“Up until recently, it was almost an established fact that all [action sports athletes] were chronically-under-aroused and they are just seeking the next thrill around the next corner,“ says Dr Woodman.

But in actual fact, according to Dr Woodman, this assumption is false. The pursuit of that temporary sense of euphoria isn’t the only motivation for most action sports athletes. Nor is it the feeling of box-ticking sense of achievement from having done something new. He says:

“If you ask someone: ‘Why did you do this?’ They might well say: ‘To achieve something I didn’t think I could do’. [But] why wouldn’t knitting a jumper not provide them with a sense of achievement?” Instead, Dr Woodman says, the appeal of action sports is far broader – because fear does many other things to your brain too.

Keep calm and embrace your fears

The positive effects of regular exposure to scary situations is something big wave surfer Easkey Britton appreciates. “Fear can be our greatest teacher and it feels more like a companion than a demon in bigger waves,” she says. Easkey was the first female surfer in Ireland to ride 15-foot waves off the cliffs of Moher. She’s won British and Irish National Surf Titles and was the first Irish woman to be nominated for a Billabong XXL Big Wave Surfing Award.

For Easkey, facing her fears when surfing big waves enables her to trust herself more completely, as she’s forced to put her faith in her long hours of training and practice. She says that it is a “total act of surrender” where she has to let go of all control and really listen to herself:

“Surfing, it teaches us to let go, to keep calm and not panic even when we are being washing-machined beneath a watery avalanche and your body is screaming at you to kick, to fight, to struggle… which is a little like life.”

“It teaches you to keep calm even when you’re being washing-machined beneath a watery avalanche and your body is screaming at you to kick, to fight, to struggle…”

Fear also keeps Easkey in the present and helps to allay irrational fears – both when surfing and in real life – in a similar way to mindfulness. “When I began to focus on the “what ifs”, the demons in my head creating (false) expectations, I overcame it using mindfulness. By really being present, taking it moment by moment, allowing space for what wanted or needed to emerge.”

Be smart, go jump off a cliff

The idea that something as dangerous as wingsuiting can be meditative – or have positive mental effects – might seem strange to some. Statistically it’s one of the most dangerous things a person can do. A 2012 study by University of Colorado found that a jumper will suffer a severe injury on average once every 500 jumps. All too often these severe injuries are fatal.

Among the unlucky ones was Shane McConkey, a skiing legend who took up BASE jumping and wingsuiting before pioneering the “ski-wingsuit-BASE jump” a specialty which involved skiing off a cliff before flying with a wingsuit and then finally opening a parachute. On 26th March 2009, McConkey died in Italy after his ski binding got stuck, sending into a spin which meant he couldn’t deploy his parachute on time.

But despite being known for his naked back flips, out-there alterego “Saucer Boy” and crude practical jokes, McConkey was far from just a crazy thrill-seeker. He was also described as a “scientist”, “brilliant mind” and “innovator” in the 2013 Red Bull-funded documentary “McConkey”.

“Like a lot of medical doctors and engineers, these athletes are intelligent, switched-on people who know full well that if they mess up they’re dead,” says Dr Eric Brymer, a specialist in the psychology of extreme sports from the Leeds Beckett University.

Nathan Jones confirms that far from being an impulsive act, there is a lot of thought and planning that goes into BASE jumping. He says: “People go on about adrenaline junkies, but if you start to break down extreme sports and the way people approach them, the people involved are more like nerds than adrenaline junkies.”

Learning from fear

Treating fear as “information” that must be factored into rational decision making is certainly something that seems widespread among action sports pros. Olympic snowboarder Jenny Jones, who won a bronze medal at the most recent winter games in Sochi, consciously uses fear to inform her decision-making processes.

She says: “I first assess the type of fear I am feeling. Am I just feeling nervous and excited about attempting a bigger jump? Or am so scared that I am losing all the feeling in my body to the point that I won’t be able to do the jump and then I’ll crash? If it’s the latter, then it’s too soon to try that trick yet so I’ll stop there and try something easier and then go back to it.”

“I think technically about what I’m going to do and I try to visualise it which helps me to override the fear. Visualising how it looks or watching someone else do it always helps me because I try to repeat each step in my head and try to follow that ingrained instruction.”

In short, it’s never a question of just hucking yourself off a jump and hoping it will end up fine. Action sports are much more about calculated risk than blind optimism.

“There is a misconception that […] people who do these sports only see the reward,” says sport scientist Dr Woodman. “But in fact, it turns out they are very high in [what’s known as] ‘punishment sensitivity’, because they know full well what the worst case scenario can be.”

A rationalist who’s an expert at processing information from multiple sources, takes a nerdy approach to preparation and enjoys the calming, meditative effects of their favourite pastime? It sounds more like a description of a chess-player than a BASE jumping enthusiast. And yet, according to the experts, these are the kinds of people that make excellent action sports athletes.