[jwi]

From this excellent blogpost: https://www.thinkingclimbing.com/2023/12/what-is-average-height-of-best.html

• The best male lead climbers are around 174 cm tall and the best boulderers around 175 cm tall.
  The best female lead climbers are around 163 cm tall and the best boulderers around 164 cm tall.
  The best male climbers are on average 4 cm shorter than their non-climbing peers and female climbers around 1 cm shorter.
  In both, men's and women's categories, the best boulderers are taller than the best lead climbers.
  The difference between bouldering and lead climbing has been shrinking during the last decade, especially since 2019.
  It is harder to maintain consistently good results in bouldering than in lead climbing.

The analysis is pretty solid. Borderline ‘I can't believe someone provide me with this for free’-quality. To be much better, you would have to throw some money at it, imho.

[Wellsy]

Shorties rule I guess

Although actually I think it's more that short people weigh less tbh. Being 5" taller wouldn't make their fingers any stronger after all, but they'd weigh 15kgs more probably

[jwi]

Shorties rule I guess

But not too short, as the data show. There is also less variation in height among elite competition climbers than in the general population.

[Duma]

Not read, but I would guess that the general population overstate their height to some extent?

Surprised there's not a greater height (weight) diff between lead and bouldering tbh. Wonder if that would have been true pre olympics.

[edshakey]

The analysis is pretty solid. Borderline ‘I can't believe someone provide me with this for free’-quality. To be much better, you would have to throw some money at it, imho.

I was very impressed at first glance, still am to an extent. But couldn't let this go by:

Before you ask, the super-tall outlier is Paul Jenft of France at mighty 198 cm. He is an outlier indeed, given that the next tallest climber measures 188 cm, Meichi Narasaki from Japan, and then Adam Ondra from Czechia with 186 cm

Not sure how anyone could read this and not be skeptical. So I looked it up, and sure enough, the IFSC list his height as 198. However I'm pretty convinced it's a mistake.

For example, in 2021 he made lead finals at Chamonix and lined up on the stage between Stefano Ghisolfi and Luka Potočar, seen here at 1:09:46 . IFSC lists their heights as 169cm and 177cm respectively (very plausible). Not sure if I'm going crazy, but to me there's no way Jenft is a full 21cm taller than Potočar. Just looking at other videos too, of him climbing and seeing others do the same bloc, he just doesn't look quite that big.

Another method of comparison is Meichi Narasaki lining up next to Rishat Khaibullin at Hachioji combined final in 2019 (188cm vs 170cm) at 12:02 here https://www.youtube.com/live/hZ7Gmllr-a8. Looks remarkably similar to Jenft and Ghisolfi, and yet there's meant to be 9cm difference between the two comparisons.

Also, googling Paul Jenft height yields only one other relevant result, which says he is 186cm. There is no timestamp on the profile (relevant because Jenft is only 20, so old articles could list height before he reached his adult height), but it does refer to results from 2023, so it would appear to be up to date.

I'm not 100% sure I'm right, but I'm pretty sure. This report later talks about how Jenft skews a finding by 0.5cm. Seems crazy to have him kept in the dataset, since it's not just incorrect data, but it's having a sizeable affect on findings. If you're going to call out an outlier, surely you check that it's still worth including.

[IanP]

I was very impressed at first glance, still am to an extent. But couldn't let this go by:

Before you ask, the super-tall outlier is Paul Jenft of France at mighty 198 cm. He is an outlier indeed, given that the next tallest climber measures 188 cm, Meichi Narasaki from Japan, and then Adam Ondra from Czechia with 186 cm

Not sure how anyone could read this and not be skeptical. So I looked it up, and sure enough, the IFSC list his height as 198. However I'm pretty convinced it's a mistake.

Indeed, from an interview in October:

What's your particular strength?
I’m good at analyzing methods, tactics, and technique. I find it easy to complete the routes and I'm quite good technically. I have some physical shortcomings but I make up for that with my size!

