Awkward and time consuming for someone to collate the information from forum posts so I knocked up a quick survey (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGpjTF9lZ3lkekNlRG56QzBkM0YyQXc6MQ) for people to complete and will do some analysis once N >= 30 and report back.
Which BM? 1000 or 2000?
Height - 186cm
Weight - 75 kg
Fingers - +10KG deadhang on large BM hold.
Can hold second to smallest crimps on a BM (consistently)
Pull ups - weighted c.10KG, no lock off on one arm.
Boulder - 7B+ max, 7A/+ ish in a session
going to do mine again as i put my bests i have done,i have no current sport grades.
Just filled mine in. I just read part of the request. I put 0 in for the ones where I can't do any (i.e. one armers). Hope that was OK. I din't put N/A in any of them.
1k..Which BM? 1000 or 2000?
Height - 186cm
Weight - 75 kg
Fingers - +10KG deadhang on large BM hold.
Can hold second to smallest crimps on a BM (consistently)
Pull ups - weighted c.10KG, no lock off on one arm.
Boulder - 7B+ max, 7A/+ ish in a session
Zero's fine for numeric fields, but don't worry too much I can clean things up in the end.
Zero's fine for numeric fields, but don't worry too much I can clean things up in the end.
Wouldn't having to do that trigger a slack-rant if you had to do it for work? ;)
My first entry,just scrap the whole thing.I've put 0 in all fields with no answer.I went the roaches at the weeked and did a 6c so that's my only recent climbing I can enter. I don't have fingerboards to hang off but door frames will do .
You might get more useful responses using beastmaker holds rather than wanting to know how deep the edge people can hang is.
You might get more useful responses using beastmaker holds rather than wanting to know how deep the edge people can hang is.
+1
Indoor grades are a load of bollocks anyway.
You might get more useful responses using beastmaker holds rather than wanting to know how deep the edge people can hang is.
+1
Well my reasoning was simply that not everyone has a beastmaker but anyone can take a ruler/tape measure to their fingerboard (or the one at the wall) and find out the depth of the smallest hold they use, thus making it a more generalised survey.
Given there are now 34 survey completers it would be perhaps too onerous a task to reset the questions and ask everyone to do it again.
Good idea Slackers. I've split the topic off and added it to the front page to raise the profile / response
done it but dont bench/deadlift and have no idea how long i can hang edges/how much weight i can pull up.
Also not done sport for a while so mine probably looks a bit weird
done it but dont bench/deadlift and have no idea how long i can hang edges/how much weight i can pull up.
Also not done sport for a while so mine probably looks a bit weird
It would be useful if people don't already know some of these could hold back on filling things in and find out over the coming days and then complete the form. At the moment besides the bouldering grades the most complete field is maximum pull-up reps.
EDIT : I didn't know I was 186cm and 84kg ;D
But I can hang smaller edges than those on the beastmaker, and I'm sure a lot of people can. Plus I don't have access to a beastmaker.
more people have access to a BM 2000 than will be bothered to find edges and measure them
I think anyone who was bothered enough to do the survey would do it again after a modification; plus it would allow comparison between grips types, which I had kind of thought was the main useful thing which might come out of it.
I think finger strength is such a biggie that it needs to be right. How about using a campus rung? they're more common than BM's, particularly for an international audience. I propose testing 3 grips on the smallest campus rung (incut edge up) - 4 finger open hand, 3 finger open hand, and 4 finger half crimp.
I'd also like to see a test for core strength, but I'm not sure which is best, possible dishes?
I think finger strength is such a biggie that it needs to be right. How about using a campus rung? they're more common than BM's, particularly for an international audience. I propose testing 3 grips on the smallest campus rung (incut edge up) - 4 finger open hand, 3 finger open hand, and 4 finger half crimp.
I'd also like to see a test for core strength, but I'm not sure which is best, possible dishes?
I think finger strength is such a biggie that it needs to be right. How about using a campus rung? they're more common than BM's, particularly for an international audience. I propose testing 3 grips on the smallest campus rung (incut edge up) - 4 finger open hand, 3 finger open hand, and 4 finger half crimp.
