Does being taller make climbing easier? Answering this question with data!

Jonathan Walker wrote:

Lol, there's nothing opinion-based about different body types creating different advantages and challenges to specific physical performances.

Indeed, yet there's no mention of ape index, hip flexibility, overall flexibility, etc.  These are all physiological attributes that contribute or detract heavily from climbing performance, yet not mentioned in the survey at all.  It's strictly about height, which is what I think the comment was addressing.

Jay Andersonwrote:

No, being tall doesn't make us better climbers (quite the opposite in my case), but it does allow us to occasionally piss off shorter people by making some ridiculous reach.  Height is no substitute for coordination, athleticism, strength to weight ratio.  It's those 115 pound guys that you have to watch out for - they just float up the wall.

I would say 80% of the time I get shut down on grades, boulders or routes, that I've somewhat easily dispatched in the past, it's due to abysmal hip flexibility.

All I know is I’m 5’-7” and my usual indoor partner is 6’-2” and he often sends climbs easily that I have more trouble with. Even though I climb more than him and am, well, better. But he just reaches up to a hand hold that I have to be creative or stronger to get to. Nothing new here. I think the difference is less pronounced outdoors since there are usually more options, as natural rocks are not color coded.  Just ask Lynn Hill. 

For every 6'4" Jim Holloway, there's a 4'10" 14 year old crushing grades harder than you ever will. 

Of all the variables that go into climbing, height is the one that we cannot change, so it's best to just not worry about it.

I didn't fill out your survey. Instead I spent time (not really) figuring out how tall the strongest climbers in the world are. Results: They are all pretty average height with far more important attributes that allow them to make the climbs easier (i.e. mobility, ape index, injury prevention, diet, etc.).

It would be pretty funny if being taller was indeed an absolute advantage in climbing, and as a result the best climbers in the world were all lanky 7 footers like Kevin Durant and Chet Holmgren

“Tall climbers reach, short climbers, climb”- Quote from a setter as my tall buddy climbed.  

I think it’s true that beyond 5.13 and V11, it helps to be really light , not so much shorter. It’s just that shorter people can be much lighter.

Lena chitawrote:

I filed out your survey. While no survey is ever perfect, here are my thoughts on how it could be improved.

1. why did you divide the height into the brackets, instead of having people just put in the height, the way you do for the climbing grades? You are introducing unnecessary bias there. Let’s say the actual answer is 5’10”. Well, you grouped 5’10” with shorter height, instead of grouping it with taller height. So if the answer is 5’10”, your survey will show that being shorter than average is advantageous, if you had grouped it differently, it would have shown that being taller is advantageous. Neither is correct.

2. Why didn’t you ask about the gender? What if the answer is, for beginner gym climbers it’s advantageous to be taller than average for women, and shorter than average for men? Without knowing how many men vs women filled the survey, it would be hard to say how skewed it is.

3. I understand what you are trying to do with your question about highest grade vs consistent grade, but I would have asked it differently. Instead of asking about highest vs “consistent” grade, I would have asked, what is the highest grade you sent, and the LOWEST grade you didn’t send. I would also specify the recent time limit, e.g. within the past year. 

I really appreciate this response! Thanks for taking the time to actually give points of where you think it could be improved! 

1. I only divided the heights into brackets for the opinion based question of what height people THINK is the most advantageous. That said, you might be right that it would have been better if it was broken up entirely like I did with the question asking what height you actually are. I did want to make those questions look a little different though, since people often don't read them fully before answering. 

2. This is a great question, and one I regret not including. A few hours after the survey went live I had a real facepalm moment when I realized I hadn't asked about gender. Great point, and a learning experience for next time!

3. This is one I thought about a lot. You understand what I'm going for with those two questions, so I'm sure you can imagine the challenge of finding the right one. I thought about lowest grade, although I don't think it's as relevant here. Since many climbers have slipped off of very easy climbs when they were beginners, or even just weren't paying attention, it leaves a lot of room for interpretation. I understand what you're getting at, but it would take a lot of specifying to ask the question right, and many would still answer it the wrong way. I've tried to make the questions here as unambiguous as I can. Obviously I'm not perfect, but I have put some thought into it.

