UKC

@Rob Greenwood/UKC team - given the proliferation of UKC opinion pieces lately discussing the importance of height in climbing ... would UKC be willing to run a non-opinion piece discussing the objective importance of height as factor in climbing performance?

Hypothesis:  If height is a major determinant in climbing performance, as is suggested in the Opinion pieces, we would expect to see a bias in competition climbing towards the selection of climbers with above average height on the basis that above average height would equate to higher rankings/more medals etc... 

Question:  Do we see any evidence to support this hypothesis?  i.e. are elite climbers taller than average?

Evidence: 

• We know who the current top competition climbers are - we can get it from ifsc [1].
• In the sport category:  the top 3x male competitors are from JPN and there are a further 10x competitors from JPN in the top 100.   13 in total.
• We can find out the average height of a male in JPN from worlddata [2] = 172cm
• Getting the height of the JPN competition climbers = not so easy - I had to go digging.

Sorato ANRAKU | 168cm

Satone YOSHIDA | 168cm

Shion OMATA | 162cm

neo SUZUKI | 163cm

zento MURASHITANA | NA - couldn't find a height.

taisei HOMMA | 180cm

ao YURIKUSA | 175cm

yuta IMAIZUMI  170cm

yoshiyuki OGATA | 171cm

shuta TANAKANA | NA - couldn't find a height.

mototaka ISHIZU | 158cm

masahiro HIGUCHI | 169cm

hiroto SHIMIZUNA | NA - couldn't find a height.

========

AVERAGE:  168.4cm

========

So on the face of it ... it would appear that the top 13 male JPN sport climbers in the world are, on average, BELOW the average height of males in JPN.  i.e. height appears negatively correlated with climbing performance.  In fact, out of the 10 climbers I was able to get a height for ... only 1x was above the national average.  Removing the tallest and smallest climbers in the JPN team in case they are outliers .. brings the average down further = 168.25cm.

Conceded in advance ... super small data set, maybe I got lucky or maybe my data is bad. 

Let's test again with female sport climbers from, for example, ITA in the top 100 of the ifsc ranking.

• Average height of a female in Italy according to worlddata = 161cm

laura ROGORA | 152cm

ilaria SCOLARIS | 160cm

camilla MORONI | 158cm

claudia GHISOLFI | 160cm

savina NICELLI | NA - couldn't find a height.

federica PAPETTI | NA - couldn't find a height.

========

AVERAGE:  157.5cm

========

Same pattern = they appear to average out below the national average.

Trying one last time AUT female sports climbers.

• Average height of a female in Austria according to worlddata = 166cm

mattea PÖTZI | 160cm

jessica PILZ | 165cm

flora OBLASSER | 160cm

julia FISER | 162cm

eva maria HAMMELMÜLLER | 168cm

ines SCHWAIGER | NA - couldn't find a height.

magdalena KOMPEIN | NA - couldn't find a height.

sarah FEICHTENSCHLAGER | NA - couldn't find a height.

========

AVERAGE:  163cm

========

Same result again.

Clearly .. not proper analysis - there could be 1000 holes in this.  Conceded in advance.

But is points towards a question:  "If as the Opinion pieces have suggested that height is a major factor in climbing performance worthy of the introduction of slash grades ... why don't we see above average height in elite competition climbers?  In fact - why are we seeing the exact opposite ... below average height at Elite level?"

In the data above it looks like there might be a negative correlation between height and climbing performance.  Taller climber don't appear to be getting selected at elite level climbing.  Quite the opposite - it looks like elite level climbing has a bias towards smaller than average climbers.

Contrary to what some will suggest - I am not suggesting that smaller climbers don't personally experience challenge climbing - in fact, to avoid taking this thread off in that direction I am actively acknowledging the challenges that smaller climbers have.  The challenges smaller climbers experience are real and we should acknowledge them more.

I am asking why, if height is as an important factor as the Opinion pieces have been suggesting, is it apparently absent in competitive climbers?  Not only do elite competitions apparently fail to fit a bell curve (average height does generally fit a bell curve) ... they actually appear biased in the opposite direction towards selection for smaller than average climbers.  

While there will be multiple reasons I am sure .. i can think of one reason why this might be the case that is absent in the Opinion pieces - BMI.  Taller people tend towards a higher BMI than smaller people because taller people have a greater mass for the same level of body fat.  BMI = weight(kg)/height(m)2 ... in lay terms .. taller people, while potentially having a greater reach (a benefit) also tend towards having a greater mass (not a benefit) relative to their height ... AND ... that that extra mass taller climbers have might actually have a larger negative effect on climbing performance than the positive effect of their extra height. 