Mounted at what angle?
I'd also like to see a test for core strength, but I'm not sure which is best, possible dishes?
I was wondering this, technique can be crucial, so I was thinking something dead basic like planks?
Different campus boards are incut to different amounts and have different sized 'smallest' rungs.
Typically the rungs are either Crusher Holds Metolius or Woodgrips, same difference?
Typically the rungs are either Metolius or Woodgrips, same difference?
The fact that everyone has different ideas about how to control the variables just shows it's a tricky experiment
, but you've got people thinking, and it might lead to something useful.
I was thinking most people would have access to a campus board at a wall, which I've presumed generally to have a degree of standardisation ie: 15 deg?
shall I enter my pre-anklefook stats?
current bouldering grades are a bit low
do you want the front lever times in minutes or seconds?
I'm surprised no one has raised the issue of variation in the style of problem or route ascended (i.e. does it make sense to have your max boulder problem 7A on a slab comparable to a 7A roof).
I'm surprised no one has raised the issue of variation in the style of problem or route ascended (i.e. does it make sense to have your max boulder problem 7A on a slab comparable to a 7A roof). Far more important than the relatively minor differences in rung size/angle/conditions/etc. of a finger board.
(i dunno, i couldn't get very far once my left foot was in place- maybe because of poor footwork and flexibility :))
(i dunno, i couldn't get very far once my left foot was in place- maybe because of poor footwork and flexibility :))
Try your left heel?
shall I enter my pre-anklefook stats?Really!!!! Minutes as in plural? That's bonkers. I can't even hold it for a second. :slap:
current bouldering grades are a bit low
do you want the front lever times in minutes or seconds?
I tried to fill it in but got so confused about max redpoint grade (http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,20825.0.html) that I gave up :blink:.
I don't know if this can be of any help, but: the tests I did during the summer were
- max added weight on 1,5 cm flat wooden edge for 5" (slightly rounded )
- max time on 1,5 cm (bodyweight)
- max time on 1 cm (bodyweight)
- max time on BM one pad monos (middle fingers)
- max time on BM small pockets (front2)
- max number of one armers (on 4,5 cm flat edge)
- max time 90° lock off
I don't know whether and/or how these data could be useful.
Max OS grade
Consistent OS grade (could think-of-a-number required)
Max grade you've climbed a minimum of four* problems/routes
Max grade you've climbed
And maybe:
Consistent one-session grade (implies multiple ascents of said grade but could specify, e.g. six*)
*being numbers plucked out of the air
do you want the front lever times in minutes or seconds?Really!!!! Minutes as in plural? That's bonkers. I can't even hold it for a second. :slap:
lagers, you mofo!do you want the front lever times in minutes or seconds?Really!!!! Minutes as in plural? That's bonkers. I can't even hold it for a second. :slap:
no, I was taking the piss
lagers, you mofo!do you want the front lever times in minutes or seconds?Really!!!! Minutes as in plural? That's bonkers. I can't even hold it for a second. :slap:
no, I was taking the piss
Taking the piss, were you? So yesterday I nearly spat my guts off to get to 35 seconds for nothing!!!???
paid for advice is more effective than the stuff you get for free
well not nothing it will get you stronger right?lagers, you mofo!do you want the front lever times in minutes or seconds?Really!!!! Minutes as in plural? That's bonkers. I can't even hold it for a second. :slap:
no, I was taking the piss
Taking the piss, were you? So yesterday I nearly spat my guts off to get to 35 seconds for nothing!!!???
One suggestion would be that age would be an interesting factor - apologies if is already there and I missed it on the form
paid for advice is more effective than the stuff you get for free
How much did that knowledge set us all back?