Thank you again, and to anyone else who has issues with the survey I encourage you to message me and give me your feedback! I love hearing it, especially when I can learn from it!

https://www.theclimbingguy.com/tall-vs-short-rock-climbing

phylp phylpwrote:

https://www.theclimbingguy.com/tall-vs-short-rock-climbing

There's plenty of data around the height of elite level climbers. What I'm trying to find is more related to climbers in the beginner - intermediate range. I haven't found much data around that, but if you have some I'd love to see it! I think someone else talked about an 8a.nu study that sounds like it miiiight have been at least a little more related to that than the one by the climbing guy. With that said, most users of 8a.nu aren't beginners, and their findings that 5' 3" and 4' 11" are the best heights for men and women respectively seem a little off to me. They may not be, but I want to gather some data of my own to check it. I believe that study also only looked at max grade, without taking into account consistency, although I could be wrong on that. I think to properly have this conversation, consistency must be taken into account. I'd be interested to hear your opinion!

Trinidad Collierwrote:

There's plenty of data around the height of elite level climbers. What I'm trying to find is more related to climbers in the beginner - intermediate range. I haven't found much data around that, but if you have some I'd love to see it! I think someone else talked about an 8a.nu study that sounds like it miiiight have been at least a little more related to that than the one by the climbing guy. With that said, most users of 8a.nu aren't beginners, and their findings that 5' 3" and 4' 11" are the best heights for men and women respectively seem a little off to me. They may not be, but I want to gather some data of my own to check it. I believe that study also only looked at max grade, without taking into account consistency, although I could be wrong on that. I think to properly have this conversation, consistency must be taken into account. I'd be interested to hear your opinion!

Since you referred to the “plenty of data” but did not show any of it, I was compelled to look for some data myself. I am just sharing it.

I won’t be doing your survey. I am in Kevin’s camp. If you are looking to establish a cause/effect or even correlative relationship, all the other variables need to be as closely controlled or matched as possible.

For non-elite climbers, the factors of time spent climbing, time spent training, motivation, type of climbing pursued, ape index, genetics, flexibility, and many other so complex variables make the results meaningless from my perspective. 

Yes- “average” height is likely ideal, but I do feel that if you had to choose between being overly tall or overly short— overly tall is more advantageous most of the time.  

Trinidad Collierwrote:

There's plenty of data around the height of elite level climbers. What I'm trying to find is more related to climbers in the beginner - intermediate range. I haven't found much data around that, but if you have some I'd love to see it! I think someone else talked about an 8a.nu study that sounds like it miiiight have been at least a little more related to that than the one by the climbing guy. With that said, most users of 8a.nu aren't beginners, and their findings that 5' 3" and 4' 11" are the best heights for men and women respectively seem a little off to me. They may not be, but I want to gather some data of my own to check it. I believe that study also only looked at max grade, without taking into account consistency, although I could be wrong on that. I think to properly have this conversation, consistency must be taken into account. I'd be interested to hear your opinion!

That tells me kids make for the best climbers which many of us likely have anecdotes about?

Other than parents who yell at the kids for not “reaching their potential”, kids love climbing and many are just so good at it.

J W wrote:

I like your outlook enough that I’m adopting it, as well.

I have a delusional climbing partner who thinks he’s better than I am just because he can easily send routes that shut me down.

Truly, the best way to look at things.   

J W wrote:

I like your outlook enough that I’m adopting it, as well.

I have a delusional climbing partner who thinks he’s better than I am just because he can easily send routes that shut me down.

I love it, too!

All joking aside, really, in all the short/tall, as well as any other body-composition complaints, people just want a little bit of validation from their friends when they are struggling. 

So, when your meaty-fingered dude complains that he has to use that pocket as a mono, when you are comfortably putting in two fingers, just tell him that yeah, it sucks, it is clearly harder for him, and you see it!

