Statistic for: HEIGHT, WEIGHT and CLIMBING START

What is the subtitle on the X axis? 

the x-axis relate to the 200 single route climbers based on their 8a.nu ranking from the 1.-303. with complete profil regarding the elaborated parameters.

Weigh and height run against each other, try with BMI.

I think weight is intresting in terms of training. BMI would be nice:) You cannot really change your height or year you started climbing, but you can change your weight. Also I'm really intrested what would be the results for boulder ranking. You took the data from the all time list?

already did this if you look at the priv. forum posts. both boldering and sport.. 

@mr.monkey: no, you did something different.  @pbla4024: don't understand what you want to say.  I collected data from climbers with complete profile regarding height, weight and climbing start. I did not used the all time ranking. I used the actual 8a.nu ranking for route climbers. I collected data from 200 climbers. The x-axis shows the best of the 200 climbers from the actual 8a.nu ranking at the beginning of the graph till to the 303. climber on the acutal 8a.nu ranking. Every peak is one climber. You can even match the data for the height, weight and climbing start because I used the same climbers.  Interesting facts:  Height: the mean value for the best climbers is between 170-173 cm. Following the trend of the linear progression line we can say that in the mean, better ranked climbers are shorter, approximately 1 cm every 100 positions in the ranking.  Weight: the mean value for the best climbers is in between 56-64 kg. Best climbers are lighter and every 100 positions in the ranking means approximately 3 kg more weight.  For the climbing start it is interesting that you need approximately 14-15 years to be on the top.  

The "year started climbing" doesn't make any sense, it should be the age they started, which can be easily calculated anyway. No wait, I see what you mean, but it'd be easier to understand if it was "years spent climbing" The whole correlation shown is very weak IMO. I think it would have made more sense to have grouped distribution on the X axis. E.g. average all time ranking for all climbers between 170 and 175 cm of height or something.

I want to say that I would expect stronger correlation between ranking position and BMI (than the correlations for weight and height).

Yeah..  i used the reg. last year ranking asweel. But i just took a selection of the ones with compleate data in every 1000.. there is only like ondra on the 14k, then like 17 in the 1000 after that. Then i div. the total of the next one with 30 and got the intervall, then if the person on that interval did`nt have data i went down to the first one with data and on to the next interval. So yours is more complete in the top range, and the one i did goes longer. One thing i was thinking of is that the weight is prob. even lower than the numbers, since i guess most put in the data when they make the profile and dont change it when they get stronger, and i think the weight goes mostly down and not up. And if they loose weight for comp. or prob. i think the weight put in is the ¨off season¨ weight, atleat in the top range. And like you say there is 3kg diff. in 100..  but there is also about 2-3kg from elite to about 8a for every 1000 points also.. you can see in the sports scatterplot i did that most the really elite climbers are below the overall trend, so they go even further down from top to elite.. but stil i goes up til you get to about 8a sport and 7b+ boulder..  think maybe this is some of the reason that people get stuck in this grades?   the data shows atleat that we that are about 170 can`t comp. about the tall guys:)  and that we chould stop liftig weight and start eating less and doing cardio..heh..  yeah and train fingerstrenght. Just got my 9 out of 10 climbers book and dave has some good points about this subj...  like the top guys drop as low as 4% fat!..  but as the BMI shows you dont really need that much muscle eiter..  like i have been focusing a lot on getting stronger (bigger) over the years, (like back, chest and arms) but think i`m gonna try something different in the future..  think being lighter is going to help with all the f..ing injueries asweel.

@pbla4024: My approach was to collect and determine mean data for height, weight and climbing start for the top ranked route climbers and to see how they change with the ranking. If I have time I will collect more data up to 500 route climbers to find out more about the progression of the parameters with lower ranking.  @BOR: it is a good idea to took the all time ranking for a more complete data set, but it takes me much more time and I think that the data don't change that much. The mean height and the mean weight of the 200 top climbers from the all time ranking might be around 171-172 cm and between 58-61 kg I suppose.  @mr. monkey: interesting inputs. The data show, that in the mean shorter climbers can climb harder rated routes than taller climbers.  In general, shorter climbers have a better morphology for climbing hard rated routes (rated mostly by short climbers as a positive feedback loop?). Generally taller climbers have to bring a better performance to climb at the same level as short climbers. Of course the biggest impact is the weight, which is closely connected with height and finger strength.

