You remind me of Sheck", "What you are doing is great"...

The ego is a dangerous thing.

This will sound way off topic at first, but....

I can't remember which biography of Jim Morrison of the Doors I read it in, but there was a story of a time he and a bunch of other friends went to someone's house and had dinner. The host took out a bottle of Courvoisier, Morrison's favorite alcoholic beverage, and gave it to him. The message was clear--"I got this for you to drink tonight." Morrison drank it. He ended up passing out and pissing himself. Later on, he was angry and said, "You gave that to me. You were saying, 'You're the drinking man.'" He had to live up to it. He had to drink to excess because that was what was expected of him. That was what his fan base wanted him to do.

 

[drrich2]

Interesting topic. Few questions/observations.

1.) In some endeavors, like running (sprint or distance) you can strive against a goal, whether externally competitive or a personal best, and pour your heart into it with low risk of failure killing you. You could pull a muscle, be worn out and sore for days, maybe get heat exhaustion, etc…, but unless you have underlying health problems (e.g.: older, coronary artery disease) or go to ridiculous extremes (e.g.: intense long distance run in 95 degree humid weather), odds are you get 'tactile feedback' and harm without serious permanent injury.

2.) In some endeavors, like weight lifting, if you have people spotting you, you can try, and if need be others can step in and safely rescue you in case of a failure.

3.) In some endeavors, like the above, as you progress gradually, the strain/harm progresses gradually, so you can judge fairly precisely what you can and cannot do, and slowly advance as your conditioning/ability improves. Lift a little more, run a little farther...

Seems to me that while pushing the limits is psychologically stressful, you don't get quite the same tactile feedback that some land sports involve. A person may feel okay, though task loaded, until an added stressor (e.g.: free flow) tips the balance like a house of cards coming down, and the diver is overwhelmed and panics. By the time you are 'seriously strained,' the cascade of events may be headed for a fatality. With extreme diving, rescuers may be absent or not spotting you closely enough. Narcosis can creep in, perhaps without diver awareness. Add to that that susceptibility to narcosis (and they say ox tox) varies.

A problem with pushing your limits is it's hard to know just where they are on a given dive & day, and if you push to the point you find them, you're liable to kill yourself once things go that far. How many divers who 'push it' die on dives they've made the equivalent of before?

Let me put it in practical terms. I could ask some athletes how much they could bench press, or their time on a 1 mile run or to swim a given number of laps, and get a pretty set answer. But while a diver can tell me his deepest dive, or his longest, or how far he made it back into some cave maybe, or the coldest he dove…how many divers can tell me how deep, long, dark or extreme they can dive?

Scuba seems like a mighty dangerous place to go hunting your limits.

Richard.

 

[laurin]

Limits can be pushed by careful risk management and planning or by being a loose cannon. The difference between "let's see how deep I can go" and "what do we need to do to push the end of the line further". I've observed there's a small portion of divers who come to the sport of diving, proceed fast and dive a lot in short time, get all the gear but don't bother with getting the skills and taking the baby steps. Then if they're lucky they get out in a couple years by getting bored or after a close call. The sort of guys who start karate and drop out after a couple of months when the black belt didn't magically appear, or do a sky diving course and a couple of jumps just to say they're sky-divers. Pushing the scrubber, not bothering with setup dives, going out to sea in too rough weather etc are all symptoms of the risky kind of pushing-the-limits attitude, in my opinion at least...

//LN

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Let me put it in practical terms. I could ask some athletes how much they could bench press, or their time on a 1 mile run or to swim a given number of laps, and get a pretty set answer. But while a diver can tell me his deepest dive, or his longest, or how far he made it back into some cave maybe, or the coldest he dove…how many divers can tell me how deep, long, dark or extreme they can dive?

Scuba seems like a mighty dangerous place to go hunting your limits.

Which is sort of the point, I think. I enjoy many things about preparing for and planning a big dive, and I enjoy both the simple 'gee, I'm deep underwater hours away from surfacing and look at all the stuff here!' aspect and performing the specific skills necessary to execute the dive itself. But the reason I invest my time in the kind of diving I do and look forward to doing, and not something with more artificial and/or predictable metrics, is that in diving you can do everything right and still find yourself presented with a situation of unknown outcome.

That outcome will be determined almost solely by your self-control and mental reactions. In this way, complicated technical diving has a lot in common with really extreme mountaineering or hunting large, dangerous game with primitive weapons and no backup...there's an external force out of your control with which you must deal, or die. Unlike chess, knocking over your king and resetting the clock isn't an option. There's not much else in modern life (outside a war zone) where that applies anymore; someone who spent time studying the frontier thesis in school would probably have a field day with technical diving.

Someone on here has in their signature a Gary Gentile quote from Dark Descent that nicely sums it all up: "Many people in extreme sports do not recognize their limitations, and when they do, they are about to die." Gentile means it as a caution, and it should be taken as such by all of us. But it's also a promise with a corollary: that survival when things go sideways under such conditions likely means you've learned something about yourself worth knowing. We're all born and the hammer cocks...while most if not all of us very much wish to avoid an untimely demise, there are worse things in life than miscalculating your limits.