For info the smallest edge was that on a BM 1K (guessed at 8mm)
For info the smallest edge was that on a BM 1K (guessed at 8mm)
Really? I measured the smallest edge on my 2k and it's 11mm
I don't think that's right. The interesting part about the BM 2K small bottom outside crimps is the added slope at the end. They're dead flat for about 1cm, then slope and round out to finish at about 18mm. (leastways on mine they do)
For info the smallest edge was that on a BM 1K (guessed at 8mm)
Really? I measured the smallest edge on my 2k and it's 11mm
You're right, I was reading off the inches side of the tape :oops: Didn't think that sounded quite right :-[
Mine are 14mm from back to front.
That's quite a lot of tolerance still vs 18mm, ~20%
Hard to say exactly(not the best measuring device), but 14-15ish is what mine measured, so I'd go with the 14mm.What the fuck are you measuring it with? Is this some sort of American pie beastmaker?
Are we near to n >= 30 yet ?
Hard to say exactly(not the best measuring device), but 14-15ish is what mine measured, so I'd go with the 14mm.What the fuck are you measuring it with? Is this some sort of American pie beastmaker?
I started writing some scripts to summarise the results over the weekend, not masses of time to spend on it, but will post some stuff up when its ready.
There's something seriously wrong with me. I'm giddy with excitement to see the results.....
I wonder if any significant correlations will show up??
Don't your results show that an increase in strength due to a large increase in muscle mass (caused by not climbing a lot and going to the gym loads) does not lead to higher climbing grades? There's a difference there!
Though perhaps slacker's results will prove me wrong, when everyone who can bench 3x their body weight :weakbench: is climbing twelve grades more than me. :coffee:
Though perhaps slacker's results will prove me wrong, when everyone who can bench 3x their body weight :weakbench: is climbing twelve grades more than me. :coffee:
I doubt it since this is purely "observational" and any analyses will reveal only correlations, which do not imply....
Whats more likely if there is an association between bench pressing and climbing performance is that there is a third factor that correlates with these two....the amount of time spent climbing.
Anyway, got some figures sorted nicely last night, here's a sampler...a box-plot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_plot) of pull-up repetitions by outdoor bouldering grade....(http://i.imgur.com/WlBC4.png)
...which shows that there is trend (no claim as to significance yet) between the maximum number of pull-ups and outdoor bouldering grade (but if you want to do more pull-ups you shouldn't bother bouldering, see the grey "NA" box which represents the pull-ups done by people who didn't enter bouldering grades).
would a scatter plot with correlation co-efficient work better for that and give a more accurate quantifyable level of correlation (maybe needs grade converting into a single number so 6B=1 6B+=2 etc)
but if you want to do more pull-ups you shouldn't bother bouldering, see the grey "NA" box which represents the pull-ups done by people who didn't enter bouldering grades. but if you do too many pull-ups your shoulders will be so f*cked you won't be able to boulder any more
Awesome I'm the very bottom of one of those little sticks! Does this mean I should do more pull ups?!
Awesome I'm the very bottom of one of those little sticks! Does this mean I should do more pull ups?!
Me too!
Years ago, I used to do sets of 30+ pull-ups off a single-joint deep door frame edge... I could boulder around f6c+.
I then moved to Yorkshire, I couldn't do any pull-ups (parents' house: weak door-frames and no chin-up bar) but I was unemployed and spent a year or two solidly grit bouldering - did lots of f7b+'s and the odd soft 7c. After that spell, I had a go on a chin-up bar and found I could only manage around 10 pull-ups. By my understanding of science, if I chop off my arms and get down to zero pull-ups, I'll have a bouldering grade of font-infinity!
Positive font-infinity based on my own two, longitudinal data points (30+ chinups = f6c+; 10 chinups = f7b+/c)! And yes, I am aware that incomplete statistics are misleading and, even where the numbers are accurate, correlation doesn't determine causation.... that was kind of the point I was making, albeit in a ham-fisted way. All other things being equal, more arm and finger strength is good, but if technique / core are terrible they'll be the limiting factor.
I wonder if only studying people who've climbed a good few years makes any difference to the results. If limiting the data set to those for whom "rookie" technique is unlikely to be limiting, makes strength based correlations clearer?