And then maybe he will return the favor and tell you that yeah, he can see how unfair it is that he can reach past that shitty crimp that you are pulling on, and how that move is definitely harder for you.

And then you both will go on to send that route with completely different beta, and high-five each other at a compromise mid-height point that both parties are able to reach. :)

phylp phylpwrote:

Since you referred to the “plenty of data” but did not show any of it, I was compelled to look for some data myself. I am just sharing it.

I won’t be doing your survey. I am in Kevin’s camp. If you are looking to establish a cause/effect or even correlative relationship, all the other variables need to be as closely controlled or matched as possible.

For non-elite climbers, the factors of time spent climbing, time spent training, motivation, type of climbing pursued, ape index, genetics, flexibility, and many other so complex variables make the results meaningless from my perspective. 

I agree with you to some extent. I don't think we're going to be able to get perfect data from this survey, and I agree that it would be much better if all of that was accounted for. I actually wrote up a VERY long response to Kevin last night before discovering that MP only lets you reply to a thread 3 times in a day. Oops! I don't have time to write one quite that right now, but there are a few things I'd like to say.

While the data won't be perfect, I'm hoping to get enough responses to drown out the outliers and establish some kind of an average. While self-reported surveys are far from perfect, they can point you in the direction you'd need to take for another, better, study. I'm not a scientist, and I don't have the time or resources to do a large scale peer-reviewed study on this. It's something I was curious about, and hoped to shed a little bit more light on. And while I'm not an expert, I am trying to do the best I can to make this as reliable as possible. I think Kevin's comments have some amount of bad faith in them (pointing to the one question that's very obviously and intentionally opinion based and framing it like the whole survey is that way) but he, and you, bring up good points. I would love to see a better study done on this at some point, but I also think some data is better than none. I have a ton of respect for Kevin, and at the end of the day we're all rock climbers. I'm sure I'd get along with both of you guys great!

Obviously you don't have to do the survey, and I respect your decision not to. I just wanted to push back a little bit on the assertion that it's completely useless. Would it be better if all of those questions were included? Yes. Would people spend 20 minutes to fill out a survey? Not very many of them would. I'm trying to do what I can with what I have. If you have more experience with this stuff than me and want to help design a more comprehensive study, let me know! I run a business and still try to climb as much as possible so I don't have a lot of time, but I want to do right by this community and help further our understanding of the sport however I can.

I hope this doesn't come across as me not respecting your opinion, and I do appreciate you sharing the data about pro climbers. You make a good point! I didn't share any of that myself. And I probably should have! Thanks for doing that for me!

Gee let’s do a survey of do people get better looking at closing time or do blonds have more fun. The only reason I even looked at this is because I am recovering from ankle surgery and am really bored. 

Good thing everyone is taking this so seriously because this is very serious. 

If anyone wants the answer, it's literally as simple as, the taller you are the less strong you need to be to climb the same grade. Lattice did a post about this a year or so ago and was able to use all their performance data to get a pretty clear trend. 

That's all folks. 

that guy named sebwrote:

If anyone wants the answer, it's literally as simple as, the taller you are the less strong you need to be to climb the same grade. Lattice did a post about this a year or so ago and was able to use all their performance data to get a pretty clear trend. 

That's all folks. 

It depends upon setting and route, but I agree for the most part this is the case for easy climbs where there are always good holds “somewhere higher up”.

J W wrote:

For myself, I think that height is not only not a trivial consideration, it makes a significant difference—but only in the very localized context of individual moves on individual sections of individual routes/problems.

But I don’t know. That’s just based on personal experience and observations, which by definition are highly biased.

How it plays out broadly among new to intermediate climbers?—as you say, limited information exists.

Carry on!

Not biased, just a single data point.

Honestly, height helps with two climbers of equal skill and strength on easy to intermediate climbs, and that advantage becomes less so when having to use opposition forces and core. Being taller can become a disadvantage.

We can just observe the average height of climbers sending more difficult routes even at the gym.