In elite climbing they appear to be sacrificing any competitive benefit they might receive from height in order to optimize for some other factor(s) that, presumably, have a greater effect on climbing performance than height does.

Conceded in advance ... I could be totally wrong in this.

Putting my hard hat on now .... 

[1] https://www.ifsc-climbing.org/rankings/index?discipline=lead&category=m...

[2] https://www.worlddata.info/average-bodyheight.php

[3] https://www.nhsinform.scot/healthy-living/food-and-nutrition/healthy-eating...

In reply to StuPoo2:

One caveat about using data about competition climbers is that routes and problems are *likely* to be set by climbers with very similar physical characteristics as the participants (ex comp climbers and those just outside the elite level), so you have a baked-in bias as the route setters will set routes according to their own physical understanding of grade & movement. 

Secondly, i think height needs the context of weight (a sensitive subject). As I understand it Ondra (70kg) is 6ft 1" yet Megos (57kg) & Ghisolfi (58kg) would fit in your pocket at about 5ft 7".

There is only one of them you wouldn't want to have to buy a scarf.

It'd be interesting to see how they each faired on a weighted pin lift with a 20mm and 15mm edge. My money is on Ondra having the strongest fingers in absolute terms for RM and 5-8RM.

In reply to Shani:

You're not wrong, my local gym set "normal" boulder problems then changed setter to a top local comp guy, your typical emaciated dwarf that previously was a gymnast. Disastrous, most of us couldn't even get on the starting holds if it was a sit start.

In reply to StuPoo2:

IMO the number of subjects you used is definitely too small for you to draw any useful conclusions from your data, that is, to say there might be a correlation. Good luck with your further analysis though. 100 or more subjects will be better. (PS I specialise in statistics)

In reply to StuPoo2:

Comp routes are set so that reachy moves *shouldn't* be significantly discriminatory. Therefore in a sense the grade of the routes is assessed for a shorter demographic of climber than is the case with rock routes.

To remove this bias, you could compare grade performances on rock. But then climbers will naturally be keen to focus on attainable goals rather than on routes they're going to find much harder than most, so there's an inherent route selection bias.

So your hypothesis doesn't seem to be assessable using available data.

In reply to StuPoo2:

I believe UKSport and its member national bodies have, for the more established Olympic Sports, stacks of data on the body shapes that correlate with elite performance in Olympic sports, so they can filter for those attributes in their World Class start programmes. So in rowing the limiting physiological factor is, I understand, lung size, which favours the really tall. I don’t know if that work has been done for climbing, as you suggest it would be really good to read it if it does, but I suspect it gives a competitive advantage so won’t get published if it exists in a national sporting body.

My amateur theory for climbing is a variation of your BMI concept. If the limiting factor for climbing at the elite level is finger strength, then that presumably increases roughly as a square of height (cross section of the muscle) whereas weight will roughly increase as a cube of height, as the body grows in 3 dimensions. Huge approximations of course.

Provided someone meets a minimum height threshold that allows them to make the moves, of course.

Totally ready to have this torn apart as i am neither a medic nor a sports scientist, but interesting to think about.

In reply to Shani:

The routesetters also know that whilst the occasional "beta break" adds a bit of drama to the competition, it would generally be unsatisfactory for both spectators and competitors if some athletes were able to very obviously lank their way past hard moves or other athletes very obviously struggled to reach something that was probably intended to be static. Certainly they get a lot of stick every time Ai Mori looks like her height holds her back! As they're very skilled setters and have lots of time to work on the problems, they have a whole bag of tricks to ensure height isn't too much of a factor.

That doesn't really apply in outdoor climbing, which is what most of the grade discussion has been about. And for indoor climbing more widely than top level competition, they don't have anywhere near as much time to spend on carefully considering whether moves are excessively reach-dependent.

In reply to Hovercraft:

This is the crux, because there is little muscle in the fingers. If anything, forearm muscle is more important. Elite climbers have big forearms for their otherwise skinny frames  but not big compared to a body builder or strength athletes of the same height.

IIRC, finger strength comes from forearm muscle hypertrophy and neural recruitment (better activation and synchronization of the muscles controlling the fingers), tendon stiffness (to transmit force more efficiently), connective tissue density and resilience ,(stronger pulleys, ligaments, and tendons reduce injury risk and allow more force application), and finger joint stability (developed through climbing and specific training).

