UKC

Only Exhaustion Influences Climbers' Performance

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 JPM71 08 Jan 2010
"The maximum time an athlete is able to continue climbing to exhaustion may be the only determinant of his/her performance. A new European study, led by researchers from the University of Granada, the objective of which is to help trainers and climbers design training programmes for this type of sport, shows this to be the case."

http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=65636&CultureCode=en
 Yanis Nayu 08 Jan 2010
In reply to JPM71: I must be exhausted a lot then.
The_JT 08 Jan 2010
In reply to JPM71:

I read through some of the actual paper they are reporting on here. Here is the Abstract:

"We studied which physiological and kinanthropometric
characteristics determine climbing performance
in 16 high-level sports climbers aged 29.9 ±
4.9 years. Body composition parameters were measured
with dual energy X-ray absorptiometry scanner. We also
measured kinanthropometric and physical fitness parameters.
The sex-specific 75th percentile value of onsight
climbing ability was used to divide the sample into expert
(75th) and elite (C75th) climbers. All the analyses were
adjusted by sex. The 75th percentile value of onsight
climbing ability was 7b in women and 8b in men. There
were no differences between expert and elite climbers in
the studied variables, except in climbing time to exhaustion
and bone mineral density. Elite climbers had a significantly
higher time to exhaustion than the expert group (770.2 ±
385 vs. 407.7 ± 150 s, respectively, P = 0.001). These
results suggest that, among climbers with a high level of
performance, as those analysed in this study, climbing
time to exhaustion is a major determinant of climbing
performance."

Vanesa España-Romero, Francisco B. Ortega Porcel, Enrique G. Artero,
David Jiménez-Pavón, Ángel Gutiérrez Sainz, Manuel J. Castillo Garzón y Jonatan R. Ruiz. "Climbing time to exhaustion is a determinant of climbing performance in high-level sport climbers". European Journal of Applied Physiology (2009) 107:517-525, noviembre de 2009.

Variables they looked at included grip strength / body mass, grip strength endurance and body mass.
 Yanis Nayu 08 Jan 2010
In reply to The_JT: I'll remember that on the crux of Chalkstorm...
 bouldery bits 08 Jan 2010
In reply to JPM71:

As a boulderer I may have to disagree.
The_JT 08 Jan 2010
In reply to wayno265:

HA! Good point... tbf they do specify sport climbers
 racodemisa 09 Jan 2010
In reply to JPM71:Jibe tribout said it all when he said something like"the hardest thing to do is to keep climbing with good technique when you are pumped".
This was back in the early 1990s when the hardest rts started to get longer and longer and movement centered preparation and training was being emphasized with less emphasis on just maximum recruitment/strenght training ie Gaining movement skills by increasing quality volume etc slowly raising BOTH onsight and redpoint levels,maybe bringing them closer together.Perhaps this reflected how important comps were at the time i am not sure.
 john arran 09 Jan 2010
In reply to JPM71:

Over ten years ago Dave Binney got the same result when he did a research exercise for Sheffield University with the British lead climbing team. I was working at the BMC at the time so we carried out the tests together at a team training meet. IIRC factors we looked at included grip strength, core strength, VO2 max, etc. but the only factor that was significantly correlated with comp performance was finger endurance.

We measured this on a kind of foot-on campus board which made your forearms burn with agony after a few minutes, and I wouldn't be surprised if half of what we were seeing with the better performers was better physiolgy and the other half was a higher pain threshhold!
Serpico 09 Jan 2010
In reply to john arran:
> (In reply to JPM71)
>
> Over ten years ago Dave Binney got the same result when he did a research exercise for Sheffield University with the British lead climbing team. I was working at the BMC at the time so we carried out the tests together at a team training meet. IIRC factors we looked at included grip strength, core strength, VO2 max, etc. but the only factor that was significantly correlated with comp performance was finger endurance.
>
> We measured this on a kind of foot-on campus board which made your forearms burn with agony after a few minutes, and I wouldn't be surprised if half of what we were seeing with the better performers was better physiolgy and the other half was a higher pain threshhold!

By contrast from a study by Dave Mac':
"We compared the strength and endurance characteristics of our climbers to their best onsight grade. Finger strength and onsight grade were strongly related, whereas endurance and onsight grade were much less related. This is potentially a massively important finding."
From: http://www.scottishclimbs.com/wiki/Climbing_Research_-_Making_more_question...
In truth I think the results are relevant to the conditions under which you test them; the Binney results and the Spanish results (probably) used constant intensity climbing (the Binney campus test definitely) which would have a high correlation with competition and Spanish routes, the Dave Mac' test is probably more in line with the discontinuous nature of UK climbing (hard cruxes, easy sections).
I think the way this new Spanish study (and particularly this thread headline) was poorly written up, even though the study itself was possibly quite good.
It's definite that exhaustion is NOT the only thing that influences climber's performance, but more likely that in this particular study all other things being equal exhaustion was the performance indicator.

 john arran 09 Jan 2010
In reply to Serpico:

Thanks for the Dave Mac study link; I hadn't seen that before.

I've only looked at it briefly but it seems to me there may be a fairly major flaw in the methodology there.

The reason is that the crimp strength they are measuring and correlating is an absolute measure, whereas the endurance figure test is weighted relative to maximum crimp strength. Surely then doing well in the endurance test means you're likely to be more suited to longer routes rather than bouldering, and says nothing whatsoever about how good in absolute terms you are compared to anyone else?

I may well have missed something important, so if anyone can put me right that would be good.
Serpico 09 Jan 2010
In reply to john arran:
> (In reply to Serpico)
>
>
> The reason is that the crimp strength they are measuring and correlating is an absolute measure, whereas the endurance figure test is weighted relative to maximum crimp strength. Surely then doing well in the endurance test means you're likely to be more suited to longer routes rather than bouldering, and says nothing whatsoever about how good in absolute terms you are compared to anyone else?
>
I think to a degree you're right, however they started out with the information about who was better than who in absolute terms and then worked backwards from there (which is the opposite of comp selection).
If they'd included an absolute endurance test it would have given further insight though.
ice.solo 11 Jan 2010
In reply to JPM71:

big bloody deal. i reckon any climber who thinks about what they do could have told them that.
more wasted research funds.
'im buggered' is what limits every climber. and every training technique devised is about dealing with it.

sounds to me like a bunch of graduate students getting some climbing in on the unis tab.
good on em i say, but surely you can come up with a better thesis than that.
how about 'the effects of continuous seasons in exotic locations on muscle recruitment'?
i will join.


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