UKC

Hi all, 

as an undergrad studying Outdoor Adventure Education, I am doing a research module, but deciding on a topic has been difficult as I can't find any literature on the topic which interests me:

"Measuring the grip strength and body weight and testing how long they can dead hang for compared to the time of someone with the same grip strength but different body weight."

Has anyone done research like this before or know of any similar research topics to this?

Yes, but they tend not to reference UKC.

Do they not teach undergraduates how to do a literature search in first year anymore?

Hi Jon, they do but after hours of searching I haven't found any research which looks at grip strength and body weight together with the result of improving something related to climbing its mainly one of the other. I was just wondering ion someone had the needle in the haystack. 

You could start with Seifert, Wolf et al Science of Climbing & Mountaineering

Great news that you couldn't find anything after an extensive search,  you should be able to produce some novel research. good luck.

Sounds like an original idea to me. Have you checked this climbing research inventory?

https://beta-angel.com/research/research-inventory/finger-strength/

What about lattice board assessments?

Is grip strength an indicator of a person's climbing ability, or just a by-product of it?

There's your working title. You will of course need to grip test a lot of people and trust their honesty about climbing grades. 

You could of course expand into the different climbing disciplines too. 

This must be a troll. Its hilarious!

Heres a starter: https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22grip+s...

First paper https://experts.umn.edu/en/publications/grip-and-pinch-strength-normative-d... has been cited 1982 times. https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cites=379703564634987762&as_sdt=20...

As C9Smith8 says Lattice trainers Tom Randall and Olie Torre have been collecting max dead hang data of climbers for some time now.

We do when you do an actual degree, not "I should have spent my 27k getting my SPA/ML/Paddling quals"

So basically, the effect of body weight on duration of dead hang?

I think I might know how that one will work out...

To be clear, I want to help you and am not here to bash your post at all. With that being said I'd like to add my two pence...

1) All things considered, it would seem to me that bodyweight is a highly influential aspect of your study; would you be able to address whether it possible for two individuals to have "the same grip strength"?

2) In an effort to minimize ambiguity toward point 1; could adding "bodyweight" to your subjects, in the form of weight veists/ankle weights/backpacks etc help with you identifying "same grip strength"?

I hope the helpful people who have posted previous to me have put you into a state of research overload. ????

I'm interested in the progress of your research proposal, do keep us updated !

Grant.

"Measuring the grip strength and body weight and testing how long they can dead hang for compared to the time of someone with the same grip strength but different body weight."

It's a bit of a tenuous link. Why - so you can determine whether it's important to exercise grip strength if you want to get better at climbing?

Is dead-hanging an established proxy measure for climbing ability? If not to infer anything about climbing you'll need to have a study quantifying dead-hanging as a factor in climbing ability. Also grip strength and body weight will influence all sorts of climbing moves not just dead-hanging. Why not just use max grade as a measure and drop the dead hang from the equation?

If yes then grip strength is only one factor in dead hanging, wouldn't it make sense to remove some variables and just add weight to the same subject? Even then if I'm in an 'expressive' mood I can dead hang twice as long as if not. 

Then I would think you're looking at if there are easier gains for some climbers through training grip strength or losing weight than say, core strength or flexibility or psych. So you'd need to think about how to compare those potential options for it to have any practical value to climbers

I don't think it's a terrible idea just a shaky premise and any findings will be hard to quantify in practical terms to climbers. Good luck

I'm not the OP, but the answer to your question is yes. There are multiple studies, including ones contained or cited in the book I recommended above, and ones done & published by the lattice lads, showing that *relative* dead-hanging strength as % of bodyweight is strongly correlated with climbing ability, and a better predictor of it than any other physical factor that has been measured.

I'd be interested to hear why the OP thinks absolute rather than relative dead hang strength might be interesting.