UKC

TCA Bristol has a Lattice Board and I thought I would try the endurance self-assessment. Apparently you need to aim for about 2 seconds a move. As far as I know there is no fixed sequence of moves so I just moved in a random, varied way. I have seen it suggested that 30 moves first rep tends to be what people who redpoint 7b manage, 7c climbers manage about 40, 8a climbers manage about 50 but my sense of it is that they manage a lot more moves. 

Apparently you are meant to do the following
Rep 1: as many moves as you can manage
20 minutes rest
Rep 2: 75% of the number of moves as you managed in Rep 1
Rest for time taken to complete Rep 2
Rep 3: as many moves as you can manage
Rest for time taken to complete Rep 2
Rep 4: as many moves as you can manage
Rest for time taken to complete Rep 3
Rep 5: as many moves as you can manage
Rest for time taken to complete Rep 4
Rep 6: as many moves as you can manage
Rest for time taken to complete Rep 5
Rep 7: as many moves as you can manage

Apparently your aerobic capacity score is the Rep 3 %age of the total number of moves you managed in Rep 1 and your anaerobic capacity score is the Rep 7 %age of the total number of moves you managed in Rep 1.

My self-assessment today was
Rep 1: 56 moves in 2 mins 8 secs (then 20 mins rest)
Rep 2: 31 moves (75% of Rep 1) in 1 min 3 secs (then rest = this work time)
Rep 3: 41 moves in 1 min 38 secs (ditto rest)
Rep 4: 30 moves in 1 min 13 secs (ditto rest)
Rep 5: 30 moves in 1 min 11 secs (ditto rest)
Rep 6: 28 moves in 1 min 16 secs (ditto rest)
Rep 7: 26 moves in 1 min 4 secs
Aerocap score 73%. Ancap score 46%. Endurance typical of 8a redpoint climbers 

Analysis
- My pacing was pretty close to the 'move every 2 seconds' tariff
- I wonder whether I need to be doing a set sequence of moves to improve comparability
- I think my endurance is more like that of 7b/7b+ redpointers
- I levelled off pretty quickly (Rep 4) and could have probably have fought a bit harder to not drop off at all. 

What is your actual redpoint grade?

There is a fixed sequence .

Also, tcA is 20 degree and the 50 move comparison is for a 27 degree board. 56 on a 20 should be about 2/3rds that on a 27 .

My last redpoint was 7b+ in August. I feel in roughly the same shape.

Thanks AJM, very helpful. Means that on that board 7b redpoint climbers would generally manage 45 moves first rep, 7c climbers about 60 moves, 8a climbers about 75 moves. 

I suspect I was using a soft sequence unintentionally. Do you know the correct sequence is?

A lot of boards have number tags to indicate the correct hand sequence, i guess the TCA one doesn't?

I had a quick look for a video showing the sequence but couldnt see a complete one. The epic tv vid of matt doing the assessment shows most of the sequence and you can see the little number tags.

There must be someone at TCA that can show you? 

Getting confused about what redpoint grade is. If you're willing to spend all season on one route, surely it'll be higher than if you get bored after a few goes and move on. But your physical and technical ability could be the same.

Cool, seems pretty accurate then, factoring in the differences between this board and the actual one as AJM says. 

The way the Lattice people deal with this is that they look at their database and say that the people in their database who have redpointed grade x (regardless of number of sessions) tend to be able to do y number of moves in rep 1 on the Lattice Board. My guess is that there is a band of performances so that those redpointing that grade more quickly will tend to be be able to do more rep 1 moves on the Lattice Board. 

Your guess is right - there are no numbers on the TCA Lattice Board.

I will have a look at that video and check out the tags.

Yes there is someone at TCA I could ask (Paul Twomey, who does the Lattice assessments). I don't want to be cheeky though and perhaps I should be paying for an assessment. 

Yes, pretty accurate, with the way I did it possibly flattering me a little.

I did a bit of Googling, since they're getting scientific I thought they'd things better defined. But couldn't see anything.

It always used to be a moderately prolonged redpoint (10 sessions?) rather than a second go job. But yes, obviously there is a range (they show box/whisker plots in the dummy reports on their site), everything is a correlation rather than a direct link.

Thanks. Would be interested to have a go if I ever get the chance.

Thanks. Sequence on this at about 4 mins 30 secs

https://www.epictv.com/media/podcast/matt-takes-on-the-lattice-training-ass...

Good point. I was thinking the same. The difference between a few tries and even a just few days could easily be several grades.

Then there is a difference in the style of climbing. Steep climbing is likely to require more physical strength and/or endurance than vertical techy climbing. Then boulder problem routes will be different to endurance routes. Then there is the difference in the area you climbed in. Climbing at somewhere like Kalymnos seems to require little finger strength for many of the routes whereas Peak limestone is almost totally about finger strength. Not to mention some areas have much softer/harder grades than elsewhere.

I am not a Lattice person but my understanding of the ways they address these issues is that they look at their database and say that the people in their database who have maximum redpoint grade x (regardless of number of sessions it took them to redpoint it) tend to be able to do at least y number of moves in rep 1 on the Lattice Board. So on average the people the people doing that grade in a couple of tries with tended to have redpointed harder so that takes them out of the equation. They are not saying that, if you can do y moves on the Lattice board you can redpoint x grade, and certainly not that style of route doesn't matter. 

Disclaimer: I work for Lattice.

You've pretty much nailed why it's so hard to measure 'climbing ability' in an objective way. In theory grades should do this, but as you point out if someone says "I climb 7b+" this could mean "I climb 7a+" or "I climb 7c+" depending on how many sessions it took, the style of the route, over/under grading etc.

At a data level these differences tend to get averaged out when you have a big enough data set. It helps that climbing style tends to be fairly consistent across grades. i.e. people operating at the mid to low sevens are much more likely to be doing quick redpoints rather than extended sieges and vice versa for higher grades. On a more subjective level we gather a lot of information about a client's current habits and their goals which lets us adjust feedback on an individual basis. For example, if you have someone who has a lot of onsight/quick redpoint experience it's pretty straightforward to extrapolate that they'll be able to climb harder if they start projecting a bit more. Obviously it's more complicated than this in practice, but that's the basic idea.

Is there data to back that up? If by "operating at the mid to low sevens" you mean max redpoint, I've noticed the opposite.

But like I mentioned in the reply to Remus, does that data exist? Or are we mixing data with anecdotal evidence and calling it science?

So you're saying those operating at the mid to low sevens generally take more days to redpoint their routes than those operating in the high sevens and eights? If true that would clash with my experience but of course that's just anecdotal too so I don't really know for sure.

I'm saying I don't know. Best not to rely on to anecdotal evidence.

Is this the sequence? 

https://www.instagram.com/p/Be_mmpXnoYB/

Yes, that's the one - well spotted