Can tall climbers reach highest level?

Here is a little sample from a earlier statistic regarding height for the climbers with complete profile in the 8a.nu database according to its ranking, female and kids have only a weak impact, so the statistic is referring mostly to males and goes only to the around 700. position in the ranking. The complete data I will show when I am finished but you can see the trend, with weight and body mass index it is clearly the same.  For female climbers the average of the first 200 is around 163 cm and the top female climbers are even 1-2 cm shorter which is some kind of interesting, probably they are selecting more but if you have a look at the best female lead competition climbers, they are even a notch shorter, some of them don't reach 150 cm so the trend to be shorter exists even by females.

I have found one source of the height of Stefan Fürst - in an old rotpunkt-Magazine he is described as 198cm tall - i think that was the information i had in mind, if some one wants a scan let me know. Also i remember in old bulletins and stories Jim Holloway was at least 190 cm tall. OK you really can't estimate his achievements - but one of his hardest boulders (Trice at Flagstaff Mountain is now scaled at Fb. 8a+). In one bulletin of a repetition of Trice, Jim Holloway is declared as 6 foot 4 which is at least - 194 cm. http://legacy.climbing.com/news/hotflashes/triceasnice/ Have a nice week, Hartwig

It is not just about size of holds etc. In theory, if we could make an exact copy of ourselfs, but twice as tall, we would be four times stronger but 8 times heavier. 

pettter p can you explain me why just four times stronger and not also eight times? I'm not really into this topic, would like to learn!! But shouldn't the volume of the muscles also grow with the potency of three? Also a question to everyone, why is it harder for taller climber? I get that their size creates a bigger momentum, but it seems that there is more that makes it harder?

Niklas: Area (cross section of muscle) increase in ^2 , and volume => weight increase aproximately in ^3 It is the cross section of the muscle that determine strength, not the volume.  So by making a twice as big copy:  Cross section increase (strength increase): 2^2 = 4   and weight increase: 2^3 = 8 

Niklas, to simplify, think of the muscle as a wire, its the area of a crossection of the wire that governs the strenght. (In a living tissue it is of course a lot of other factors that makes you strong or weak.) If you look around in nature you will see many proofs of this. A giant ant would probably need to have other proportions, with thick legs like an elephant. ( and they would probably not be able to carry other dead giant ants in their mouth).

double

I explained many times in this forum the advantages of shorter climbers, thank you Idar for the explanation, the nature is full of scaling problems where the development of certain parameters are not evolving linear with size, depending from the morphology and the correlation with the different weighting of forces; if we would scale the size of a human individual to the size of an insect, we would not be able to walk because the adhesion force becomes bigger in this size scale than the gravitational force. We would adhere to the ground if the morphology does not change and only with point-shaped feet we would be able to walk.  There are also other impacts like the positioning of the body, the signal transmission in the nervous system which probably has not an significant impact, but the limiting point is the finger strength which correlates with the body height, body weight and relative development of muscle fibre, which is not linear as Idar explained.  The other big point is that routes which are on the limit or not possible for short climbers are mostly considered as morphological and therefore given a contorted grade, the fact is that mostly short climbers are setting the standard in grading problems, which is not as logical as it seems. The problem is that it is not transparent when a climb is much easier for a short climber but it is easy to see when a tall climber is advantaged, this creates a contorted representation of a rated climb.  

I think what matters is the average height of the CLIMBING-population. As long as most competitionclimbers are small, routes will be set accordingly. Being short myself I find this discussion amousing. I set routes in a gym and there really aren't that much situations that favour the small but A LOT that favour taller people. Smaller climbers might have some advantages in enduranceclimbs and low sloppy edges but get totally shut down on a lot of moves like high underclings, high feet and reachy moves vertical and horizontal.

@oO00Oo: excellent post, i fully agree. @alex: you are right in the sense, that it is always very obvious, when a tall climber is favoured by a certain move. thus the contorted grades that have been mentioned. i don't want to repeat all biomechanical arguments that have been given. read closely what petter, idar and oO00Oo have pointed out. AND...in any given sport, you can derive the most favourable morphotype by simply asking one question: what do the athletes, who perform best look like? and strong climbers tend to be short and light. that is a FACT. and of course a rule that has exceptions

Thanks a lot for the good explanation, idar, pettter and oO00Oo!! This all makes very much sense. Sorry for not searching the forum, oO00Oo!! Alex, I understand you well, I'm also relativly small and set routes too. People complain fast about reachy moves, but if I look at these arguments, maybe it's even better to set some of them, to balance the advantages of small and tall climbers? Maybe I should rethink the (my) ideal of setting a route without any (obvious) height-dependend moves...

