UKC

Bodyweight has to be the single biggest factor in climbing. No one over 85kg is ever going to climb 9a. Period. 

It seems ridiculous to attempt to impose an absolute grading system because there's simply no way the same route could be of broadly similar grade to the majority of people who climb.

Thus, it'd make sense to follow rowing, weight lifting, horse racing and combat sports, and introduce weight categories.

At the Olympics there's no reason why the super heavyweights crushing a fr6b+ shouldn't be every bit as exciting as some lightweights mincing around on a fr8b+.

This would not only broaden climbing's appeal, but increase inclusivity, address weight discrimination, and remove some of the dangerous incentives to lose weight.

Plan B could be a handicap system of weights.

Totally agree. Height is important as well, need extra categories for tall people.

The Olympics should introduce categories for the height of the athlete in the high jump too.

perhaps the World Limbo Championship too.

It's not just physical - anyone not motivated to train isn't going to climb 9a either. Perhaps there should be separate classes for different level of motivation: Dedicated, Keen, Casual, Lazy. We can't help the way we're born!

To the uninitiated statements such as 'no one over 85kg is ever going to climb 9a' might seem to incentivise losing weight too. Especially if coming from someone in a position of experience.

Out of interest how did you reach the figure of 85kg? 

How about levelling the playing field by combining competitive climbing with activities where weight might be an advantage, such as drinking and fighting? They could compete for the Don Whillans trophy.

Never heard of John Dunne? 

This is absolutely spot on but it's a bit late for that

John Dunne was no stick insect ! 

Are you journalist? Or a coach from a certain country?

What about 84kg?

#arbitrary. 

What about 8c+?

"But Captain ... will nobody think about the weak-fingered?!"

Are there no 9a slabs then?

He was a heavy guy but apparently he can't from a gymnastics background and he lost some weight when he climbed hard. 

At Malham he climbed upto 8c I think.

I have heard from him and about his achievements.

The Meltdown at  Twll Mawr on the slate.

Excellent idea. I’ll add 3 grades to all my climbs and 4 if I’ve put on some lard after Christmas 

Damn, I wondered what my problem was!

However, obvious Christmas Troll thread

Loving this. Put me down for the Casual 90kg 6ft category! I CAN be a contender.........

John was more muscular than the fashion at the time but what never that big at his peak. I'd be surprised if he was even 85kg, let alone heavier.

Toni Lamprecht?

but how do you judge the laziest winner....asking for a friend

Entered, turned up ('cos you have to set the bar somewhere), but never left the bar.

Not sure how much Kai Lightner weighs now, but he must be one of the heavier climbers to climb 9a.

Does rowing have weight categories? I only pay attention at Olympics, but I thought it was just classed by crew numbers.

(I'd also assume weight would be less important than for, say, climbing)

Yes, but afaik only two - unlimited and "lightweight"

Rowing is binary - open weight and lightweight. Lightweight categories peaked at the Olympics sometime in the 90s, and have been gradually reducing due to overall pressure on competitor numbers.  There is an individual max and a crew average (70kg for men).

I would argue having a lightweight  category in rowing increases unhealthy attitudes to weight and weight loss, rather than reduce them.  But I would also guess that performance is not as closely linked to weight in rowing as it is  in climbing. 

 Not sure how tactful or helpful it is to make a comment like this about someone who's spoken openly about their struggles with eating disorders.

https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/kai-lightner-climber-eating-d...

Yeah I know this... my point is he has a big frame and is naturally not like most high level climbers. He has spoken about weight struggles when competing in the past. But this year he managed to climb 9a again, despite him now being much heavier, and presumably more of a natural weight for his frame.

​​​​​​As someone with a similar frame and naturally on the heavier side, I find this quite inspiring, which is why I mentioned it.

It's actually quite an interesting topic. There's definitely a reason why the best climbers in the world are (with a few, but only a few, notable exceptions) 5ft 6 to 5ft 9.

We're all aware that heavier climbers have increased injury risk and tend to be taller... which means longer levers (smaller holds relative to size) and less ability to fit small boxes... their only advantage being reach which becomes increasingly less important as grades rise... but one thing I learned recently and had not considered before is the way mass and strength scale...

A muscle's cross sectional area defines its strength. But a muscle's volume defines its mass. So as muscle mass increases as a cubic, strength increases as a square. This leads to increasingly inefficient muscles as you get larger. 

