UKC

I weigh 11 stone, I'm 1 stone over weight and I'm five foot seven tall. I can currently onsite french 6b and redpoint french 6c. If I loose a stone, what grade could I climb?

I'm planning to do this, so I'll let you know. (Obviously not an exact science in many ways.... )

In reply to Donnie:

You are not over-weight in fact you are over slightly over average weight.

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/healthy-living/Pages/height-weight-chart.aspx

In reply to Donnie: heard one rule of thumb that losing 5kg results in a single grade bump (eg 6b to 6b+). (Naturally for those who are already slim, losing 5kg will likely make you perform worse).

In reply to Offwidth: Thanks!! I mean my natural weight - ie when fit. That actually fits quite well with the chart as ten stone is bang in the middle of healthy weight for a man of my stature.

In reply to turtlespit:

Really? I was hoping for more but I guess if it gets me to 7a that's not so bad.

In reply to Donnie:

Try climbing with 1 stone on your harness and see how much your grade goes down. It will probably go up by about the same.

In reply to Donnie:

Depends massively on whether the limiting factor holding your climbing back is your power to weight ratio - if it isn't then the gains will be far less because it isn't addressing your biggest weakness.

In reply to Robert Durran: I might just do that.

In reply to AJM: I'm a bit dubious about the idea of their ever being a single limiting factor. Apart from maybe fear.

If I improved technique without getting stronger I'd climb harder, and if i improved my strength to weight but not technique I'd climb harder...

The definitive answer is "it depends on a lot of things"...

I've lost a lot of weight recently and haven't increased my grade much at all (ok I've got 1/2 grade for >10% body weight loss but I put that down to new shoes).

Things it might depend on:

how much is useless weight to begin with - are we talking lard or muscle?
where the weight is - losing meaty thighs helps more than losing biceps
what is your limiting factor climbing - weight loss is no sub for poor technique
how and why you lose weight - for instance you're unlikely to gain much if you lose weight through illness
how your weight loss affects your climbing training regime - if you stop climbing to attend weight watchers or too starved to put any effort it it won't help

If you lose weight by taking up lower body intensive activity such as road running or biking you may see your grade go down as your arm power to weight ratio decreases!

If you are talking about general lardage it will help but YMMV.

And remember for trad, the gear doesn't slim down with you...

In reply to Donnie:

I lost around 1.5 stone and my bouldering suffered by two or three font grades. Now gained much of the weight back, but sadly not all the bouldering ability! I suspect my earlier relative success was mostly due to being unemployed and able to get on the grit around 4 times a week. At leisure to pick and choose my days for good weather and fitness... rather than being forced to cram the weekends regardless of rain and injury.

In reply to thebigfriendlymoose: i lost 3.5kg and went up a whole letter french grade.

Concentrate on getting leaner, not lighter though. You need to maintain muscle whilst loosing fat. Get some electronic body fat scales; ignore the absolute reading and comparing it to anyone else and concentrate on getting that figure as low as possible.

There was a similar thread recently:

http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=552193

In reply to C Chestwig; Treacherous climber:

I'm in no hurry to re-lose the weight! Regaining most of the 10kg I lost has nudged my bodyfat up to around 6.5%.... I don't think there's a great deal of margin to play with (I think - we've met at Kilnsey on a few occasions - I was the fella who resembled an anglepoise lamp falling very slowly upwards).

In reply to thebigfriendlymoose: It's the right direction!

In reply to Donnie:

One is always worst, but you can almost certainly more easily tell which ones aren't worst! In your example, if you were able to knock out 6 one armers whilst climbing Fr6c then pushing to 8 wouldn't help you improve anywhere near as much as focusing on something else - technique, fear etc.

For most people it's probably either fear/overgripping, speed, efficiency of route reading and movement, that sort of thing. Power to weight ratio is probably irrelevant if you never push yourself to falling for example. So improving power to weight would have a benefit, almost certainly, but putting the same effort in elsewhere would probably generate a greater benefit.

In reply to AJM:

The short answer I'm probably failing to write here by the way is that it will be unique to you. I lost over a stone a little while back and went up a couple of grades, but others will have done Mich more and others much less. It's more likely to benefit than harm, it's just a question of by how much really.