Moose may have a good point, and # of years climbing may be a good addition to the survey (If its not there now, I can't remember).
My reasoning being that technique is of far greater utility to on-sighting and the strength of any relationship between feats of training strength would be weaker when that is the outcome.
I've the same graphs for each of the questions for each of the bouldering/route grades but am holding back on putting anything else up as I'm writing it up as a PDF report (when I get round to having time to spend on coding the analysis and writing the text to go with the figures).
I'll put everything up on the wiki when done and link it from here, including a copy of the cleaned data (anonymised by the removal of names that people have entered) along with the scripts I write should anyone wish to do any further work.
I've the same graphs for each of the questions for each of the bouldering/route grades but am holding back on putting anything else up as I'm writing it up as a PDF report (when I get round to having time to spend on coding the analysis and writing the text to go with the figures).
I'll put everything up on the wiki when done and link it from here, including a copy of the cleaned data (anonymised by the removal of names that people have entered) along with the scripts I write should anyone wish to do any further work.
Any chance of putting the anonymised data (give em names A, B c etc..) on a google docs spreadsheet we can copy from?
Maybe wait until its been up a week?
Interesting to note the users on here have a modal indoor grade of 7A and outdoor grade of 7C! It would seem that those who get the opportunity to climb outdoors climb harder, or is that an invalid observation for some reason?
Interesting to note the users on here have a modal indoor grade of 7A and outdoor grade of 7C! It would seem that those who get the opportunity to climb outdoors climb harder, or is that an invalid observation for some reason?
Interesting to note the users on here have a modal indoor grade of 7A and outdoor grade of 7C! It would seem that those who get the opportunity to climb outdoors climb harder, or is that an invalid observation for some reason?
You could also come to the conclusion that indoor grades are off by 2 ;)
Interesting to see the anomaly to the trend of number of pull up to boulder grade outdoors. So there are some 6B+ climbers doing 20+ pull ups!
However 'climbing-type' exercises seem to have a slight positive correlation.
Hold size tends to decrease with climbing ability though (i.e. better climbers can hang smaller holds).
Hold size tends to decrease with climbing ability though (i.e. better climbers can hang smaller holds).
As difficulty is inverse to size of hold I'd call that a positive correlation.
It appears to me there is a small negatiove correlation between heavy weights (bench, dead-lift) and boulder grade. Would really need to be referenced for weight as well I expect to understand it. However 'climbing-type' exercises seem to have a slight positive correlation. Moral: weights are perhaps not all they're cracked up to be. I wonder what Mr Sharratt would say?
It appears to me there is a small negatiove correlation between heavy weights (bench, dead-lift) and boulder grade. Would really need to be referenced for weight as well I expect to understand it. However 'climbing-type' exercises seem to have a slight positive correlation. Moral: weights are perhaps not all they're cracked up to be. I wonder what Mr Sharratt would say?
I am proud to be the 7B+ but can only do 10 pull ups outlier :)
Looks like I'm one of the outliers as I can do 20+ pull ups on a bar (strict, no kipping) and one-arm pull-ups (with a bit of a kip) each arm but only boulder V4/5 and redpoint F7b. Can bench press 1.5x my bodyweight - doesn't make any difference to climbing as far as I can see. But I get loads of finger injuries and am only just learning to be stronger on small holds.
I am proud to be at the bottom of the scale on everything.
I was going to but realised I didn't have any metrics other than my weight, height and grades. Not done any pullups since I was at school.
Love the graphs, especially how much they highlight my punterishness on every level. Great work slackers
As Stubbs mentioned - bench and deadlift are better expressed in proportion to body weight. Not too complicated to work out
Not quite in the benchmarking spirit, but might show trends with which to compare the weights/pulls/grades graphs.....
BMI against grades would be good (has this been done/suggested and I've missed it?)
would be interesting to see hight to grade just to prove that climbing is easier for short people
and where is the "physically attractive" measure?
and everyone knows that routes are easier with an 8b tan - data to confirm this would be most welcome
What about size of finger tips to edge hangs.little fingers make hangs easier as they are normally connected to school boy sized climbers.
