[a dense loner]

To take your point "how can climbing be different" quite easily. If you don't understand the difference in putting one foot in front of the other for 100 metres and something as ridiculous and fickle as ascending a piece of rock unlike any other piece of rock then I think we've all got problems.
To take your other points on finite levels, yes that's all very well but as climbers we're nowhere near them. Take say first round first minute 9b, it's got an 8B crux for the sake of argument, how do we make this harder? I'll go out on a limb and say add another 8B move and another and another. This is physical factors alone.

[gme]

I don't know how to say this politely but i really don't think you have any idea what you are talking about. The difference between 7a and 8a is roughly the same as the difference between 8a and 9a i.e. huge and  to say that grades move in ever decreasing increments is to betray your ignorance. If anything people at the top end will hold grades down until there is a step change (obviously we forgot this with E grades) making it possible to talk about bottom end and top end of said grades. Your contention earlier that there isn't much difference between an 8b and the top end is strange to say the least. Well there is a difference and it is about 30 years.

That's polite enough.

It's not as if I can see into the future.
And more than happy to admit that I could be way, way off base.

Our ability to climb, it would seem logical to say, must ultimately be limited by our physiology and therefore finite.
So there must at some point come a "hardest grade it is possible for a human to climb" is achieved. Without considerable evolution/genetic modification, of course and that might be possible soon.

I think you're right about the time spans/effort/training that it takes to progress from 8a to 9a and how it reflects the difference between 7a and 8a.

But.

But anything which is approaching it's physical limits must become influenced by ever smaller variables.

I don't know how much further it can go, but there will come a point where, even if you could stage the exact conditions and ability of the climber, you may never achieve a repeat ascent, because something too minor to be observable is not the same.

So, I'd still contend that there must be an end point. A maximum grade, beyond which humans cannot progress.

Maybe I've implied that somehow the difference between grades gets smaller, that's not what I meant.
I mean that it takes a greater and greater effort to shave less and less from the block of "possible".

Think of a sprinter. The margins shaved from the world record time become smaller and smaller as each generation passes. The effort required to beat that target will only increase.

How can climbing be different?

And it's taken me so long to draft this on a busy afternoon that I've probably missed half the conversation...

I agree with the tapering returns as per sprinting but i think we are so far off this in climbing. I feel we will see 9c within 3 years, 9c+ within 10 and 10a within 20. And not just by Ondra either as i feel we will see a lot of people suddenly doing 9a+/b as because Ondra and Megos are doing them easy others will try and succeed. Which is kind of the point i have been making all along, if 8b is seen as really hard then its mentally hard to do it.

Move the idea that things don't get hard until 9a+ and psychologically 9a becomes easier to achieve.

[dave]

I agree with whoever commented that this more suited to the significant repeats thread rather than deserving a new thread on its own.

Move original post to "significant repeats"

That's what I should have done originally 

Mind you - so should Dave seeing he was first to reply 

Hardly my place to move it, given I had no idea who jim pope was, and I have no idea if a vintage 8b done by a 15 year old is news or not.

What is interesting to me in these types of debate is the tacit assumption that an advancement in standards, or more sponsorship available, or keeping up with global standards, is "good for the sport". There could be an argument for saying that on a small densely populated island with a finite supply of decent rock that we should be pushing for standards to increase at a snails pace if we are to have anything worthwhile left for future generations.

[Oldmanmatt]

To take your point "how can climbing be different" quite easily. If you don't understand the difference in putting one foot in front of the other for 100 metres and something as ridiculous and fickle as ascending a piece of rock unlike any other piece of rock then I think we've all got problems.
To take your other points on finite levels, yes that's all very well but as climbers we're nowhere near them. Take say first round first minute 9b, it's got an 8B crux for the sake of argument, how do we make this harder? I'll go out on a limb and say add another 8B move and another and another. This is physical factors alone.

Hmmm..

True.

But that means our grading system is to imprecise. Too subjective.

So the crux grade is perhaps more relevant?

I do appreciate the difference between sprinting and climbing, but the analogy is valid as it would be across any activity which relies on physical prowess.

Obviously I don't know what is ultimately possible, but I'm less hopeful of seeing unending progress than some posters...

We might see an individual who links 100 consecutive 8C boulder problems, whilst placing gear on lead.
Or we might not.