What do you mean?
I'm 1.90m tall, which is rare in climbing. In the world's Top 100, only two of us are that tall, but I've turned this weakness to my advantage.

https://groupebpce.com/en/all-the-latest-news/news/2023/sport-climbing-paul-jenft-on-his-way-to-the-top-of-his-discipline#:~:text=Paul%20Jenft%2C%20a%20sport%20climber,personality%20in%20the%20following%20interview.

[IanP]

Otherwise I agree seems like a good quality and in depth discussion of the subject.  The fact that top climbers are overall a bit shorter than the average for the population (only just for women) confirms what can be observed from  quick examination but it's interesting that they also have less variance than the population. I wonder if the fact that setting has to take into account the size of climbers acts as a reinforcement for this trend?  Do top outdoor climbers have more variance in height?

[Fiend]

Woah, wait a minute, is this saying that when competition problems are specificially and meticulously set for a generally known field to provide an all round test of climbing ability including for average / slightly shorter climbers and not just set to be abruptly punitive for short climbers in "if you can't reach it like others can you're fucked" sort of way (gritstone, I'm looking at you here), then it tends to be the best all round average / slightly shorter climbers who do well at those problems?!?!

[Ross Barker]

I believe Billy Ridal mentioned something about this in the Careless Torque pod. The gist of it was that comps in particular were generally slightly skewed against the tall, because they had to be not skewed against the short.

If a shorter climber couldn't reach a certain hold or make a certain span, there'd be an uproar, and understandably so. Whereas if a taller climber had to fold into a tiny little box, they would just be considered too inflexible and that's the end of it.

Obvious tall outliers excluded of course, Ondra being Ondra and Hojer being a master of alternate beta.

It's just a result of easy-for-the-tall moves being so much more glaringly obvious compared to easy-for-the-short moves, and impossible-for-the-short moves being generally more common than impossible-for-the-tall moves.

FWIW I am reasonably tall and often climb problems which my 164cm friend refers to as "morpho bullshit"

[jwi]

The analysis is pretty solid. Borderline ‘I can't believe someone provide me with this for free’-quality. To be much better, you would have to throw some money at it, imho.

I was very impressed at first glance, still am to an extent. But couldn't let this go by:

Before you ask, the super-tall outlier is Paul Jenft of France at mighty 198 cm. He is an outlier indeed, given that the next tallest climber measures 188 cm, Meichi Narasaki from Japan, and then Adam Ondra from Czechia with 186 cm

Not sure how anyone could read this and not be skeptical. So I looked it up, and sure enough, the IFSC list his height as 198. However I'm pretty convinced it's a mistake.

The author has been made aware of this error in IFSC's database. However, when corrected it just strengthen his conclusion that elite comp climbers are a bit smaller than average and with less variation. Clearly the author has not watched a lot of comps irl.

Much to the author's credit all data sources are explicitly given and the source-code for all analysis is online, so anyone supicious of the work can check it and re-calculate with almost no effort.

I'm mostly worried about the quality of the measurements. I do not know if the height on IFSC's athelete pages are self-reported, reported by their federation, or from direct measurement (when doing the BMI screening for example.) I suspect they are self-reported, and might be a bit about 1 cm under full adult height for some (underfed men rarely reach their full height until they are 20 yo).

[Never trust a man when he answer questions you have no business asking: his height, his weight or how much he earns]

For this reason, I would trust antromorphic studies with actual measurements more, even if the sample size would be smaller. From memory, antromorphic studies on elite climbers says the same (the average male is about 175). At some point I made a data sheet of the self-reported/googleble height of every 9a+ climber in the world and also found that the average male 5.15 climber was 174 cm or so.

I found the histogram, I made



Cannot be bothered to look up the data again.