I agree that BMI is a bit crap, but it can be got from the exising data
waist measurement might be better - or some waist/height/weight magic athleticism index probably better
as regards the tan investigation; we could use Tanners to test/corroborate predictions made after analysing the existing data
I'm not a great fan of BMI as it tends not to work too well for particularly muscley people.
maybe just - "do you do aerobic exercise" yes/no NO
resting heart rate? 48
vegetarian? AH AH! IN TUSCANY???
frequency of posts on popular climbing based forums? DAILY
number of children? ZERO
income? PATHETIC
marital status? SINGLE
religion? THE RELIGION OF FONT 8B
Or number of Rock Shoes? ;)
Dammit :slap: you've confirmed what I've always suspected. I'm way to heavy to be climbing hard. I have the highest BMI of anyone climbing over 7B+......
Cakes, pies, and :beer2:, or climbing harder.... Tough call
Dammit :slap: you've confirmed what I've always suspected. I'm way to heavy to be climbing hard. I have the highest BMI of anyone climbing over 7B+......
Cakes, pies, and :beer2:, or climbing harder.... Tough call
I wouldn't worry about it too much, with a larger sample theres bound to be someone with a higher BMI than you who can climb as hard. :P
EDIT : Updated the PDF (http://ukbouldering.com/wiki/images/5/53/Ukbenchmarking.pdf).
Oh shit look at that slight negative trend between height and bouldering grade, you've played right into the tallies' hands!
I wouldn't worry about it too much, with a larger sample theres bound to be someone with a higher BMI than you who can climb as hard. :P
EDIT : Updated the PDF (http://ukbouldering.com/wiki/images/5/53/Ukbenchmarking.pdf).
I'm sure you're right, but I've never met one..... Looks pretty similar for routes.....
Oh shit look at that slight negative trend between height and bouldering grade, you've played right into the tallies' hands!
Imagine willackers should be there too though?
its the one-armers where there is so many missing or zero's its barely worth bothering.
I should add that if anyone keeps a diary of their training and climbing then they could easily analyse themselves to see what training level equates to what level of performance (although it might be a ballache to have to enter it all into a computer if its kept on paper).
Do you mean in a manner like this - comparing training intensity/volume to performance level across lots of different people or meaning correlating periods of varying training volume/intensity with performance level?
If the latter, I think it's actually quite a hard thing to do as you not only have to consider (and somehow gauge - hard to do accurately) intensity and volume, but also exactly which energy systems you're working on and how long for, and you have to worry about how to take into account what you've been doing previously. E.g. If you go day-on-day-off for a month and climb really hard it doesn't necessarily mean that you should be following that protocol all the time.
(obviously I'll have to bend down to show it to them)That's for sure with me, I am still a good few cm's shy of the shortest one in my grade category... (assuming I managed to read the graph correctly).
Is there a facility by which to test hardest grade climbed against hardest grade flashed? I'd be interested to find out if there are as many people as me who have flashed a whole number less than they've climbed or if I'm just truly terrible at reading sequences...I'm interested as well, for both bouldering and routes.
6 number grades... (7c vs .13d)
Was that data recorded in the original survey? I don't remember mentioning hardest ever grade or onsight.
Yes, I boulder more than sport or trad (just like one is more than zero ;D )
I'd like to see max flash vs. max workedfor bouldering but the other permutations could be interesting too.
collect more data perhaps?
You don't need data for this, I can confidently inform you that if your flash/onsight grade is a number grade below your worked limit you are undoubtedly relatively bad at flashing/onsighting.
Slackers, is it easy to set up a new survey just asking those questions I want?
I may be reading this box plots wrong but it looks to me like someone on here can bench press 200kg, do 40 pull ups, and climb Fb7C! That's some serious all round strength!
Only justnoticed this thread. I'm getting a 404 on the pdf download any chance of re-uploading slackline?