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NEWS: Frankenjura 8a+ for 11 year-old Josh Ibbertson

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 UKC News 12 Nov 2015
Josh ibbertson, 5 kb11 year-old Josh Ibbertson has climbed his first 8a+ with an ascent of Primeur de Luxe in the Frankenjura, Germany whilst on a half-term holiday with his family. There is some debate as to the grade of the route, with many climbers known to take 8b for it on 8a.nu, but Josh felt that 8a+ was more appropriate!

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 USBRIT 12 Nov 2015
In reply to UKC News:
Its not at all surprising the very young can excel at sport climbing as they do the same with the sport of gymnastics. We have seen much of this in the UK climbing news this month.
11
 GDes 12 Nov 2015
In reply to UKC News:
Flipping brilliant josh, well done. That's a pretty groundbreaking achievement. I think we bumped into you up at montsant last new year and you seemed to be having a great time. Keep it up!
 GDes 12 Nov 2015
In reply to USBRIT:
just because it's not surprising doesn't mean it is not extremely impressive, and shows a huge amount of dedication from a youngster. Easy to forget about all the failures and hard hours practising that aren't mentioned in a news report. Fair play to an 11 year old for enjoying that whole process.

And I must have missed all the other reports this month about 11
Year old Brits climbing 8a+, would you mind showing us a link to them?
Post edited at 22:31
 FactorXXX 12 Nov 2015
In reply to USBRIT:

Its not at all surprising the very young can excel at sport climbing as they do the same with the sport of gymnastics.

How old are male gymnasts then? Thought they were mostly in their early twenties?
In reply to UKC News: What a hero! Well done Josh, it's so exciting to follow your progress - keep updating us James. Don't pay any attention to grumpy people on UKC, they've no understanding of the work that goes into climbing this hard. You're a star. Great to see Jack cranking some hard routes too.
 stp 14 Nov 2015
In reply to USBRIT:

Are you alluding to the fact that they're light, thus good finger strength, power to weight? Whilst there will be some advantage in that along with it comes a very serious lack of reach. There are plenty of small light adults who don't necessarily climb particularly hard. At that age other aspects are more difficult too, like coordination and general upper body strength.

In terms of size I remember there was an article on 8a some time ago which was trying to work out the optimum size for a climber and I think they came up with a figure of 5'8 ish. So a typical 11 year old is still not yet the ideal height. Climbing at this grade at this age is extremely impressive by any measure it seems to me.
 Robert Durran 18 Nov 2015
In reply to stp:

> In terms of size I remember there was an article on 8a some time ago which was trying to work out the optimum size for a climber and I think they came up with a figure of 5'8 ish.

I do wonder whether pockety climbing is especially suited to small people (or at least people with small hands); an extra finger in most pockets is going to make a big difference.

It's also occurred to me that if a rock type has a surface which is fractal (ie self similar at every scale), then size of climber should make no difference on average to the actual moves required. But given that smaller climbers have a biomechanical strength to weight ratio advantage, it would be, in general, a case of the smaller the better.

Whatever. Very impressive achievement!
 winhill 18 Nov 2015
In reply to Robert Durran:

> I do wonder whether pockety climbing is especially suited to small people (or at least people with small hands); an extra finger in most pockets is going to make a big difference.

Not if the pockets are well spread out, in Frankenjura there may well be little else to use except the pockets, so if you can't reach you're pretty stuffed.

Small climbers may have a better strength/weight ratio but strong climbers even more so, young climbers less so because they need to acquire muscle, which takes longer.

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