[Reprobate_Rob]

How is this still news to people? Surely the recipe has been know for ages? Be short (weigh less, smaller lever effect etc.), have long arms (reach further). Being tall only helps on slab/vert things and as mentioned, comp climbing would be shit if a problems was obviously won because a shorty just couldn't reach (a BBC final between Barrans and Ned springs to mind here)

[edshakey]

The author has been made aware of this error in IFSC's database. However, when corrected it just strengthen his conclusion that elite comp climbers are a bit smaller than average and with less variation. Clearly the author has not watched a lot of comps irl.

Much to the author's credit all data sources are explicitly given and the source-code for all analysis is online, so anyone supicious of the work can check it and re-calculate with almost no effort.

I'm mostly worried about the quality of the measurements. I do not know if the height on IFSC's athelete pages are self-reported, reported by their federation, or from direct measurement (when doing the BMI screening for example.) I suspect they are self-reported, and might be a bit about 1 cm under full adult height for some (underfed men rarely reach their full height until they are 20 yo).

[Never trust a man when he answer questions you have no business asking: his height, his weight or how much he earns]

For this reason, I would trust antromorphic studies with actual measurements more, even if the sample size would be smaller. From memory, antromorphic studies on elite climbers says the same (the average male is about 175). At some point I made a data sheet of the self-reported/googleble height of every 9a+ climber in the world and also found that the average male 5.15 climber was 174 cm or so.

I found the histogram, I made



Cannot be bothered to look up the data again.

I wasn't suspicious so much of the general methodology of the findings, just that this was a clear oversight. And sure, I could go and check the code, and create my own attempt at a dataset, but realistically that's a huge job.

A huge job which backs up your point too. Even ignoring errors like Jenft's, the lack of transparency when it comes to the heights quoted makes the whole dataset, and therefore findings from it, pretty meaningless. The whole paper hinges on this dataset, so while it's an impressive bit of work, I can't say i'll believe anything that tries to be more than just a broad handwavey conclusion, ie something we already knew.

I wonder if the fact that setting has to take into account the size of climbers acts as a reinforcement for this trend?  Do top outdoor climbers have more variance in height?

Agreed, I would find an outdoor one much more interesting (removes the potential routesetting bias, in favour of a hopefully less important first ascent-ionist bias).

[Stu Littlefair]

The only thing surprising about this thread is that people are describing a height of 174 as short.

[Moo]

Silence pint size

[rodma]

The only thing surprising about this thread is that people are describing a height of 174 as short.

You and me both thinking that is not short, says as much about our age as our height. 

That is, if the general grumbling about the state of things hadn't already put us clearly in the "out to pasture" camp

[teestub]

The only thing surprising about this thread is that people are describing a height of 174 as short.

174cm 5 foot 8.5 inches for those like me that still cannot quite convert to cm for height despite leaving everything else imperial behind!

Apparently UK average is 5’10.5”, so as someone over 6 foot would be ‘tall’ I guess it makes sense for someone more than 2” the other way to be ‘short’. Any further deviation from the mean would be ‘tiny’ or ‘massive’ 😄

[jwi]

(Suggested endogeneity: had calory-restrictions during long periods in puberty. But I like observational studies that makes zero efforts to explain the variation. Because without first principles that is usually just a rabbit hole)

[ferret]

I'd describe the average height in this data as on the cusp of medium and short.
Do you think that competition climbing weighs more to the shorter end than rock climbing? Maybe a product of the setters being able to put holds wherever they want.
When I think of the best rock climbers there's a good spread of heights but the majority wouldn't be described as short.

[remus]

I'm mostly worried about the quality of the measurements. I do not know if the height on IFSC's athelete pages are self-reported, reported by their federation, or from direct measurement (when doing the BMI screening for example.) I suspect they are self-reported, and might be a bit about 1 cm under full adult height for some (underfed men rarely reach their full height until they are 20 yo).

Indeed. To improve on the analysis further, I think it would also be useful to know at what time the measurements were taken and if they're ever updated. If the system is like "the first time you compete in an IFSC event your details are added to the athletes page and then never updated" there may be an issue with heights being under-reported when athletes grow.