Look up the weight of the toplevelclimber and make a graph out of it. I bet it would look similar to the one posted above. No one would argue that it's because of the setting in comps that heavier climbers aren't at the topend. The assumption that it's because of their height that most toplevelclimbers are small is wrong. It's because of their weight. Adam Ondra kind of proves that because he is tall AND light. Blame nature that taller guys are heavier by design ;-)

@alex: you are of course right about that. certainly taller climbers have disadvantages, because they are heavier by design. if i understand the experts in biomechanics on this thread correctly though, there seems to be evidence that of two climbers with the same weicht, the smaller of the two would still have a better strength to weight ratio, due to the above mentioned biomechanical properties of muscles. maybe someone could explain if i get that correctly? not to mention the fact that the smaller climber has advantages in levers and fingersize. and disadvantages on reachy terrain.

@Alex G: yes, as I pointed out, weight correlates strongly with height and the development of muscle fibre (which is not linear). I collected many data and have done some very interesting statistics, I will present them when the time is ripe and I am finished with the data :-). @tomas beena: yes, it is correct what you are saying, we have to imply that we are talking about the average development of muscle fibre to the relative body height of both. When both have the same weight and the same body fat, the short one has a better strength to weight ratio. @Niklas: I find it very commendable that you are rethinking your setting by integrating the information.   Here some data which I collected approximately one year ago, reflecting the body weight: 

definetely one of the most interesting threads on 8a.nu...

looking at your Graph, i'm wondering if this might work the other way around as well. meaning: could one deduce that being a climber of say...175cm and 65 kg and you are NOT able to climb 8a...that you either haven't yet reached your full potential or that you are doing somrthing seriously wrong in training? maybe this is too simplistic. just a thought.

I appreciate the good discussion, but I still think the point is a little missed ... short climbers are NOT 170cm tall ... in my mind (and the data) that is within the range of being average height for a human male ... I do agree that within the range of being an average height climber the current grading will support the notion that being closer to the bottom end of this scale, that is, you will likely do better being closer to 170cm than being closer to 180cm, but let's not fool ourselves, they are both "average" heighted climbers :). p.s. Also, at the end of the day, climbing grades are more or less set by average heighted males ... the influence of kids and females is, as you've started to point out oOOOo ... minimal. To answer the original question ... the data is certainly not supporting an easy time to reach the top being 185cm ... BUT yopu certainly do not want to be short either ... you want to be in the range of average height, towards the shorter end (in the low 170cm's), but still not short. This is from the veiw of someone who is a male at 163cm ... I can't tell you how much harder I would have sent by now if I had just 4-7cm extra :) ... as much as you can theorize about those things ;). p.s. oOOOo is you do get more data I'd really like to see where the peak of the graph is for height and ranking ... though I want to see ranking on the y-axis and height on the x-axis ...

@tomas beena: hmmm, interesting, a rough orientation you might be able to estimate but we are talking about a complex system with many parameters which are hard to integrate but create chaotic patterns (the character of the single route, the fuzziness of the grade, the parameters of the individual, like muscle quality, finger size, training, hormones...); as an orientation and by choosing a superficial perspective, the idea could work.  @Derek Bredl: No problem, otherwise I can even send you some of the data if you want? Let us say a sample of 700 climbers, is this ok for you?  I will see what I can do with the 8a.nu data, I have some time-consuming ideas, I would like to connect the data of the ranked climbers with the progression graph; to elaborate how long climbers need on average to reach the relative performing peak and how these data correlate with height and height/weight ratio; further, how long a climber of a certain height needs on average to reach the level of a certain grade. I consider everything as short what is below the average body height and tall, what is above that rough value (the related standard for me is europe).  Even female climbers tend to be shorter than the average, some of the best female route climbers don't reach the body height of 150 cm, on rock the trend is the same, the top 100 start at 161 cm and progress to 163-164 cm. The progress is relatively fast but the trend is still there. How do you explain this?  Are the top female climbers selecting more specific, or is the scaling impact of the muscle development bigger than the reaching factor, even for heights around 155 cm?  I have done the data also with the all-time ranking, the top 100 start from 171 cm and progress to 174 cm, this value is settling down after, progressing very slow.  To complete the previous data, the body mass index:

One possibility: tall people, on average, are not as coordinated as shorter people. So they don't do as well on rock. Similar in football, where very few top players are tall. Another possibility: climbing, for whatever reason, has attracted shorter/normal size people. They naturally find/bolt routes that fit their own body size. This makes it harder for taller climbers to send those same routes. This also could explain, in reverse, why Sharma finished 3 degrees pretty quickly, and no one else has succeeded: the route favors tall climbers.

it might work this way: the smaller a climber is, the better. up to the point, where he is way smaller than those people, who grade. it could then turn into a disadvantage on certain climbs. i guess, this is what derek is referring to. i really don't believe, that taller people are generally less coordinated. it might seem that way because they will never have the bidystrength to weight ratio that a comparatively small person can attain.