In reply to Luke90:

i disagree - particularly as grades increase. I have had to pull down hard on a sharp gritstone crystal more than once in my life. I've done several routes with an English 6b crux, but 6b crystal-pulling is a world of pain at 85kg. Skin tension and pain tolerance being limiting factors.

Where i won't disagree is with routes below about VS where yes, there are huge footholds everywhere and you can stand and reach....

In reply to StuPoo2:

Setting aside the small data set and the differences between comps/general climbing and indoor/outdoor... even if your conclusion that top climbers tend to be shorter than average could be proved rigourously across a bigger data set, I don't think it really undermines the case for particularly short climbers having additional struggles. Firstly, I don't think I've seen anyone saying that short climbers are the only ones who might benefit from extra grade info on particular routes. It's widely acknowledged that there are routes/problems that are extra hard for particularly tall climbers, or those with particularly small or large hands (mostly cracks). Secondly, when people do talk about short climbers struggling with either climbs or grading, I don't think they're referring to those just a little below average, they're talking about those who are significantly below average. It's very likely that in terms of the grading discussion, those in the vicinity of average height (probably especially those in the vicinity of average male height), including those only a bit below it, are indeed the ones who are going to find consensus grades most realistic for them.

In reply to Shani:

Sorry, my point was evidently unclear. I didn't mean that being tall or heavy has no disadvantages in outdoor climbing. I meant that in outdoor climbing there's no setter actively attempting to place holds in such a way that the route isn't particularly height dependent.

In reply to StuPoo2:

You are correct that the best climbers are, on the whole, not above average height, and that this is clear when we look at comp climbers. Nor are they, on the whole, significantly below average height, i.e. very short.

But you're also misunderstanding what people are talking about regarding height as a factor on routes/problems. You are generalising too much. No-one has suggested that being shorter IN GENERAL is a detriment to attainment; the observation is that it is undeniably something which makes CERTAIN CLIMBS harder. The point made, repeatedly, is that it is only some climbs which are height dependent for the given grade, not all climbs, and the difficulty can be telling which are which. It is not the case that one could simply add half or a full grade to all routes/problems for those below a certain height as you (presumably not at all seriously?) suggested in another thread.

In reply to StuPoo2:

I would argue that your data subsetting is very biased ,  but I don't think it matters as you get the point... I was at a world cup recently and the majority of those climbers are very small.  On steep routes this is a bonus for power to weight, being light with very high dinger strength making up for any lack of reach usually, and decidedly so in comps.

Proviso - generally as a small climber I have to use extra holds, different squence to tall.  At the highest grades there are routes a short climber cannot do e.g. DNA (?). Then again if we look at the examples of Adam Ondra on Perfecto Mundo and Excaliber, his weight and size mean he couldn't those routes, so it cuts both ways.

On easy routes below english 6a then the benefit is loaded towards tall climbers as routes aren't normally steep enough, and there are jugs , large holds to lank between.  Things even up when everyone needs to use small holds

In reply to Luke90:

My bad. Thanks for clarifying. 

In reply to StuPoo2:

Surely if you're looking at the experiences of average climbers at the wall, rather than pro climbers in comps, the big difference is they're not set for male and female categories. In pro comps there'd be no point them setting the women's category for the average male. But I'd argue that's far more likely to be the case at a commercial wall and therefore (while I can't speak for blokes), the average female, or notably short male, is a lot shorter than walls tend to set for, I'd wager. 

I'd also argue that there's only so much to be gained by looking at pro climbers. We all know that if you manage to overcome the restrictions of being 5'2" to that extent, you're going to be pretty damn impressive. 

In reply to StuPoo2:

I wasn't going to reply but I've been lured in.

From my perspective  

Less than 5ft 5 - gonna have to work a bit harder than most for the given "grade"

5ft 5 to 5ft 8 - excellent bouldererisers and sport redpointers.

5ft 8 to 6ft 1 - okay at everything.

6ft 2 and above - excellent vertical/slab onsighters on trad and sport.

When a short person is onsighting if they have to use an alternative sequence that isn't chalked it's likely going to be harder to spot what to do and execute. But changing that to a redpoint absolutely levels the playing field apart from on really morpho routes as the alternative sequence probably isn't much harder than the regular sequence, just different.