On finding better data, I think Volker said in an interview with Megos that at some events (maybe even a full season?) he took height + weight measurements for the purposes of monitoring athlete wellbeing. I'd guess that'd be fairly high quality data, albeit limited (which is another discussion!)

[stone]

My impression is that if things were greatly exagerated, eg a 1mm climber would have an enormous advantage over a 10m climber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allometry

But such effects are lost in the noise of the vast range of talent and route setting bias etc. So basically, for climbing outside, people can be any hight and be great or crap, and for comp climbing, if people are sort of within what is set for, they can be great or crap.

[stone]

In principle, the shorter a climber was, the slighter their optimal build would be. But in reality, very slight build and shortness is not a normal combination for humans in general and that is reflected in climbers.

[Fultonius]

What all this is saying is that it's no fecking surprise Stefano, Bosi, Simon Lorenzi etc. are all the best in the world...

Ondra is almost the most surprising outlier! (Esp in the plot above where the 9b, 9b+ and 9c candle is all him!)

And....shut the FU shorties, trying being 182/80kg and see how easy it is to climb 8a by "lanking past the hard moves"     

My personal, unscientific observation is that tall people have a general advantage up to "advanced" grades (mid 7s on sport), but then there's an inflection point and then it (generally) becomes advantageous to be smaller in the elite grades (to a point).  [size6pt] and this suits my worldview....[/size]

[Fultonius]

I'm mostly worried about the quality of the measurements. I do not know if the height on IFSC's athelete pages are self-reported, reported by their federation, or from direct measurement (when doing the BMI screening for example.) I suspect they are self-reported, and might be a bit about 1 cm under full adult height for some (underfed men rarely reach their full height until they are 20 yo).

Indeed. To improve on the analysis further, I think it would also be useful to know at what time the measurements were taken and if they're ever updated. If the system is like "the first time you compete in an IFSC event your details are added to the athletes page and then never updated" there may be an issue with heights being under-reported when athletes grow.

On finding better data, I think Volker said in an interview with Megos that at some events (maybe even a full season?) he took height + weight measurements for the purposes of monitoring athlete wellbeing. I'd guess that'd be fairly high quality data, albeit limited (which is another discussion!)

Without delving too deep into the "issues" with IFSC data, if it's self/member state-reported or in any way....shall we say....generous.... then I would not be in the slightest surprised if the data is a few cm under-reporting....   It's not hard to slouch a few CM to bump your BMI score when you only weigh 45kg...   /controversial   I did notice a few years back that certain underweight athletes suddenly didn't have a weight quoted on their IFSC page....

[stone]

To me, the fact that both Steve Dunning and Pete Dawson climbed Hubble as one of their hardest routes demonstrates that other factors outweigh the basic physics of body form scaling etc.

In theory, a short slightly built climber would be optimal and as hight increased, a stockier build would become more necessary. But Pete is short and stocky whilst Steve is tall and slight. And yet they both climbed Hubble and very very few other people can.

[Duma]

In theory, a short slightly built climber would be optimal and as hight increased, a stockier build would become more necessary.

this doesn't make sense to me? why? I would assume the opposite

[Fiend]

What all this is saying is that it's no fecking surprise Stefano, Bosi, Simon Lorenzi etc. are all the best in the world...

Ondra is almost the most surprising outlier! (Esp in the plot above where the 9b, 9b+ and 9c candle is all him!)

And....shut the FU shorties, trying being 182/80kg and see how easy it is to climb 8a by "lanking past the hard moves"     

My personal, unscientific observation is that tall people have a general advantage up to "advanced" grades (mid 7s on sport), but then there's an inflection point and then it (generally) becomes advantageous to be smaller in the elite grades (to a point).  [size6pt] and this suits my worldview....[/size]

Try being 173/80kg you athletic twat and also try getting the font size function right too :p

But nice hot spicy take about under-reporting height to fit into the BMI limits 

[Fultonius]

Try being 173/80kg you athletic twat and also try getting the font size function right too :p

 

[Fiend]

TBH I only replied to tease you about the font size function 

[duncan]

The only thing surprising about this thread is that people are describing a height of 174 as short.