When you consider power to weight is hugely important to climbing performance it follows that heavier/more muscular climbers can never achieve the same ratio and thus immediately suffer a handicap.

Yes.

Rowing benefits from big muscles and large bodies (tends to favour the tall), because the weight is mostly carried by the boat so isn't directly penalized in the same way. So getting below 70kg and performing well given those constraints tends to involve a lot of squeezing of the rest of the "non productive" weight, with all the unhealthy adverse consequences that can entail.

Given the well documented issues the sport has had with athletes developing eating disorders, and the association of participating in a sport with weight categories and disordered, unhealthy and extreme dieting this is a bad suggestion, as bad as I’ve seen in here to be honest.

If the sport were to move ahead with this, many more people, particularly young female athletes would develop issues. We’re supposed to be moving away from this kind of thing, not exacerbating it.

Allometric scaling

Also have you noticed that most route setters are 5 ft 8”

So the both the physical advantages and the environmental advantages favour a set height range.

Seems to play out better for taller folk outside climbing as there’s quite a bit of evidence they are more successful in terms of jobs, salary, partner selection. So in terms of taller heavier folk not climbing as hard perhaps we should reframe it to stating we would love to climb that hard but wouldn’t swap the rest of the lifestyle that goes with it…

Totally agree. It's much harder for us.  

I don't support the proposal at all. It seems silly to me for a multitude of reasons and was probably a troll rather than a serious idea. But if it did happen, the pressures might be different from other sports with weight classes by virtue of the fact that weight isn't an advantage in climbing like it is in most other sports that use weight classes. In boxing and other combat sports there's a huge incentive to cut weight down to X kilograms because if you can't do that then you instead need to fight people substantially heavier than you, which is generally going to be a huge disadvantage. The weight classes exist there because otherwise only heavyweights would be able to effectively compete. I don't know anything at all about the other sports that have been mentioned but they seem to follow the same pattern based on comments from people who do follow them. You could argue that weight classes in climbing would actually push in the other direction. If cutting weight puts you into a lower weight category, that might be a disadvantage rather than an advantage.

To be honest I was referring to rock climbers, not comp climbers. But yes, same applies to comp climbers. Not sure who set Raven’s Tor. But I’d like a word with them. Terrible job. 

The thing about real climbing on rock though is that the crux may vary depending on your build, and whilst on some climbs you may benefit from being 6'+ others most certainly don't. Same with heavy muscle, some routes need more power whilst I suspect the balancy ones will favour lighter climbers.

In other words, at a given grade there will be routes/problems that give an advantage and others that discriminate against your body shape/weight.

There have been fairly informal ‘studies’ done on this. Summary is that being tall may lead to you occasionally finding something with a big grade a lot easier than others. So you may have a high max grade in theory. But your pyramid is unlikely to back that up.

There’s a reason Shawn and Aidan are so tiny... 

Jon Glassberg and Toni Lamprecht have both climbed 9a at around 90kgs. Jimi Webb is one of the best boulderers in the world and is huge, though may fall just short of your marker of 85kgs. Anyway, it's clearly bollocks and I'm sure if someone wants to put a few minutes research in they can add to my list of 2.

Weight is a factor in tons of sports. Show me a chunky marathon runner. We don't have to have categories for everything.

You have weight categories in combat sports because it would be dangerous to put someone who weighs 150kg against someone who weights 60kg. You have weight categories in lifting because heavier people will always be able to shift more weight than lighter people. If those two sports weren't weight-controlled then the elite would all invariably be huge. In climbing there is a reasonable mix of shapes and sizes still I think. If it got to the point and popularity where all the elite were the same height and weight then it may be worth exploring.  

Very good points, and to a certain extent you may be right but really any sport with weight classes leads to an unhealthy diet behaviour. 

We’d certainly see a lot of bulking before and crash dieting after weigh ins also some people bulking up to move up a class, and others struggling to win in their class dieting to go down and compete against different athletes.

Any sport that has weight divisions also has these issues. And climbing needs to stay well, well away from it, we already have problems.

To be fair Jimmy Webb is 6ft and 76kg ish from what I hear. He is definitely massive for a climber but not massive in every day terms…

I think one of the best things about climbing is that different routes and disciplines can suit a huge variety of body shapes. 