[Jaspersharpe]

It's not predicting unending progress to say that climbing is miles away from other sports when it comes to knowledge about training and also still has relatively tiny numbers participating.

Because of these two points I think grades will continue to increase for a very long time to come.

[petejh]

I personally think, and you obviously dont agree with me, that over-hyping young sports people can have a negative effect

    

  Gme's points don't seem negative to me, but well thought out and fair.

To those arguing that hype encourages people to do better - does it really attract and encourage athletes 'more' if you set the bar for recognition low? Or does it attract/encourage athletes more if the bar for recognition is high, and thus more time and effort is required to get a metaphorical pat on the head and a tickle behind the ears?
The best sport climber in the UK by a country mile is one of the last people you'd associate with hyperbole, self-promotion and needing external rewards. There are plenty of others - Pasquill etc. That proves media hype is definitely not a requirement for success.

[rodma]

Over hyping may well encourage a little creative writing too, or make people feel under too much pressure, or make them think they're already strong enough so can ease off on the training, or many other things I'm sure.

I don't think anyone is over hyping jim's achievement, since they haven't said that he'll definitely tick x grade next year or crush all the comps or any such nonsense.

[Johnny Brown]

in many cases the big fish in the small pond that gets transferred to the big pond often retreats back to where it is more comfortable rather than accepting its new position and trying to grow.

If there are too many tadpoles in a pond a hormone reaches a level which retards the development of all.

I suppose its the ones that can deal with being a small fish that go on to become the very best.

Or those that avoid the negative environment of the crowded pond in the first place.

Some fish thrive in a competitive, crowded environment, but many others don't. If you want to carry on with the fish analogy a fish will grow more quickly when it isn't wasting time and energy fighting others. Climbing remains a very individual pursuit and if you look at the recent top players in British climbing I'd say they tend towards the lone outsider than the clique hero.

Ambition that might have driven a climber towards significant ascents may be more easily satisfied by earning the respect of a clique of top climbers. My list of who I consider the best climbers in the UK would have significant differences from a list of the most accomplished - i.e. the best on paper. History will favour the latter.

[Oldmanmatt]

I don't know how to say this politely but i really don't think you have any idea what you are talking about. The difference between 7a and 8a is roughly the same as the difference between 8a and 9a i.e. huge and  to say that grades move in ever decreasing increments is to betray your ignorance. If anything people at the top end will hold grades down until there is a step change (obviously we forgot this with E grades) making it possible to talk about bottom end and top end of said grades. Your contention earlier that there isn't much difference between an 8b and the top end is strange to say the least. Well there is a difference and it is about 30 years.

That's polite enough.

It's not as if I can see into the future.
And more than happy to admit that I could be way, way off base.

Our ability to climb, it would seem logical to say, must ultimately be limited by our physiology and therefore finite.
So there must at some point come a "hardest grade it is possible for a human to climb" is achieved. Without considerable evolution/genetic modification, of course and that might be possible soon.

I think you're right about the time spans/effort/training that it takes to progress from 8a to 9a and how it reflects the difference between 7a and 8a.

But.

But anything which is approaching it's physical limits must become influenced by ever smaller variables.

I don't know how much further it can go, but there will come a point where, even if you could stage the exact conditions and ability of the climber, you may never achieve a repeat ascent, because something too minor to be observable is not the same.

So, I'd still contend that there must be an end point. A maximum grade, beyond which humans cannot progress.

Maybe I've implied that somehow the difference between grades gets smaller, that's not what I meant.
I mean that it takes a greater and greater effort to shave less and less from the block of "possible".

Think of a sprinter. The margins shaved from the world record time become smaller and smaller as each generation passes. The effort required to beat that target will only increase.

How can climbing be different?

And it's taken me so long to draft this on a busy afternoon that I've probably missed half the conversation...

I agree with the tapering returns as per sprinting but i think we are so far off this in climbing. I feel we will see 9c within 3 years, 9c+ within 10 and 10a within 20. And not just by Ondra either as i feel we will see a lot of people suddenly doing 9a+/b as because Ondra and Megos are doing them easy others will try and succeed. Which is kind of the point i have been making all along, if 8b is seen as really hard then its mentally hard to do it.

Move the idea that things don't get hard until 9a+ and psychologically 9a becomes easier to achieve.

Psychology will only carry us so far.
It's inevitable that there will be more people capable of climbing hard, as time goes by. Mainly because there will be more people.