174cm 5 foot 8.5 inches for those like me that still cannot quite convert to cm for height despite leaving everything else imperial behind!

Apparently UK average is 5’10.5”, so as someone over 6 foot would be ‘tall’ I guess it makes sense for someone more than 2” the other way to be ‘short’. Any further deviation from the mean would be ‘tiny’ or ‘massive’ 😄

Mean for UK males in 2021 is 178cm (5’10”, in 2021) if they self-report, 175.5cm (5’9”, in 2019) when a (n=~ 2000 IIRC; hopefully representative) sample are measured by independent investigators.

Women are 161.9cm when measured.

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/health-survey-for-england/2021/part-4-trends

[teestub]

Ondra is almost the most surprising outlier! (Esp in the plot above where the 9b, 9b+ and 9c candle is all him!)

I feel like Ondra's height should come with an asterix and a correction for 'neck factor'

[stone]

In theory, a short slightly built climber would be optimal and as hight increased, a stockier build would become more necessary.

this doesn't make sense to me? why? I would assume the opposite

The strength of muscles/tendons etc increases roughly in proportion to cross sectional area and so to the square of increases in height. Weight increases to the cube of increase in height. So if an identically proportioned person doubles in height, they become 2x2=4 times as strong but 2x2x2=8 times as heavy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allometry#Allometric_scaling

[Duma]

yes, so taller people need to be thinner.

[stone]

To keep the same strength to weight ratio, taller people would have to be stockier. That phenomenon is observed when animals are compared

A classic example discussed by Galileo in his Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences is the skeleton of mammals. The skeletal structure becomes much stronger and more robust relative to the size of the body as the body size increases.[13] Allometry is often expressed in terms of a scaling exponent based on body mass, or body length (snout–vent length, total length, etc.). A perfectly allometrically scaling organism would see all volume-based properties change proportionally to the body mass, all surface area-based properties change with mass to the power of 2/3, and all length-based properties change with mass to the power of 1/3.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allometry#Allometric_scaling

[Duma]

Weight increases with cube of height, strength with square.
A taller person of the same shape ("stockiness") will have a lower strength to weight ratio.
If they were stockier, their strength would improve but no more (probably less) than their weight.

What am I missing?

Also - your argument fails the sniff test - good tall climbers are virtually all skinny, whereas plenty of short decent climbers are "stocky" (relatively).

[spidermonkey09]

Its the gap between rigidly applied theory and reality.

[stone]

Duma, if it mattered whether someone could do a pull up (as a simplified example), don't you agree that the minimum amount of "stockiness" compatible with that would increase as the climber got taller?

[stone]

Its the gap between rigidly applied theory and reality.

Totally, my original point was that other factors vastly outweigh the biomechanics of scaling between climbers of different heights.

[IanP]

The only thing surprising about this thread is that people are describing a height of 174 as short.

174cm 5 foot 8.5 inches for those like me that still cannot quite convert to cm for height despite leaving everything else imperial behind!

Apparently UK average is 5’10.5”, so as someone over 6 foot would be ‘tall’ I guess it makes sense for someone more than 2” the other way to be ‘short’. Any further deviation from the mean would be ‘tiny’ or ‘massive’ 😄

Mean for UK males in 2021 is 178cm (5’10”, in 2021) if they self-report, 175.5cm (5’9”, in 2019) when a (n=~ 2000 IIRC; hopefully representative) sample are measured by independent investigators.

Women are 161.9cm when measured.

