[mrjonathanr]

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?

[tomtom]

I am proud to be the 7B+ but can only do 10 pull ups outlier

[slackline]

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).

Eventually I expect something like size/time to be a more useful way of summarising these though.

[mrjonathanr]

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.

[slackline]

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.

But if you calculated a coefficient of correlation with the data as it is it would be negative.  Its your interpretation that leads you to call this pattern a positive relationship.

[Stubbs]

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 think you're right, to be of any real use the weight lifting performance should be divided by the bodyweight;  without this it is a little meaningless.

[Rocksteady]

Slackers this is well interesting.

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. 

My observation from my own experience (and not contradicted by the stats) is that core strength, hip flexibility and finger strength are the main determinants of climbing performance. I almost feel that being quite strong in my upper body when I started climbing was a negative, as I got into lots of bad habits. I think if you can transmit power from your feet through your core to your fingertips you'll climb hard. What I seem to do is pull hard with my arms and push hard with my legs but sag in the middle.

I feel this is a mix of technique, strength and flexibility - I'm trying to sort it out. Been doing more bouldering over the last year and am starting to see improvements.

Perhaps once your fingers are stronger then some of the ancillary strength stuff might make a difference - i.e. if you can do a one-armer on small holds then that must help?

[slackline]

Three things...

1) Patterns can be seen but they may not be significant, that will come from the modelling I plan to do.

2) I intend to release all the data (anonymised) in due course for others to mess around with (as both a fully labelled R data set and ASCII CSV files).

3) Despite 87 responders the numbers in each grade category are small.

[mark s]

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?

nice work slack.graphs and numbers are always interesting

as for weights,i think if you are a serious weakling.weights will benefit to a degree.nothing will ever be as good as technique though.
i went from 13st 4lb to a max of 15st 10lb and benched 140kg,deadlifted 200kg but it doesnt need slackers and his science to tell you i climbed wank.i was a lot stronger/heavier but it doesnt transfer to rock in the slightest.
since ive cut out lots of food and doing lots of biking ive dropped to 14st 7 and the climbing is getting easier everytime i go out.looking forward to a winter of grit climbing and enjoy getting out again.
my hope is some of the strength stays as i get back to a better climbing weight

[Fultonius]

I am proud to be the 7B+ but can only do 10 pull ups outlier

I am similarly shabby on the pull-up front!  I can't remember exactly what I put but it was around 12-14 pull-ups and 7B/Fr8a - I need to work on my pull up skills 

[rodma]

I can only do 10 pull ups too 

[Monk]

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 used to be like that. At one point I could do 4 or 5 one-armers, but was only climbing about 6c or 6B+. Basically, I had a pull-up bar at home and trained pull ups because it was easiest to access. When I was climbing at my best (several grades harder), I could probably barely manage a single one-armer. Even now that I am climbing relatively infrequently and am weak due to a young family and crap geography, I am climbing harder than when I had super strong arms. 

[Muenchener]

I am proud to be at the bottom of the scale on everything but pullups. Nowhere to go but up (and no need to train pullups for a while).

I found it interesting that - juding the charts subjectively by eye - things like pull-ups, smallness of edge hung etc. appear to correlate more strongly with bouldering than with route performance. Which I guess make sense because a lot of other factors - endurance, tactics etc. - play a bigger role in routes than in bouldering.

[fried]

I am proud to be at the bottom of the scale on everything.

Only because I didn't fill in the survey!

[Johnny Brown]

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.

[rich d]

Love the graphs, especially how much they highlight my punterishness on every level.  Great work slackers

[slackline]

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.

That didn't stop some from filling it in!

Nothing stopping you from getting some metrics though, and it would likely be very useful as I suspect you're from the opposite end of the spectrum from the intended point of the survey (i.e. I get the impression you get mileage in on rock rather than training for hours, yet still climb relatively 'ard).

Love the graphs, especially how much they highlight my punterishness on every level.  Great work slackers

Cheers, glad people are liking the graphical summaries, I'll try and get some statistics sorted soon to show what is 'significant'* and what isn't, but new laptop is off being repaired (had intended to take it away to Spain and spend down-time doing work on this, scuppered unless its back by the 2nd Nov.).


* significance isn't just a p-value < 0.05!

[lagerstarfish]

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

[slackline]

As Stubbs mentioned - bench and deadlift are better expressed in proportion to body weight. Not too complicated to work out

I can do that.

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?)

Not been done or suggested, but I'm not a great fan of BMI as it tends not to work too well for particularly muscley people.  Can add it in though.

would be interesting to see hight to grade just to prove that climbing is easier for short people

Will add that to the list.

and where is the "physically attractive" measure?

Would need to be on a logarithmic scale so that everyone else has a chance against your handsome self lagers.

and everyone knows that routes are easier with an 8b tan - data to confirm this would be most welcome

I don't think TanMan has completed the survey yet.

[mark s]

What about size of finger tips to edge hangs.little fingers make hangs easier as they are normally connected to school boy sized climbers.

[slackline]

What about size of finger tips to edge hangs.little fingers make hangs easier as they are normally connected to school boy sized climbers.

Will add it to ideas for future surveys, but more likely that weight would be a good proxy to that.

[lagerstarfish]

as regards the tan investigation; we could use Tanners to test/corroborate predictions made after analysing the existing data

[lagerstarfish]

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

[Nibile]

Great job Slackers!!!
I have no idea of what the graphs say, but they are well cool!
 

[mark s]

this is turning into slackers 'painting of the severn bridge'