[petejh]

Thanks!

Guessing most of the 'dots' below '10' could be coloured pink and the ones above '10' blue?

[Rocksteady]

Pull ups: can currently do about 18. Used to be able to do 30. At that time was a 5+ boulderer, mid 6s route climber.

One armers: 1 on each arm with an engaged shoulder. Have sometimes been able to start a second one.

Boulder grade: 7A. Probs only consistently would tick 6C in a few goes though. Route grade consistent 7b in a few goes.

My thoughts on climbing grade is it will correlate most to amount of time spent climbing/training per week, second most to finger strength, and third to core strength/stability.

[k2ted]

Pull ups - 12 good ones
One armed - not a chance!
V5 normal grade
Max grade V6

Weight - 85kg

[Danny]

Am I the only one thinking that all of the correlations shown so far show no correlation at all? Give me some r² values.

Typical frequentist comment  ...did you not see the massive red clusterf*** of a plot? That's all the evidence I need that the data are poorly described by the model. Just cocking about as data is added. I'm sure the r^2 is <.5.

It has been qualitatively revealing to see the range of numbers, especially the 10, 0, 8A type ones.   

[andy popp]

My thoughts on climbing grade is it will correlate most to amount of time spent climbing/training per week, second most to finger strength, and third to core strength/stability.

Doesn't technique/skill come ahead all of those factors?

[highrepute]

It has been qualitatively revealing to see the range of numbers, especially the 10, 0, 8A type ones.   

I suppose my definition of what a pull-up is probably very strict. I always try to accelerate upwards as fast as I can, lower-down fairly slowly and start/end each pull with straight arms. And I only realised this week that I've been cheating the whole time - I now do them in tucked position (knees held in front) as this prevents leaning past the first bit - if I used that figure it'd be more like 6.

On the girls v boys thing. My female partner could do more than me last time we checked.

[remus]

My thoughts on climbing grade is it will correlate most to amount of time spent climbing/training per week, second most to finger strength, and third to core strength/stability.

Doesn't technique/skill come ahead all of those factors?

Presumably 'time spent climbing/training per week' is a pretty good approximation to that? Though admittedly if you're only training all the time your technique is going to suffer.

[andy popp]

My thoughts on climbing grade is it will correlate most to amount of time spent climbing/training per week, second most to finger strength, and third to core strength/stability.

Doesn't technique/skill come ahead all of those factors?

Presumably 'time spent climbing/training per week' is a pretty good approximation to that? Though admittedly if you're only training all the time your technique is going to suffer.

They're related perhaps, but I'm not convinced about how strongly. Frequent and regular climbing may be necessary to developing a high level of technique, but is it sufficient? Some keen, regular climbers remain complete duffers in terms of technique. And some climb beautifully from virtually the first time they touch rock.

[Fultonius]

Have any of you lot heard Tom & Olli's latest podcast on training beta podcasts?

Apparently height makes a huge difference which could further skew any pull-up/grade correlation.  For those who haven't listened, the quick summmary (as far as I understood at 4am when I couldn't sleep...) was:

The taller you are the less finger strength (and they said all other "markers" other than core strength) you need to climb a certain grade. Or put another way:

Say there was a correlation between pull ups and grades and that the model seemed do point to 8A climbers roughly being able to do, say, 20 pullups. There would be a fair bit of height based scatter as shorter people who climb 8A may, for example, need to be able to do 22, whereas taller people would only need to be able to do 18.

Worth a listen.

[Murph]

The info from Tom and Ollie was great, but I find it painful listening to Neely not knowing what to ask. IIRC, according to T&O, tall people need more core but apart from that they've got it easier.

Another datapoint,

PUs - 15 (estimate based on doing 10 very strict ones a couple of months later at 5kgs heavier bodyweight)
OAP - never even engaged at the bottom
Regular max - 7B

It's a fun little exercise this, but so much depends on what various people consider a pull up as well as the tactics, talent and so on employed to tick whatever bit of rock.

Would be great if someone had the knowledge to set up a survey to capture all the useful anthropomorphic data, height weight, waist (I'd say easier to record than waist to hip), strict pull ups, etc.

Hours spent climbing or years spent climbing would be pretty useless though I'd imagine.

[Fiend]

Fantastic. Tall people being cheating cunts 200% confirmed, at last. 

Can everyone please repost their results to include "Pull-ups on a standard 1st joint edge". This would be enlightening.

[User deactivated]

~15
0 - Have been able to do them in the past.
8B/+. All route length though.

[sxrxg]

I suspect I might be a bit of an outlier.

Pull ups: on a bar 8 if I really try hard. (can also do 5 on small beastmaker 2000 crimps though)

One armers: a jumpy one on each arm (bottom in cut rung of beastmaker 2000)

Regular max: have done a few new 7c's this year

Used to be a able to do 20 pull ups and one armers with much better form  (on a bar) when I was younger however I was struggling to climb 7a at the time. Now I have a family and climb much less however try really hard whenever I do and am climbing much harder. It seems to me that as I have got older I understand climbing better and don't spend as long trying moves I have no chance of doing, I realise this much quicker now and instead find new beta that works for me (think this is key) as often videos/other people do moves in ways I find hard/impossible. We all have our strengths in climbing and sometimes you need to be confident in your own beta even if others dismiss it, I have found this much easier to do as I have got older. Further to this I now also have a new found ability to commit and keep going even if I think I don't think I have a chance, this focus and not thinking about the fall potential or anything else is something I struggled to click into when younger whereas I now have the ability to tap into it more often (I still don't manage it every session though - especially not when stressed with work/life). Basically I think pulls ups on a bar are useless as a measure of how well someone is bouldering. I do think however there is more of a cross over between pull up ability on a small crimp and bouldering and this is what I focus on when training, not that I am doing much at the moment!