It's not predicting unending progress to say that climbing is miles away from other sports when it comes to knowledge about training and also still has relatively tiny numbers participating.

Because of these two points I think grades will continue to increase for a very long time to come.

Yes.

But, I reckon it's going to slow down and it might just take a very long time indeed to see, say, 10b.

And it might get hard to know if things are moving really slowly or stalled completely.

Or it might not.

We might be on the verge of discovering some genetic trait/population/training technique (or what ever) that sends things sky rocketing.

The reason sprinting occurred to me, is that it is (perhaps, idk) the most heavily researched sport going. Nation states have pumped vast resources into optimising training etc etc.


It's opinion. My crystal ball is in for servicing and I plumb forgot to do a PHD thesis in preparation for this UKB thread.

And I never meant to imply that 8b was close to 9a...

Lots of sports are reaching the limit of their possible achievement envelope (Freediving springs to mind).

Ok, assuming I'm wrong, how far do you think it will go?

Best guess.

Idle speculation.

Because this is the equivalent of a conversation over a pint on a Friday night.

Not the UN debating Syria.

[petejh]

...
Obviously I don't know what is ultimately possible, but I'm less hopeful of seeing unending progress than some posters...

We might see an individual who links 100 consecutive 8C boulder problems, whilst placing gear on lead.
Or we might not.

Which highlights what Jasper said. It doesn't require 100 font whatevers for the grade level to rise - it would only require two 8C cruxes linked by easier climbing (placing gear or not) to be a new level. Plenty of room yet for climbing standards to get eye-bleedingly hard.

[a dense loner]

What do you mean free diving springs to mind matt? How come we're at the limits of that? Who says?

And how do you expect to have a conversation in a pub where the other guy says all the time " we will do that, or we may not" "this is possible maybe, or maybe not". It's a very strange chat were someone plays both sides of the coin at every oppurtunity, or it might not be 

[a dense loner]

I wrote that pete! 

[Johnny Brown]

Standards will continue to rise because the only measure we have is entirely subjective.

I.e. if it were sprinting the scale would be logarithmic with respect to time (that is if you can imagine sprinting taking place on one lane tracks in a world without clocks or a notion of measuring time other than canvassing opinions of the runners).

[Oldmanmatt]

What do you mean free diving springs to mind matt? How come we're at the limits of that? Who says?

And how do you expect to have a conversation in a pub where the other guy says all the time " we will do that, or we may not" "this is possible maybe, or maybe not". It's a very strange chat were someone plays both sides of the coin at every oppurtunity, or it might not be 

'Cos I'm not playing fair Dense, sorry.
I'm not playing both sides of the coin. I don't believe humans can go much further.

The Freediving debate is on going, but it does look as though there is a maximum amount of O2 that can be contained in the human blood stream. A maximum amount of dissolved CO2 and minimum that a metabolism can be dropped to.
Currently, unless I missed something, no organisation will even touch "No limits Apnea" because it generally just kills people.

I was a Trimix addict for many years, so I'm blown away by Herbert's 250 odd meters. My erstwhile Buddy, John Bennet, held the world record for SCUBA (on Trimix) at 300 mtrs.
Only 50 mtrs deeper than a Freediver!
Fuck me bendy!

I never had the guts to go below 135.

I bottled it and stopped diving completely after one accident too many.

John died.

But, it is fairly well agreed that Herbert Nichts (or how ever it's spelled) has probably gone as far as can be.

[Jaspersharpe]

But that just backs up the point that climbing is currently miles away from such physical limits.

[petejh]

I wrote that pete! 

I'm posting on the shoulders of giants!

Drugs common in hard sport climbing? I'd have thought stuff that boosts intense PE (AeroPow to all you Easterners and converts) would be beneficial for cutting-edge sport climbs.

[Johnny Brown]

Free-diving or sprinting are pointless comparisons because we don't have a tape measure or a stopwatch. So going an inch further could be three grades harder because you've no idea that it was just an inch.

I think the main limit is still psychological - what is considered possible. Otherwise kids couldn't progress to the cutting edge so fast.

[Oldmanmatt]

But that just backs up the point that climbing is currently miles away from such physical limits.

Does it?

Bollocks to it though.

Because JB IS RIGHT. As long as there are a very small number of climbers able to make the call that X is harder than Y, then infinite scope exists for "harder".

