[Zods Beard]

Can you be gay at 6?

[Andy Harris]

Glad that thread provoked a good bit of debate.

And to prove my point if I could be bothered to cut & paste the antics of the worlds best 14-20 year olds over the past month it would ammount to multiple pages (Ondra, Woods, Robinson, Landman, various frenchies, poles, unknowns etc etc.

What has staggered me the most is the utter pillage of the Rocklands by Robinson & Woods. These guys have basically ticked all the hardest problems in this massive area in rapid time. These are problems it has taken Fred pretty much 10years of 3 month sieges to the rocklands to put up. They even had the cheek to do loads of them ina  day and put up harder ones on their days off. Robinsons 1.5h ascent of the problem fred descxribes as the hardest he has ever done and that took him several years is pretty outrageous.

So back to the original debate and maybe a new question. I saw a picture of Paul Robinson and it would be fair to say he has the body of a small pre-pubescent girl who some might consider alarmingly overweight. I'd guess he is around 8stone. Fred must weigh in at 12-14 stone. Basically he's at least 50% bigger. Now Fred is alarmingly good at pulling on small crimps and small crimps never seem to bother him. For guys like Robinson it must be significantly easier to pull on these due to their lesser mass. For someone of Fred's size to pull on those crimps he must be so much stronger. As a reference Malc took 10 years to repeat board problems he did as an 18 year old as it took him this long to gain the neccessary strength to pull his bigger frame up the same problems. Maybe this bias is less so with non crimpy holds.

Will these guys get crapper as they get older and bigger (the history shows the opposite)? Will they get worse pulling on crimps but better on more burly stuff.

I seem to have got a little lost in my stories and witterings with a ramplings. Maybe their is a question in their somewhere and I'm sure you're the ones to try and answer it.

Have a good wend.

[travs]

Hi Andy how you doing? I think the other thing about weight is the rate at which you wear down, skin and muscle fatigue etc. If you weigh 50% of somebody else then the amount of stress placed on skin by pulling on small crimps must be considerably less. This in turn means that you must get more gos on a given problem which in turn means you can get problems much quicker. It's like climbing at Rubicon, you often have to walk away because your skin has gone not your body and what could have been a full session on a problem turns into a few gos? This in turn means it takes days and not hours to tick some problems.

[Paul B]

Hi Andy how you doing? I think the other thing about weight is the rate at which you wear down, skin and muscle fatigue etc. If you weigh 50% of somebody else then the amount of stress placed on skin by pulling on small crimps must be considerably less. This in turn means that you must get more gos on a given problem which in turn means you can get problems much quicker. It's like climbing at Rubicon, you often have to walk away because your skin has gone not your body and what could have been a full session on a problem turns into a few gos? This in turn means it takes days and not hours to tick some problems.

I don't buy this I'm afraid. Compared to most people I'm pretty light and my skin gets trashed just as easily as anyone else's on small crimps.
Due to being light I like small holds but need to work like a b*tch to get any sort of power, what I do get goes extremely quickly. Conversely stamina has never seemed to be an issue and comes back quickly. Its swings and roundabouts as to what you're body type is best at, the problem is without strong finger's you're f*cked.

[Stubbs]

What has staggered me the most is the utter pillage of the Rocklands by Robinson & Woods.

They certainly tore that place apart, interesting that neither of them repeated Monkey Wedding (which I think Woods is shown trying in Specimen), which I think is also unrepeated - perhaps one that Fred undergraded?

[Percy B]

As regards the skin issue, the younger you are, the better skin you have. The older you are, the less elastic your skin is, and the more prone to tears, splits, etc. you become. It also takes longer for you to heal up again.

It seems to me that the modern generation of mutants have obtained their strength (and particularly finger strength) from training in climbing walls, but without a 'traditional apprenticeship' in rock climbing (like us old bastards had) I'm not sure they will be able to maintain their awesome level for too long without serious repercusions on their bodies. Maybe the 5 years I spent pottering up easy rock climbs as a kid (before modern climbing walls were invented) was what my body needed to learn how to recover from the abuse I was giving it. Its way too easy to get really good really quick these days, which might explain why so many of the promising youths burn out dead quick. Of course, this isn't true across the board, but its amazing how many youths get seriously knackered fingers, whereas old bastards like me with over 20 years of climbing under the finger tips have never had a serious finger injury (touches wood). Mind you, I am shite and I've got hands like bunches of bananas.....