[Fiend]

Strong words there srrxgxrxg.

[Danny]

In defence of tall people, it's obvious that it's much harder to bosh out the pullups when tall. You've got to move more weight (on average) a greater distance with a greater mechanical disadvantage. I'm 193 cm and 85 kg. I work for my 20 pullups. Though on what highrepute says, my pullups are worth shit.

We have a number of physicists on the forums...it would be interesting to see a napkin prediction of how work done to do a pullup scales with height.

I've often thought that a better way of looking at the height = cheating debate is via the distribution of relative difficulty of moves between tallies and shorties. It's obvious when moves are dramatically easier for tallies, but I think these moves are in the minority for *most* styles. In contrast, many—perhaps a majority—of moves are probably very slightly harder for tallies (think resistant sequences on small holds).     

[andy_e]

Not sure it's necessarily height. Small folk with gorilla-style ape indices may have to do more work relative to their height because of longer lever lengths. This is a hypothesis, not a fact.

[teestub]

I've often thought that a better way of looking at the height = cheating debate is via the distribution of relative difficulty of moves between tallies and shorties. It's obvious when moves are dramatically easier for tallies, but I think these moves are in the minority for *most* styles. In contrast, many—perhaps a majority—of moves are probably very slightly harder for tallies (think resistant sequences on small holds).     

Not sure how this correlates with what the Lattice data show: that you can be weaker in every metric (except core) as a taller person to climb a given grade.

[Danny]

If the implication is causation I don't agree. Are you saying shorties *have* to be stronger to climb a given grade? And what is this grade? The max redpoint that completely suited your shape (not seen the lattice data)? You can't disregard the fact that for almost every climbing type measure of strength it will be easier for shorter (i.e. mostly lighter) people to achieve a certain benchmark. I obviously speculate on the distribution of moves thing...a top down approach would be to look at the height distribution of elite climbers vs the general population—'tall' in climbing is not always the same as tall in everyday life (though I am both). More to the point, 'heavy' in climbing based on slackers' benchmarking data looks to be in the 80-90 kg bracket. No where near what I'd call heavy in the general pop, even disregarding obese peeps.

[teestub]

Hopefully Remus or Tom R will pop up in a minute to spray us down with some stats!

[Danny]

I gladly await a showering from the lattice overlords.

[Murph]

It's correlation and we can only speculate as to the causal chain, but my money is on:

Strong -> 8A...

...being a lot more likely than...

...8A -> Strong

The relative merits of strength, height, core etc are simply the factors that fit the grade, so if you have max hang as a % of bodyweight you would predict a higher max grade for a tall person than for a short person. We don't need to make a value judgement about why that is, it just is. (Of course we all know it's because of cheating...)

Of course, as everyone knows, achieving bodyweight% feats of strength is easier for short people than tall. Just look at weight lifting records if you don't believe me. So this doesn't strictly mean that a given grade is easier/harder for the average tall guy in the general population.

And yeah 80 or 90kgs isn't heavy compared to the average fat knacker of course, but we aren't talking about the average person - T&O haven't looked at even the average climbing punter far less the average non-climber.

At the extreme of what a non-climber can climb Im reminded of this video about a calisthenics (whatever that means) guy who can clearly do a lot of pull ups but would probably be on the bottom right of one of those scatter plots.

[Nibile]

Despite my love for pull ups and one armers (despite the fact that they fried my elbows various times...) I can't help but think that the correlation could be biased by the fact that - probably - those who dedicate lots of time to getting strong on pull ups and one armers, dedicate equal time to getting strong fingers.
One of the above posts about pull ups on an edge was on this point also, if I got it right.

[ghisino]

pullups: in between 15 and 20+ depending on the form (kipping or not, legs straight or bent in fornt of you, etc)

one armers: zero. I need to unload myself by some 10-15 kg with a pulley system.

bouldering grade: i've climbed a few 7C's in a single session, one 7C+, two 8A traverses.

[tomtom]

The whole 'strength of X, Y or Z to bouldering grade' argument is dependant on three parts.

1. Assessing strength - which can be fairly quantitative (e.g. the Latticers max weight added to hold a small hold test and as climbing is a body weight dependant you have to normalise this to the body weight as they do etc..). What ever metric you come up with will probably not include height, technique, ape index, core strength etc.. Some of which (e.g. technique) are nigh on impossible to measure.

2. How this metric of strength relates to bouldering - which is at best partial, at worst useless. OK, so pulling on small edges is relevant to some bouldering but not to all. It has IMHO a fair amount of cross over to other strengths, but not all. So 1 armers are a shit metric of climbing ability, but a great metric of one armer ability...

3. Bouldering grades are so darned subjective/qualitative anyway... a 7B grit slab is completely different in terms of skill and strength to a manky tiny crimp sit start peak lime classic test problem etc..

So in summary you have (a) decent measurement of strength + (b) shonky to average interpretation of measurement + (c) qualitative assessment of what that measurement of strength relates to...

Therefore I would recommend:
(a) gossip about it as here, as its about as meaningful as the 3:30 at Kempton

(b) Give up and have a coffee

(c) make a business from it :D
(note smiley!)

[ghisino]

oh, just one though

i suspect that in terms of big muscles strenght test, straight-arm lat pulldowns or front lever progressions could be more relevant to climbing ability than pullups.

the idea being that the steeper the climb is, the less important it is to be able to lock off with a bent arm. (and more important to be able to do big moves straight armed)

i would be curious to see some data, if somebody has it!