In my opinion it's undeniable that on an onsight trad  route being tall without being overly tall will allow you the most amount of holds possible and be able to place higher gear in extremis and those who are at 5ft 2 or 5ft 0 are going to find grade vary wildly. I've had conversations with my partner that went something like "That was fine I don't know what everyone's fuss is about" then on a separate route of the same grade "Jesus that's insane" and I had thought that imho they were the same grade and saw no issue with the general grading. 

Let's face it, we've got the body we're born with, I've got massive feet so they don't go in pockets, my mate has a negative ape index, another has phatttt fingers, one is naturally weedy and can't put on muscle, one has tiny hands so can't jam Joe brown cracks. Embrace the challenge, enjoy the climbing and worry less about who has it easier than who.

Dinosaur- 168cm tall, 180cm span, size 10 feet, 28" leg, 

In reply to dinodinosaur:

Agree with a lot of this (5'3" and this is definitely often an issue on grit where a V Diff assume the ability to reach the next break), apart from the alternative sequence not being harder. Of course we sometimes have an advantage of being able to wedge into the right spot etc but a lot of the time it's using shitter holds and rocking over a lot higher up relative to your body.

In reply to StuPoo2:

Um, bollox.

Different factors become more or less important as the level (grade) increases.

At easy grades, being tall is a net advantage.

At elite grades, almost everything is made easier/harder by different aspects of morphology, not just height.

Your centre of gravity on steep ground is further out if tall; long limbs are long levers an harder to do some moves; etc.

So having articles on how to mitigate being short is entirely reasonable given the readership is mostly non elite.

Edit.  I'm calling troll.

In reply to StuPoo2:

I have a theory that different rock types will also favour different height sets. Based on exactly zero data I reckon grit and slate will favour those 5'11"-6'1", and limestone 5'7"-5'11". 

The above is based on geology but, while outdoors obviously doesn't have setters, it definitely has first ascentionists who will have a bias in grading and first routing for their heights. This affects grading and climbing style not from a geological perspective but closer to that of indoor setters. The kind of people who do first accents in areas will be socially skewed depending on location, date of first ascents etc.

From my limited one day of climbing on Czech sport, the routes appear to be graded by people who are at least 6 foot based on bolt positions. They then put in place the rules for bolting in the area, further solidifying the bias towards a height set. I've also seen something similar on mountain trad, where first ascentionists were "mountain men" in big boots, and so easy trad routes on mountain rock are definitely much easier for the tall. 

As someone who is 6'2" and likes to introduce people to bouldering, I always hear that it's easier for me because I'm tall and I always quote the average height of the olympic mens finalists in retaliation. I'm not sure how accurate that is for me, a punter, but it sure makes me feel better in front of my new bouldering buddies. 

In reply to StuPoo2:

Not nearly as often as some short people use it as an excuse

In reply to wjvt:

You hear that a lot because it is a valid observation from newbies doing easy routes. Easy routes are easier for the tall. You should also point out that as climbing becomes harder and more technical the advantages of being tall diminish. 

In reply to StuPoo2:

As other people have said, competition climbing is on set problems so you are best off being of the aimed-for height.

For rock climbing, what becomes a "hold" scales down and down. A 40kg climber will be able to use smaller holds than a 90kg climber all else being equal. Thin fingers will fit in narrow slots etc. 

I think the "area to weight ratio" thing means that smaller is always going to be best overall. You want to be the smallest size that is physiologically feasible. My guess is that is a tiny mite. They can climb across smoother ceilings than ants can can't they? Certainly much better than geckos etc.

Sticking to humans, what I think is wonderful is how such an extraordinary range of body sizes can enjoy and excel at rock climbing. The rock can be read so many ways. Ondra is quite tall and the best. Probably any stats will simply show a fairly normal size because that is the size range with the biggest pool of talent to draw from. Skill can trump much else. There are 90kg climbers who can levitate past tiny holds. They'll never outclimb a 0.5mm mite though!

In reply to StuPoo2:

Explains why I am not an elite climber 

In reply to StuPoo2:

Anecdotally, my son, mad keen boulderer (Solly K.D.) really wanted to stop growing when he had his growth spurt, because he claimed that many boulder problems, particularly sit starts are harder for the tall.

In reply to wjvt:

This is an interesting observation. Some sandstone would probably be in the "favours the tall" category as the reaches to breaks thing comes into play.

I have a pet theory based purely on observation....

I think it's all grade related.

In the low grades (using sport grades rather than trad, and thinking mainly of routes.).

In the lower grades, up to 6b there is a generally a big advantage for the tall. Depending on the route this would be anywhere from 0.5 to 2 full letter grades, and the differences are very obvious.