Being able to do a two finger pull up may help but not if you need to put your foot by your ear. Or carry a heavy pack up a snow slope. 

Yes, body weight is important in climbing but so are lots of other attributes 

Can you also factor in a lack of talent? It is shameful the way those who are technically inept (or hard of technique as I prefer to call them) are being discriminated against and it needs calling out.

As a more stout climber with weak fingers and somewhat 'hard of technique', this initiative is clearly long overdue.

I can't agree though with the idea of reducing grades based on height which is clearly unfair and nonsense, especially having recently watched a tiny 8 year old easily reach a hold that I couldn't quite stretch to, despite being 6 foot tall. 

Not sure which would be worse, wrecking your health in pursuit of higher performance, or wrecking your health in pursuit of a weight class that's perceived to be less competitive.

Probably just as well the OP was trolling 

Not sure which would be worse, wrecking your health in pursuit of higher performance, or wrecking your health in pursuit of a weight class that's perceived to be less competitive.

Probably just as well the OP was trolling 

Should have known he was trolling when he said that horse racing has weight classes but was distracted by all the other stupid things in the post.

It's OK.  Kai has spoken out about this recently.  He has talked about the importance of people realizing that they can send in a larger body.  Kai does defy the premise of this post.  He is likely the first 9a send at over 85kg.  BTW, this is Connie, his mom.

Kai was most proud of his recent 9a send, because he is over 85 kg.  Watching so many climbing hurt themselves (as he once did) to conform to the body type that they think they need to climb hard, motivated him to train hard to defy this stat.  This is definitely a narrative that needs to change.  Yes, you can be Bigger and climb stronger than you've ever climbed before.

to all the downvoters - 

https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/relative_energy_deficiency_in_...

My best climbing was done weighing less than I do now. 

climb at your limit - then put on a weight vest with 5kg and see how you get on. 

Excellent post, climbing has so much to learn from other sports.

The general public are always asking, according to Alex Honold discussing questions he always gets asked:

•  How do mountain climbers get their ropes up to the top first?
• Who is the best climber?

While the answer to the first question remains elusive, the second one can be solved. Taken from boxing, a weight system and champions belts would help settle that. You want to know the best climber? Who holds the super heavyweight climbing belt currently? It'd be a quick and definitive answer.

But in boxing the best heavyweight in the world would usually beat the smaller opponents at the top of lower divisions. The heavyweight champion of climbing is not going to beat the lightweight champion of climbing at climbing (though they may in a fight). 

Lets face it, that's what we really want to see here. Who doesn't want to see Ondra take on Honnold in a chair fight?

"What's an 'eltdown'?" - H. Simpson, February 1999

I like your thinking!

So in say bouldering competitions or speed climbing, Olympic competitions etc.... if the top two climbers performance is too close to be properly decisive or to be able to compare the climbing belt winners in different weight categories, we could make them FIGHT!

When in comes to Bruce Lee style vocalisations, you know Ondra can't be matched 

Unlikely to get many actual fights if you follow your boxing analogy! what we’ll get is five different bodies claiming to sanction climbing comps with multiple different ‘versions’ of the title belts, climbing competitions that take years to arrange as people duck, bargain for more money, take obligatories instead of main competitors, or wait until their competitors age or weaken, the widespread nod-nod-wink-wink use of clenbuterol and PEDs and the obligatory diuretics to cut weight (don’t forget to dehydrate to as close to kidney failure as possible) and some nice judging corruption to top it off. Lovely. I hope you’re being funny because bringing weight categories into a sport that is always going to have an issue with weight is the worst idea i can think of! Best thing is to give medics more oversight of the competitors and coaches so they can identify issues early and help manage them, plus promoting good research that will hopefully show that low weight does not always lead to better performance. 

How much of this thread have you taken seriously? I'm actually stunned that anyone could have thought for a moment the original post (which is a fine dry sense of humour) or the majority of the responses were serious.

You never can tell on UKC! Guess it would be nice to see a proper ring walk, climbers at comps tend to do that awkward jogging pace walk out onto the mats, then the winner could croon to us like Tyson fury. Actually, maybe not…

Frankly, if the original post was trolling / tongue in cheek, then it’s in pretty poor taste.

We know many competition climbers have suffered eating disorders, and we know the harm that can cause to individuals and their families. Perhaps it’s wiser to find another subject to have a joke about, this isn’t remotely funny to me.