oO00Oo , real interesting data.  The results depend on the height/weight numbers being accurate.  Hard to know, it seems to me.  But it does suggest one reason (of many) Adam Ondra is so great.  He is lighter than the mean, at the same time that he is a lot taller.  So he gets the advantages of greater reach, without the drawback of greater weight (which as you say is closely connected to finger strength).  I'm pretty sure the numbers you ran include both men and women.  Isn't that why your height graph shows four top 50 (?) climbers under 155 cm?  I think you should run separate numbers, by gender, and see how that affects your results.  If nothing else, it will change the means.  You concluded that "In general, shorter climbers have a better morphology for climbing hard rated routes."  Just glancing at your height graph, I see dozens of exceptions to that.  So I wonder how useful a conclusion it is.     I'm also interested to know how the trend lines look for the top 30, top 50, top 100, etc.  Are they the same as your top 200?  Final question (for now): have you run the numbers for bouldering?  I'd like to see if the trends hold true, and also what the means and deviations are, compared to route climbing.  Thanks again for the real interesting data and analysis you are doing. 

First: great that you have done this analysis. Really interesting. Make sure there are no girls in the data, as it will introduce errors in the interpretation. Maybe make a separate one for girls? I agree that the correlation between position in the rank and the height (or weight) seems very weak. But it is interesting to note, that not a single person in the top200 is taller than 190cm and only a handful are taller than 185. In my opinion, this is not the case in the general population. Surely more than 1 on 200 males are taller than 190 and many more than a handfull are taller than 185. In Denmark there are very precise statistics since every boy is measured for military service around his 18th birthday. Based on thousands of measurements, the average height of a Danish 18-year old is 180,6 cm. Also, a guess at the average height of a top200 climber would be around 174 cm - and again I would argue that the average height of a male would be around 180cm - obviously, this varies greatly in different countries, but still.. So a safe bet based on the data would be that the average top200 climber is shorter than the average guy on the street. The same applies to weight, where the average weight of a top200 climber seems to be around 65 kilos, which is far below the weight of the average guy on the street.

I guess that the best Lead competition climbers are on average 170 cm if we exclude Adam Ondra who I think is the only one above 180 cm. The girls average is probably 160 cm. I do not know any succesful male being 190+ cm or female 180+ cm. Who are the best really tall ones?

Robert Leistner seems pretty tall on video, but I can't find any stats online. Anybody know how tall he is? 

whink there is to few females to inf. the results, and you see the same trend in the BMI. You also see that the mean height goes up all the way to about the 8-9k point range in sport where it is somewhat close to the 180 mean of population. So the shorter you are the bigger chance of being in the top. And the lower BMI the bigger chance of being in the top.. is`nt it possible to just get all the data from the database into excel or something in a easy way?

interesting points... I already did a new statistic for 500 route climbers, which means from the best down to the 772. position. Interesting data, I will publish soon. There are some kids and female involved in the data, without the trend is even more determined. I can take them out, of course but I don't think it is necessary. I will see, I can publish the graph with and without kids and female... I will publish the new data today or in the next days...

You should be able to use some monotonic transformation of grades to arrive at a continuous dependent variable. Then run regressions like:  [max on-sight grade] = [intercept] + a1*[height/weight] + a2*[female] + a3*[height/weight]*[female] + a4*[age] + a5*[years] + a6*[number of registered sends] + ... [max redpoint grade] = ... ... will be more informative than graphs and summary stats. 

Cool and interesting data.  As most have said, difficult to make any really statistically significant implications, but the data certainly supports anecdotally what most climbers know, and that is that the best climbers are in the mid-range height and weight categories. I think the data would look pretty cool if presented graphically with both the axis reversed in the graphs of height and weight. Show height and weight along the x-axis and the position along the y-axis. I think it would show better the "ideal" ranges. One could be forgiven for thinking that to be better than the number 1 position currently you have to be even shorter and even lighter (extrapolate the trend lines ...) ... which is obviously not the case. Looking forward to seeing the data for boulders and for seeing the data presented in the manner I suggested. p.s. If you can't be bothered to look at the graphs differently, I'd be more than happy to do it if you can share the data you've compiled?