In the mid grades, 6a to 7a there's often an advantage and again, it's usually quite obvious. Say more like 1 grade on average (if we're talking > 180+cm / 5'11" compared to <162cm 5'4" ish).

Around 7b, and up to about 8a I suspect things even out a fair bit if you look at the "average" person achieving those routes on any day at the crag. Some moves are clearly easier for the tall, but it's often counterbalanced by the fact you have to carry more weight up the route, and certain moves are more bunched. Also....

This is another key bit of my "pet theory" - I think that smaller climbers who break through the "tall dominated" grades and progress into the mid and upper 7s actually find the grades are a bit more compressed and quite quickly progress through the 7s into the 8s and beyond. They've had to develop so much skill, rock reading, ingenuity, flexibility and everything else mentioned in the article to even to get to 7a (where the "relative" difficulty on some 6cs, or even 6b+s might be roughly the same as other 7as that suit them) - remember, as the "tall male" is the average bolter / grader, they don't often find this anomaly, as the grades are typically more well spaced and "correct" for him). 

As the smaler climber progresses, they find that the 7b is not a huge jump from 7a etc. etc. (barring the odd route with "stopper" reaches)

(I'd love for some more feedback from smaller climbers on this).

From 8a and up the ideal height seems to be more around the 170/175 with very little advantage of being 180+, obviously all with very high height/ape to weight ratio.

Now for the punchline, given I'm 183cm and 78kg this theory suits me perfectly as an excuse for why I find it SO DAMN HARD to do a 2nd 8a (and a less soft one at that...) 

It would be really cool to see subsets of things lie 8a.nu or UKC Logbooks with individuals' grading thoughts on routes vs their height so see what the trends, skews and biases are.

Maybe grades need two axes?

In reply to Alasdair Fulton:

I don't think it's a crazy argument, but the obvious counterexample is Ondra. Clearly a single person wouldn't generally mean much, and he's evidently exceptional in some way regardless of whether or not his height is a disadvantage. But given that he's undisputably the greatest sport climber of his generation and significantly taller than your proposed cutoff (186cm according to Google), it would be extraordinary if his height was a significant hindrance to his climbing. He's clearly very gifted in multiple ways and has both natural and hard-learned skills that might allow him to overcome some disadvantages, but that surely only goes so far. You might expect that someone whose body type isn't ideal for their chosen sport could still reach the highest levels by dint of extraordinary effort and compensating with other strengths, but to absolutely dominate that sport and set new levels would be something else entirely. I think it's a pretty strong suggestion that if there's a boundary where being tall becomes a significant disadvantage to hard sport climbing, it's somewhere above Ondra's head.

In reply to Luke90:

The obvious counterpoint ha! 

I think he's got the "frame" of more like a 183cm person as he has such a long neck, still debunks the "tall barrier" idea.

I do think the disparity decreases with grade though. 

Interstingly Seb Bouin is only 1kg lighter than ondra despite being 6cm shorter. How many of those 6cm are just neck? 

In reply to StuPoo2:

I think we can all agree that a better data set would help, even if it only means we can draw conclusions about competition climbers. I don't really understand why you have chosen to focus on Japanese, Austrian and Italian climbers. You have started with a set of 100 from the IFSC. Would this roughly coincide with the top 100 competition climbers in the world? I assume so. So surely this is a decent data set. To get a larger data set, using similar data from 5, 10, 15 years ago would bring in hopefully more data of a very comparable quality. 

It would only really be fair to draw conclusions about competition climbing from this. Possibly an extrapolation to indoor routes might be possible. It might then be worth looking at the average height of the people in the countries from which these climbers come. Possibly the weighted average of these countries could be used.

In reply to Alasdair Fulton:

I agree with your general theory but I would also say rock type plays a part and would suggest that it doesn't truly balance across until 7bish, 7as on slabs are still lankable but 7a on pumpy limestone is probably no difference.

I find on Portland where it's vertical and a lot of routes were put up by Pete Oxley and Martin Crocker who are known to be tall the grading feels significantly harder than any inland limestone venue. On the inland limestone it's a bit steeper and there are a lot more analogue holds rather than the rather more binary style you find on Portland including undercuts and poor feet in more bunched positions. This also translates across to Spanish and eurolime which tends to have a lot of average sized holds and you just work the sequence that's best for you. 99.9% of the time I'll do a crux differently to everyone else and sometimes I'll think it's easier. 

