When I was in college, back before I ever dreamed I would help people tell their own survival

stories at this magazine, I had an incident of my own.

I was a newbie climber on spring break in Nevada and I agreed to go with my friends who

were only a little more experienced than I was on a multi-pitch route that I frankly

had no business being on.

To keep a long story short, what should have taken 4 or 5 hours took 16 and I spent a

chilly night in shorts and a t-shirt out in the desert, several hundred feet of a climb,

looking at the lights in the distance of the Las Vegas strip, certain I would have to

be rescued.

We were luckier than we deserved and eventually made it to the top of the 800-foot wall where

we could hike down the other side, but one truth has stayed with me nearly two decades

later.

We can push our bodies so much further than we think is possible.

We've all heard tales of people who lift cars off children and it's not that adrenaline

makes you stronger.

We've always had the strength to lift six or seven times our body weight, but we are

evolutionarily programmed to let our fear and pain limit what our bodies can do.

Yes, adrenaline really, really helps prime your body and contract your muscles while

also conveniently delaying sensations of pain.

But even while exercising, we typically only exert 60% of our muscle mass, meaning physiologically,

we are all brimming with unlocked potential.

It's been notoriously hard for scientists to study since conditions come about without

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