 

[Randy g]

Pushing limits? I rarely push my limits in diving but I have pushed limits in other hobbies/sports such as road racing motorcycles, completed 2 Ironbutts (ridden over 1000 miles in a day, complete mental torture), spelunking, and climbing. Being comfortable with a very small edge to stand on mentally, is a way of pushing my mental blocks and extending my limits. I chased .01's of a second on the race track for years. Ridden endurance rides of 1250+ miles in 18hrs, Climbed deeper and higher every few trips until I had maxed my gear out and was happy in doing so.

I have been an adrenaline junkie since I was about 8 yrs old and have lived to tell about it. Not without my failures and falls, broken bones and weeks in a hospital. Stay within your boundries but push them back slightly every so often and live a long strong life. The memories will last a lifetime................... literally!

 

[Kevrumbo]

Which is sort of the point, I think. I enjoy many things about preparing for and planning a big dive, and I enjoy both the simple 'gee, I'm deep underwater hours away from surfacing and look at all the stuff here!' aspect and performing the specific skills necessary to execute the dive itself. But the reason I invest my time in the kind of diving I do and look forward to doing, and not something with more artificial and/or predictable metrics, is that in diving you can do everything right and still find yourself presented with a situation of unknown outcome.

That outcome will be determined almost solely by your self-control and mental reactions. In this way, complicated technical diving has a lot in common with really extreme mountaineering or hunting large, dangerous game with primitive weapons and no backup...there's an external force out of your control with which you must deal, or die. Unlike chess, knocking over your king and resetting the clock isn't an option. There's not much else in modern life (outside a war zone) where that applies anymore; someone who spent time studying the frontier thesis in school would probably have a field day with technical diving.

Someone on here has in their signature a Gary Gentile quote from Dark Descent that nicely sums it all up: "Many people in extreme sports do not recognize their limitations, and when they do, they are about to die." Gentile means it as a caution, and it should be taken as such by all of us. But it's also a promise with a corollary: that survival when things go sideways under such conditions likely means you've learned something about yourself worth knowing. We're all born and the hammer cocks...while most if not all of us very much wish to avoid an untimely demise, there are worse things in life than miscalculating your limits.

. . .Ultimately, each person who ventures out must make his or her own decisions about how far to go and what point to turn back. There's an old saying among prospectors who comb the hills for gold here in the American West: "Gold is where you find it". You can say the same about adventure ["Adventure is where you find it"]. For that matter, you can say it about risk, about death, and about being acutely alive. . .

--from Introduction, Last Breath: Cautionary Tales From The Limits of Human Endurance by Peter Stark.

 

[Taliena]

When are you pushing the limits? I have done some serious sports. But was not good enough to reach the top, so I quit. But I tried. In diving I said directly I want to do technical diving, diving without any limits on sites where most divers never come. I am not doing all times deep dives, most of my dives are in the shallow regions, but if I go on holiday, then it must be a dive holiday with at least some 100m/330ft dives. Or good caves. Divecenters seems to react sometimes strange about the question to organise some 100+/330+ dives, but I like it. I cannot do it here. I am not a person that dives single tank to 30m, I like to do that, but not as the only dives in my holidays. But I am for sure not a person to push limits. I want to do such dives safe. And I have build up such depths, I was not really fast in the number of dives before doing my first 330ft dive.
So is technical diving pushing limits? No, absolutely not in my eyes. I will never do a worldrecord in depth, no need. But I can respect the persons who want to do this (there is a diver in Egypt planning to do a 350m dive in 2 weeks). And I like to follow their ways to do such dives, what do they practise? what kind of dives before the big dive? why do dive so deep? their fears? etc

 

[jadairiii]

“Pushing the Limits” is a loaded term and often used by people that are just doing really stupid things.

Doing any endeavor ill prepared could be considered “pushing the limits” but is it? Being properly prepared, trained and supported on a “big dive” may be much safer than a solo reef dive in 15’ of water.

But as others have stated, most of the time it is an “ego” thing, you hear these idiots posting or bragging about “personal best depths” as if it is some great accomplishment. There are those that drive home drunk that are “pushing the limits” on an otherwise simple drive.

Same when you hear someone claim they are doing a “big dive”. Big compared to who or what?

So what limits are you actually “pushing”? Your physical limits? Your intellectual limits? Your equipment’s limits?

I know for a fact that there are those that believe some of my diving (or other activities) “push the limits” yet I am always quick to correct them explaining that with the proper team, equipment and mind set it is actually very easy and well within the “limits”. A recent long distance swim race I was part of would be consisted by some to be “pushing the limits” (distance, water temp, conditions, nasty critters) but I would disagree; we had a good team, good support and backup safety equipment. Simple.

Reality is when I hear the terms “big dive” or “pushing the limits” my BS meter really pegs.