A case recently was doing Crimson Dynamo (E6 6b) with a tall friend. I found the crux significantly easier than him because I could fit in such a small box and do a foot to hand match avoiding the normal crux. Everyone else has to deal with poor feet on small sidepulls and a long deadpoint but I basically went jug to good crimp skipping all the hard moves because of my morphology. If you ask Climberbill he will tell you my morphology is better than his for sport climbing and I'd agree, I'm just not quite as good at it as he is yet haha.

In reply to Alasdair Fulton:

I think the style the routes are climbed in will also have a significant influence (easier grades generally onsighted, harder grades generally redpointed). If you're short of stature and redpointing, you're surely going to be more likely to pick a route which isn't too height dependent. Or alternatively, you're going to have the time to develop an alternative sequence rather than giving up and moving on if you were onsighting.

In reply to StuPoo2:

Really interesting thread.

I am 6'5'' and a very bad climber.  (If I manage to lead a Severe, it is a good day)  This is despite being skinny, fit and going to the gym a bit.

There ARE occasions when I am able to reach past a crux and continue on without any problems.  These are normally met with howls of abuse from my friends, who like to point out how easy things are when you are tall.

I think that what is not so obvious are the many occasions when I do not have the power to get myself up a climb, whereas maybe a more average height climber would.  On those occasions no-one sympathises, they just identify that I am rubbish.

In conclusion, I very much agree that extra height may intuitively look like an advantage but actually, a bunch of top climbers hardly look like basketball players do they?

In reply to StuPoo2:

I used to climb with someone who was about 6 inches taller than me. He was 6'3" and had a wingspan of what seemed like miles. We both climbed pretty much the same grade, bouldering as well as climbing, but my pet hate was when he placed gear at arms length on his lead. He would stand on a nice wide ledge and place a wire well out of my reach leaving me to crimp and balance on tiny holds to remove the piece. That aside we were a very even match.

In reply to StuPoo

A long time climbing partner's daughter barely scraped above 5 feet tall. In the early nineties I took her climbing on some of her very first routes including Cave Arete on Stanage, a reachy route by most standards, she floated up it. Mind you she did go on to be one of the best female climbers of the time.

In reply to Hat Dude:

Charlotte Chestwig?

In reply to Shani:

Got it in one🤣

In reply to StuPoo2:

The relevant thing isn't height 

It's weight

Or more accurately; strength to weight ratio. The shorter climber typically weighs less but is no less strong in the things at the end of their arms. End of the day if my torso and legs were 1" shorter each, my fingers would be unchanged, and my weight would drop. The consequence is obvious.

The best climbers aren't the best cos they're short. They're the best cos they weigh eff all and therefore are usually short. There are outliers, but not many

In reply to Andrew Wells:

Note: this is true of many sports. Your average top level Rugby player is well over 100kgs. Your average top level rower is around 100kg and very tall/limby. Your average top level ring gymnast is tiny etc etc etc

There is an objectively "better" size for climbing. That doesn't mean if you aren't that size you shouldn't do it, at all, but sport performance is unfair and climbing is no different.

In reply to Andrew Wells:

There's a height component involved because leverage becomes a factor.  You can get round it to a an extent with high mobility in the hips, but it's there

In reply to wbo2:

Sure, it's useful to have a long reach. But it appears to be more useful to weigh less, for comps at least (and let's be real top comp climbers seem to make rock boulders and routes look piss)

In reply to Andrew Wells:

I think you're overemphasising the value of being small and light to an inaccurate extent, and I don't think that's a very healthy message to be putting out there. This is absolutely the kind of thread that Google could lead a young competition climber to if they're wondering whether they're capable of excelling, or that ChatGPT could ingest and regurgitate as advice to the same kind of person. There's a known (and much discussed on UKC) problem with disordered eating in climbing and I don't think it's responsible to be casually sharing misleadingly absolutist comments like that.

Firstly, the best competition climbers aren't particularly short. Stu's data has them in a range around average height for their gender with the average only a few centimetres below it. If your assertion that it's all about being as light as possible was correct then we'd expect to see way more genuinely tiny competitors like Ai Mori at the top levels. 

Secondly, yes, like in a lot of other sports you aren't going to see a lot of excess body fat on any of the athletes, but it's also not at all accurate to suggest that the best competitors all weigh "eff all". They're not rugby players, but they're not generally built like escaped models from the starving waif era of the catwalk either!

And then outside of competition climbing you see an even wider range of body types excelling.

In reply to Andrew Wells:

Not only does being light help on small holds, but actually helps in reachy moves involving deep lock-offs.

