UKC

I was at Oakwood on Sunday and finally got round to having a quick play on their Lattice board and the Lattice edge and pulley set-up they have. (BTW, a great wall if people haven't been; friendly staff and another cool set of problems!)

A couple of quick questions that the UKC collective may know the answer to...

First, what angle should the Lattice board be set at so that any standard endurance test results are comparable with other numbers quoted online?
The board at Oakwood was at 20degrees (which felt hard enough for two circuits) but previous threads online have mentioned 27degrees...

Second, my results for the edge test were 83% Left hand & 81% Right hand. I really wasn't sure what to expect, but at least I've now got some sort of baseline.
Does anyone wish to comment on how that either compares to their own results or what sort of redpoint sport grade that might equate to for other climbers?

Many thanks in advance.

In reply to The Ex-Engineer:

I did it and got 95% average between the 2 hands and recall that was v 9/10 and 8a+ sport. Which is a fair few grades above what I've actually climbed and it was clear why when looking at the other tests.

84-89% is the gold standard for 7c sport my report also says (as that is what grade I was climbing when I did the test)

In reply to The Ex-Engineer:

Board angle very much depends on your current grade. My girlfriend did her test on a 10 degree board (Climbing Station) as her best redpoint was 6c at the time, whereas mine was on 27.5 (Foundry) at 8a+.

Her finger strength was around 75% which meant she was at the limit of her finger strength based on the high number of moves she managed etc - mine was the other way round at 104% but low moves.

If you want to get the real numbers I recommend getting a test booked in - Robin at Oakwood is the one to get in touch with. The Lattice guys can give you his contact information if you drop them a facebook message.

In reply to The Ex-Engineer:

Most common move counts will be based on the 27.

In reply to The Ex-Engineer:

Yep, 27.5 degrees for comparison to the biggest set of data.

Your number of moves will be comparable to a load of others that have been tested on the original board in Tom's garden, the foundry board (de-facto home of Lattice now?) and others like The Boardroom in Queensferry.

82% is 7b+ish RP fingerstrength

If you did 2 circuits of the 20 degree version (28 moves?) then you're probably going to find that your aerobic function is the limiting factor, though as Mischa rightly pointed out - having a proper assessment will take the guesswork out of this.

In reply to The Ex-Engineer:


I think it's more complicated than that. I would recommend listening to the podcast by Tom and Ollie on trainingbeta.com for an explanation. On this podcast they say that the finger strength requirement for certain grades is depending on height, gender and other factors. E.g. shorter climbers need higher finger strength than taller climbers for a given grade. I think if you do the testing with lattice, then you get a result that is tailored to you. I'm sure other peoples results can give you a ball park for what finger strength should be required, but I think you'd need someone of the same gender and around the same height.

In reply to all: Many thanks for all the positive and constructive comments.

Ally, I didn't do max effort on the Lattice Board on Sunday. I just wanted a bit of practice so that I could have a proper attempt next time. I also thought it needed to be steeper...
However my gut feeling is that my aerobic function might not actually be as good as I previously thought.

Anyway I think the first conclusion is that my current finger strength probably won't get me up f8a...

In reply to The Ex-Engineer:

I work for Lattice so I can hopefully provide some answers (though not all of them! That's what an assessment is for )

As has been pointed out, a lot of our data is at 27.5 degrees as this was the original angle Tom used, so if you can do a reasonable number of moves (say, >1 lap) then it's a good idea to test at this angle.

We have done some work so that we can compare scores between angles (e.g. we know that 34 moves @ 27.5 degrees = 48 moves @ 20 degrees), this is really handy for us because it allows us to leverage our big database of scores @ 27.5 degrees to generate reference scores for other angles. Having said that, this stuff is all part of an assessment, so if you just want to compare scores between friends then Id say try and test at 27 degrees.

If anyone has more questions feel free to ask away, though I won't be able to answer stuff about reference scores as that's a lot of what you're paying for in an assessment.

In reply to remus:

What's the lowest grade you can do an accurate assessment for?

In reply to remus: what is the angle of the Lattice board at the Foundry?

In reply to dr_botnik:


It depends on the board angle. There's a 10 degree board at The Climbing Station in Loughborough which in theory could be good for people from about 6a upwards. There's also an adjustable angle board at Oakwood which can cater for a wide range of abilities. On the 27.5 degree foundry board we tend to say sport 7a or V6 boulder as a starting point, though it depends a bit on previous experience. There's various other boards dotted around, mostly at 20 degrees or 27.5 degrees. Full list is here http://latticetraining.com/partners/

In reply to kevin stephens:


27.5 degrees

In reply to dr_botnik:

Physiological data - strenght for a given grade for example - will become very dispersed at lower grades as non-physiological factors become the most important limitations to how hard you climb.

What is the cut-off point? My guess is below 7a most people need to work on their movement and head more than their forearms.

In reply to flaneur:

Very true in my case (the head part that is...)

Just wondering what I *should* be capable of physiologically to see if it could help boost the confidence a bit...