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/health-survey-for-england/2021/part-4-trends

If you dig into the data age has a significant impact on measured height.  Though there's some variability on the age group heights (maybe due to sample size) you only get to 175.5 due to effect of shorter older people, the mean for 16-44 is somewhere around 177 to 178.

[nik at work]

The only thing surprising about this thread is that people are describing a height of 174 as short.

Wot Stu sed

[Wellsy]

5' 8.5" is definitely on the shorter side for an adult man, no? Like I'm 5' 11" and 80kgs and I definitely don't consider myself a big guy, more average

[joel182]

5' 8.5" is definitely on the shorter side for an adult man, no? Like I'm 5' 11" and 80kgs and I definitely don't consider myself a big guy, more average

Average height for a UK 19 year old is 5'10"
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_human_height_by_country

[T Loughlin]

5' 8.5" is definitely on the shorter side for an adult man, no? Like I'm 5' 11" and 80kgs and I definitely don't consider myself a big guy, more average

I'm 5 foot 5 and anyone who's 5' 8" describing themselves as short should take a walk in my VAT-free 14 year old jogging bottoms to see how short they feel.

[IanP]

5' 8.5" is definitely on the shorter side for an adult man, no? Like I'm 5' 11" and 80kgs and I definitely don't consider myself a big guy, more average

I'm 5 foot 5 and anyone who's 5' 8" describing themselves as short should take a walk in my VAT-free 14 year old jogging bottoms to see how short they feel.

Based on a 5'10 average for 16 to 44 ( see my earlier post) the a single deviation falls at approx 5'7 and 6' 1 , giving nearly 70% or men between the those heights and 16% shorter and higher respectively. Seems a decent place to start for a definition of short and tall.

Though to be honest it could be more realistic to view 25% of people on each side to be short or tall with 50% as "average" which would probably place short at more like 5'8.

Wherever it is I'm looking forward to slightly smaller but still average people stopping accusing me (just under 6' these days) of lanking things 

[36chambers]

5' 8.5" is definitely on the shorter side for an adult man, no? Like I'm 5' 11" and 80kgs and I definitely don't consider myself a big guy, more average

I'm 5 foot 5 and anyone who's 5' 8" describing themselves as short should take a walk in my VAT-free 14 year old jogging bottoms to see how short they feel.

Based on a 5'10 average for 16 to 44 ( see my earlier post) the a single deviation falls at approx 5'7 and 6' 1 , giving nearly 70% or men between the those heights and 16% shorter and higher respectively. Seems a decent place to start for a definition of short and tall.

Though to be honest it could be more realistic to view 25% of people on each side to be short or tall with 50% as "average" which would probably place short at more like 5'8.

Wherever it is I'm looking forward to slightly smaller but still average people stopping accusing me (just under 6' these days) of lanking things 

Alas, you've forgot to account for half the population. Which according to the wiki link estimates the overall average for 19 year olds, in the UK, to be 171.0 cm (5 ft 7+1⁄2 in). So going with your 50% as "average" reasoning, this would put lanky climbers as anyone above 5'9.5

[sirlockoff]

Ondra is almost the most surprising outlier! (Esp in the plot above where the 9b, 9b+ and 9c candle is all him!)

I feel like Ondra's height should come with an asterix and a correction for 'neck factor'

https://youtu.be/-4v9sBO_RMg?t=184

[SA Chris]

You and me both thinking that is not short, says as much about our age as our height. 

midgets of the world unite

[rodma]

You and me both thinking that is not short, says as much about our age as our height. 

midgets of the world unite

I remember when I was growing up being told that 5'7" was average height, so I wouldn't be that far off.

Is funny how (notwithstanding a late growth spurt) obvious it is that that was no longer the case given I was the shortest in my year, the year below that and the one below that one.

[SA Chris]

What matters is that you and other said midget have climbed way harder than I ever did...

[rodma]

I'm not sure the m word is in the current vernacular,  but vertically challenged could be confusing given the arbitrary sport/hobby in discussion