You rarely see tall people hitting 1-5-9 on a campus board because they'll likely be north of 80kg even if lean.

In reply to Luke90:

High performance in sport often can come off the back of unhealthy lifestyles yes, I don't think we should be naive about this. 

Being light does help a lot. We all know that. Why pretend otherwise?

In reply to StuPoo2:

Whillans and Brown did alright

In reply to Andrew Wells:

This is such an important point.

Climbing can become a defining lifestyle choice, strongly appealing to identity - particularly if you catch the bug young.

That an evidently weight-dependent sport with a highly competitive element can capture young minds, obviously raises sensitive issues where there is already a risk among that general demographic of compulsive and/or self-harming activities.

But none of this escapes the fact that elite performance is often self destructive; bodybuilders go on stage dangerously dehydrated with dangerously low BF. Strength athletes take dangerously high amounts of PEDs and achieve dangerous body weight. Footballers trash their cruciate ligaments over a 20 year career. Marathon runners - even recreational ones drop dead every year during a race (and many die out of the spotlight training for a run). Boxing and combat sports bring multiple trauma both short and ling term.

Even if you train modestly and reign in much of the risk, several branches of sports - including climbing, have a high consequence form of the discipline - wild swimming, ultra marathons,  freestyle BMX etc....

Edit: I'm reminded of the recent Gogarth thread...

In reply to Andrew Wells:Ah sorry. My post wasn't  clear.  I've heardit implied that for some things the extra reach from long limbs becomes unhelpful. There's an interview with AO where he comments that if his arms were some 10cms longer there are moves on routes he wouldn't be able to do.

There are of course moves that are impossible for the short, where it is a very long reach that must be done statically., but those are VERY long reaches.  

In reply to StuPoo2:

In general, the ideal height for climbing any particular route will be as short as possible while still being able to comfortably make any critical reaches. That way the benefits of being short and light aren't outweighed by notably harder cruxes.

In competition routes, this will be maybe a couple of inches taller than the shortest competitor the route is set for, so for women maybe 5'2" or so and for men around 5'7"?

For outdoor climbing, different routes will have different critical reaches, and therefore the ideal height will vary. But if we estimate that routes are typically graded for a climber stature of between 5'7" and 6'0", logic would suggest that an ideal climber height to get up most harder graded routes would be around 5'8" or so.

And to add something some might consider controversial: If the above is true, then were men and women to start competing on the same routes, the routes would need to be set for the shortest women and therefore the ideal height for climbing them would be well within typical female climbers' height range but outside of typical male climbers' height range. Women would therefore be expected to have a slight advantage!

In reply to Andrew Wells:

I'm not suggesting pretence, I'm suggesting that we could acknowledge the benefits of being light without overstating it and implying that it's the only relevant metric or that there's no such thing as taking it too far (not just in health terms, but also in terms of performance).

In reply to Luke90:

It's not the only important metric it is just a very important metric

In reply to john arran:

Looking the the 10 people in the world who have climbed 9b+ and based on their reported heights this doesn't look like a bad estimate.  They range in height from 5'2" to 6'1', with half 5'7 or shorter and half 5'9 or higher with half actually between 5'6.5"and 5'9.5".

But that looks like a relatively wide fairly normal distribution so in reality does the concept of an ideal height for climbing make a lot of sense?  For comparison the top 10 tennis players in the world range between 6' 0" and 6'6" with 7 between 6'2" and 6'5".

At a grade down I think the shortest person to climb 9b is Laura Rogora at 5'0".  I can't think of anyone taller than Adam Ondra who's climbed 9b though could well be missing someone.

In reply to Ian Patterson:

I'd say that it suggests that an ideal height is genuinely important for climbers, but the wide distribution also suggests that height is not a particularly dominant factor, so I'd expect other factors to be just as important too, if not more so.

In reply to Ian Patterson:

Survivorship bias, surely? You can't just look at the successful in a population.

The question is, "what happened to the peers of those 10 climbers who have climbed 9b+ - the ones who they started with?"

Out of each cohort ask did the taller climbers drop out of climbing because the top grades were beyond them? Did the shorter ones drop out?

In reply to john arran:

And Shani

Tiny amount of data obviously but not sure it indicates makes a significant indication of heights importance.  Height is fairly normally distributed in the population with a standard deviation of approx 3 inches so from 100 men 67 will between 5'7 and 6'1" and 95 between 5'4" and 6'4.  Therefore if potential climbers had the same height distribution as the population and height was completely irrelevant then there would be more climber around that mid point and less at either end.