[Andy Harris]

Good point Paul but here's  few thoughts. Skin strength is a factor of genetics, adaptation by usage & the ability to stop before it's too late. Logically light guys like you and me should have much better skin for pulling on tiny holds. I'm pretty lucky and I've always had good skin that is pretty resilient to cutting. You on the other hand seem not to. John Welford is a similar build to me and always had dreadful skin.

Ther's some logic to say that if you are heavy and don't have genetically bad skin then it should adapt to pulling on small holds. Given skin is the same person to person, then a heavier person should develop thicker skin to adapt to poorer holds. What I'm not sure is whether skin strength and body weight are a linear relationship or not. Or for that matter whether the stress on the finger joints / forearm muscles is linear with weight increase. These 2 questions answered might help a lot.

I guess Monkey Wedding is what used to be called the sit start to The Baboon Master? I remember seeing this and it did look like the hardest problem I'd seen in my life. It was 8b then. Funnily it has no small holds, crap feet and all the holds point in the right direction. Extreme burl and tension look liked they'd rule.

[dave]

but its amazing how many youths get seriously knackered fingers, whereas old bastards like me with over 20 years of climbing under the finger tips have never had a serious finger injury

I think one big factor is how fast you get strong. It always seems to me that people who get strong fast also get injured, as tendons can't keep up with muscle gains. you generally don't have to look far to find someone who trained like a bastard, got crazy strong then dropped off the radar again with an injury. whereas the people who got strong slowly over a period of years generally avoid injury and stay strong for longer. Of course there are exceptions.

I think weight plays a big part in skin issues. If you put the same skin on a 12 stone guy and on an 8 stone guy then you don't have to be Steven hawking to work out who's going to get more splits. I don't buy this idea that the skin of heavier climbers self-compensated by getting thicker - or at least if it does I can't see that being an advantage. As someone who's been the wrong side of 12 stone all their bouldering career I'm always plagued by split tips that come out of nowhere and tear the finger appart. I very seldomly wear a tip down really thin, what generally happens is i have really good thickish skin then on a particular hold blow the pad wide open (with a deep tear that takes a week to heal) after pulling on that hold once or twice (the crimp on ange naif springs to mind).

[Doylo]

What has staggered me the most is the utter pillage of the Rocklands by Robinson & Woods.

Just checked out there 8a's. Staggering............

[Paul B]

As regards the skin issue, the younger you are, the better skin you have. The older you are, the less elastic your skin is, and the more prone to tears, splits, etc. you become. It also takes longer for you to heal up again.

It seems to me that the modern generation of mutants have obtained their strength (and particularly finger strength) from training in climbing walls, but without a 'traditional apprenticeship' in rock climbing (like us old bastards had) I'm not sure they will be able to maintain their awesome level for too long without serious repercusions on their bodies. Maybe the 5 years I spent pottering up easy rock climbs as a kid (before modern climbing walls were invented) was what my body needed to learn how to recover from the abuse I was giving it. Its way too easy to get really good really quick these days, which might explain why so many of the promising youths burn out dead quick. Of course, this isn't true across the board, but its amazing how many youths get seriously knackered fingers, whereas old bastards like me with over 20 years of climbing under the finger tips have never had a serious finger injury (touches wood). Mind you, I am shite and I've got hands like bunches of bananas.....

I think being prone to injuries is fairly consistent to favoring the crimp and not down to a lack of apprenticeship. What that is causing is people who don't know anything apart from a figure of 8 and a gri-gri and have very little respect for their environment.

[dave]

I think being prone to injuries is fairly consistent to favoring the crimp

I doubt theres any evidence to corroborate that.

[Percy B]

Being prone to finger injuries is caused by getting strong too quickly for your tendons, pulleys, etc. to cope with the stresses - not by favouring one hold type over another. Crimps, finger cracks, slopers, pockets - all will blow out tendons, ligaments and pulleys if you pull to hard. My point is that nowadays its possible to get hideously strong so quickly that your hands have little time to adjust to the forces being put through them.

[Paul B]

I think being prone to injuries is fairly consistent to favoring the crimp

I doubt theres any evidence to corroborate that.

I doubt there is, however if you use the search function the most common injury that sticks out to me is the A2, highly stressed under crimping. Are you seriously arguing that crimping is no more risky than open handed? Snap, Crackle Pop.

