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How tall are the best competitions climbers? (Read 3997 times)

Fiend

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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"   :chair: :chair: :chair: :chair:  :lol:

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  :worms:

Fultonius

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

 :fishing:

Fiend

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

duncan

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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

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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

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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

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yes, so taller people need to be thinner.

stone

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

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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

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Its the gap between rigidly applied theory and reality.

stone

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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

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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

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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

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

Wellsy

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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

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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

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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

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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  8)

36chambers

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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  8)

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

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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

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


midgets of the world unite :)

rodma

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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

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

rodma

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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  :whistle:

 

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