Based on the 9b+ list it would appear that there's a slight bias to climber being a bit shorter than average but around that point they seem relatively normally distributed i.e more in the middle and less shorter and taller so its not really evidence that there a significant advantage to being a particular height.

To Shani's point to about taller (and particularly shorter climbers) missing you'd need a much bigger sample - e.g just based on population averages you'd need best 100 male climbers to expect 2-3 under 5'4" if height was irrelevant.  I imagine Ramon (5'2") would appear on a list of the best 100 sport climbers? On the taller side I think Kai Lightner is 6'3 and has climbed 9a+,  Paul Jenft is the same height and gets to finals in boulder and lead,

In reply to Ian Patterson:

I had a lively discussion on this subject a few months ago and, as it was during a wet week, I took the time to generate some data beyond "Adam Ondra is tall, therefore...". 

According to climbing-history.org, 47 men have climbed 9b or harder. I could find published heights for 25 of them. Mean height was 173.0 (SD 6.1) cm, so a little less than average for young men from those populations.

Raw numbers (let me know if you have sources for the missing): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YNZdj3MxCW8tWBGyxIm7bZSshq0aOPtmqk4...

Still a very small sample but it passes the sniff test as anyone who has spent any time at one of the hard sport crags will testify: not places to recruit for the basketball team.

This doesn't necessarily apply to easier grades of course. As suggested by John Arran I think, being a little taller than average is likely to be a net advantage on not-steep middle grade or easier routes. The ones most people climb! How would you test this hypothesis? 

In reply to StuPoo2:

While I find the OP interesting and would be curious to know more about the tendencies of elite athletes - I was taken aback by how short and slight Toby Roberts is when I met him - very few climbers are elite, which I think is why height can be such an emotive subject. 

I’ve only recently started climbing outdoors frequently, so can’t speak for that, but have been climbing in gyms for nearly ten years and in that time I (182cm tall) can probably count on one hand the number of projects that have shut me down, because of a sit start, or it’s too boxy, or I can’t otherwise find tension between holds. On the other hand, my partner, who is 157cm, is regularly shut down because a move is simply out of reach and alternative beta won’t work.

Strength, power, technique, dynamism, experience and climbing nous can all be developed, but height cannot. If you climb 2-3 times a week, as we do, around work and caring responsibilities and don’t have time to add in a Lattice training programme, then being shut down by something out of your control is frustrating. And I would hazard a guess that 95% of climbers in my local gym are this type of (keen, enthusiastic) ‘hobbyist’.

More considerate setting would make these climbs accessible to more people, without affecting the overall challenge/grade/whatever and it’s worth nothing that, when we have visited gyms who use regularly use female route setters, height has been much less of a problem.

In reply to Souvarine:

This might say more about the height of the route-setters than anything. Similarly, the 'reachy' shut down could be due to your partner's deep lock ability. Not saying this is the reason, just that we need to be mindful of alternative explanations.

There's strong biomechanical and physiological evidence that weight scales with the cube of height under equal body proportions.

Thus a 10% height increase maps to a 33% weight increase as rule-of-thumb (supported by geometric modeling, allometric biology, and the misfit of BMI to height extremes).

In reply to Alasdair Fulton:

I'm 187cm tall with what I consider to be a long neck and slim/athletic build - slim cut shirts for 42" chest, 34" waist, 33" inside leg. Non-climbers regularly say I'm skinny.  I weigh 85kg, and was 80kg at 18, that's 10-15kg more than Ondra.  Someone with a normal length neck at mine and Ondra's height will definitely be carrying more weight for the same build.  What we should be measuring is height to the shoulder, not height to the top of the head.

In reply to Shani: why deep lock rather than any number of technique method that get more cushioned?

This is the problem with using lower to medium  grade climbers to say tall is good or bad as there are potential techniques not being used

In reply to wbo2:

I agree... Lynn Hill famously explored such techniques.  She was the first to free The Nose. Also, back in the day, in a Birmingham World Cup superfinal (on the men's final route), she would have matched close to men's bronze on a route not set for women's reach. Training methods and evidence of elite female talent in depth have moved on a lot since then.

In reply to wbo2:

Absolutely. It's why I said 'could'.

I was trying to make the point that "I can't reach" does not mean "I am too short" or "This problem is reachy".

In reply to Shani:

I would have thought that reach (arm span) has more effect than heifgt