Being prone to finger injuries is caused by getting strong too quickly for your tendons, pulleys, etc. to cope with the stresses - not by favouring one hold type over another. Crimps, finger cracks, slopers, pockets - all will blow out tendons, ligaments and pulleys if you pull to hard. My point is that nowadays its possible to get hideously strong so quickly that your hands have little time to adjust to the forces being put through them.

I get your point on speed completely but thats not always the case is it? I can think of some good examples of people who are prone to injury and aren't young and certainly haven't become board strong.

[a dense loner]

andy, you speak sense. long have i waited for the day when tiny man questions tiny man. fred's forearms weigh as much as robinson barley water. the big question is not why these young guns are doing all these hard problems now, but will fred be canonised in our lifetime?

i daren't look at woods & robinsons scorecards, my eyes only accept a certain amount of numbers at a time

crimps will cause injury way more than any other hold. pockets less so, i think, since you've got to be strong enough to pull on the pocket anyway. in other words anyone can crimp a hold, but not anyone can pull on a 2 finger pocket. the man who gets injured on slopers wants shooting

[dave]

I think being prone to injuries is fairly consistent to favoring the crimp

I doubt theres any evidence to corroborate that.

I doubt there is, however if you use the search function the most common injury that sticks out to me is the A2, highly stressed under crimping. Are you seriously arguing that crimping is no more risky than open handed?

I'm argueing the point about people who favour crimping being more injury prone, which is a totally different point. People who favour crimping (e.g. me) do it a lot and always will have done, so will have built up gradually the tendon support necessary for fairly safe crimping. People who favour openhanding and only crimp once in a blue moon or in extremis are more likely to injure themselves crimping because they're not used to is and not prepared for it.

Conversely, to a crimping climber like me, openhanding holds (especially 2 fingers) feels infinitley more tweaky and injury prone, infact the only finger tweaks of any not i've ever picked up in 10 years of climbing have been openhanding, precisley for the reasons given above.

The A2 "crimping" injury probably is fairly common, but thats not to say that the people who get it are necessarily the career crimpers.

[Johnny Brown]

People who favour openhanding and only crimp once in a blue moon or in extremis are more likely to injure themselves crimping because they're not used to is and not prepared for it.

Popped both A2 ring pulleys due to precisely this - a crimp in wales and a pocket in font.

[Andy Harris]

Now I'm someone who's always favoured the cimp, however as I've got older if I can pull on a hold in an open handed crimp I'll do so as it conserves energy and feels less stressful. I can anoften do live up to old nick names if required. So whilst I've always prdominantly crimped for 20 years & developed strong pulleys & ligaments etc other grips feel less stressful. If I was a stone or 2 heavier the forces involved would be significantly greater.

Pockets are a funny one as basically we don't have any in this country and until say the past 5 years or so with the increased popularity in areas like the Frankenjura this was always seen as a specialist strength. It now seems everyone is 1 finger campussing and pulling on monos like they were jugs. I've known many a climbing beast who was comparitevly weak on pockets an avoided them like the plague. Especially the bigger guys. Personally I've always liked them which is probably down to a bit of genetic tendon strength, lack of body weight and climbing on walls using pocket grip.

You only need to look at the big Franken climbers (and boy are some of them big) and they have obviously adapted very strong pocket pulling physiology through climbing on this type of hold day in, day out for years. But conversely get shut down in Font (I knw 1 Franken 8c hero who bouldered 8a+ but never did a 7c in font!)

People definately seem to have preferred grips. Maybe there are some sports scientists out there who can explaing the pros and cons of the various grips.

Where I and a lot of others have suffered in recent years is in knee injuries and starins through increased use of heels and legs in climbing. Skinny legs that have just edged for years aren't up to the contortions and tendon stresses the modern technique puts upon them. This is why a lot of beasts these days seem to have the thighs of an ox.

On Dense's point, Fred should indeed be at least Sir Fred for services to crimping gentlemen of the heavier variety. I guess though like most sports any body type is welcome but in general certain types excel in certain sports (eg. tall people in the high jump) and we will not see a weighting system like fighting sports, weight lifting etc. In the 80's it was the tall skinny something, in the 90's it moved to the chunkier muscle types and now it's back to the skinny 20 somethings who are pretty short. But I guess in very specific areas of the sport certain body types will still rule in general.