Bugger.

[petejh]

Standards will continue to rise because the only measure we have is entirely subjective.

I.e. if it were sprinting the scale would be logarithmic with respect to time (that is if you can imagine sprinting taking place on one lane tracks in a world without clocks or a notion of measuring time other than canvassing opinions of the runners).

Raises the interesting point of at what point does something become more subjective than objective. Because clearly it isn't subjective that a f8a is physically more difficult to climb than a f6a - it's objective, no matter what shape or how long your arms are or aren't. At some point it becomes subjective because humans are different shapes and sizes with different strengths and weaknesses; but the routes are objective physical things with definite physical boundaries that can be measured - if anyone was geeky enough to model them using some software. Discrete steps between grades are agreed on by consensus of different shaped/sized people, so while some subjectivity remains it isn't entirely so.

[Johnny Brown]

It would be great if you could measure/ model these things objectively, but I doubt it will ever happen. For example a successful model would be able to predict easier sequences than may yet have been discovered or combined - so it would probably downgrade everything.

[tomtom]

Isn't it wonderful. In a world where most things seem to be quantified - we participate in a sport/pastime where the measurement is completely qualitative!

[petejh]

Completely qualitatively? font 6A / font 7C - the difference isn't completely qualitative is it? Somewhere as the grades get closer maybe (the planck length of grades?) but not at wide differences.

[Oldmanmatt]

It would be great if you could measure/ model these things objectively, but I doubt it will ever happen. For example a successful model would be able to predict easier sequences than may yet have been discovered or combined - so it would probably downgrade everything.

But the route must change with each passage.
A little more polish here, an eroded crystal there.

That crimp that hurt so much, might not be quite so sharp for the second ascensionist.

That tight mono pocket, a little deeper, slightly more positive.

I surrender, can't fight fog.

[petejh]

This reminds me of a grade algorithm idea for computing objective grades that somebody once posted, and which I may have been sad enough to copy/save...:

'In the Facebook Movie there is a scene where the Facebook founders create a web site for rating women based on the pictures in the university facebook. The idea is to display pictures of two women and ask which one is 'hottest'. The computer then uses thousands of these comparisons to come up with an overall 'hotness' ranking using a pretty simple algorithm created by Prof Arpad Elo for ranking Chess players based on match results.

So why not apply the Elo algorithm to compute 'fair' climbing grades? Instead of having experts grade a climb or have climbers vote on what grade should be why not simply ask people entering a completed climb on a database whether it is easier or harder than a randomly selected different route from their logbook.

As the data builds up the computer uses the Elo algorithm to compute a numeric 'difficulty' score for every climb in the database based on lots of climb versus climb comparisons. Then the system simply maps conventional climbing grades onto ranges of the numeric Elo score (e.g. any climb with an Elo score of 2500-2700 is called 6a because a particularly famous 'benchmark' 6a has an Elo score of 2600).

The result could be an objective and self-correcting climbing difficulty grade which is consistent across geographic locations and applies to both indoor and outdoor.'
 

[Oldmanmatt]

This reminds me of a grade algorithm idea for computing objective grades that somebody once posted, and which I may have been sad enough to copy/save...:

'In the Facebook Movie there is a scene where the Facebook founders create a web site for rating women based on the pictures in the university facebook. The idea is to display pictures of two women and ask which one is 'hottest'. The computer then uses thousands of these comparisons to come up with an overall 'hotness' ranking using a pretty simple algorithm created by Prof Arpad Elo for ranking Chess players based on match results.

So why not apply the Elo algorithm to compute 'fair' climbing grades? Instead of having experts grade a climb or have climbers vote on what grade should be why not simply ask people entering a completed climb on a database whether it is easier or harder than a randomly selected different route from their logbook.

As the data builds up the computer uses the Elo algorithm to compute a numeric 'difficulty' score for every climb in the database based on lots of climb versus climb comparisons. Then the system simply maps conventional climbing grades onto ranges of the numeric Elo score (e.g. any climb with an Elo score of 2500-2700 is called 6a because a particularly famous 'benchmark' 6a has an Elo score of 2600).

The result could be an objective and self-correcting climbing difficulty grade which is consistent across geographic locations and applies to both indoor and outdoor.'
 

Because of the small sample size at the top end.

If you only had two opinions and they differed,you have no result.
If they agree you have a high probability of a completely false result.