Thoughts on training and Individual Limits

John Tuttle wrote:

Nope. Herman Buhl was doing one finger pullups in the 1930's per some old report I probably can't find.

It was some old analysis of climbers as compared to track athletes of the 1930's that I read years ago. It corrected for improved tracks and shoes and ropes and other gear allowing for harder things to be tried or more consistent surfaces etc and there has been negligible improvements in ability mostly attributed to far larger numbers of runners and climbers etc. Humans are not evolving into better climbers. They may be better at maximizing their individual abilities. This base composition of muscle and brain etc is what I mean by not getting "stronger". It's the same as it has been for hundreds to thousands of years at least.

Chris climbed up to 5.15b without a single day of training other than climbing iirc. He did not "evolve" training or gear. He just "was" and is the perfect example of climbing mutant. He loves climbing and is exceptionally gifted. There just are more climbers (and typically they also have the brains for training. Chris absolutely detests training).

So you don’t think that Buhl or Sharma would have progressed to a higher level of genetic potential if they utilized optimized nutrition and training protocols? 

Sharma was, and is a mutant. Perhaps Bull was also. However, keep in mind that his signature achievement, Biographie, now gets climbed in relatively few sessions by multiple individuals every year. Sharma actually HAD to train to do La Dura Dura and Sleeping Lion. Also, he climbed a fuckton when he did Jumbo Love, and climbing is training. Just imagine what Sharma could have done if he engaged in focused training when he was younger.  The shoes and equipment when Sharma was young was not much better, if at all, than it is today.

You are correct and that there are many more climbers these days, and that they are not genetically better. However, they do surpass prior generations and actually ARE better because of, as was stated above, training, nutrition and just a shift in the paradigm of what is considered actual hard climbing

Sharma married and had children with a woman that climbs 5.14.  It’s entirely possible his children will be more mutant than mutant.

John Tuttle wrote:

It was some old analysis of climbers as compared to track athletes of the 1930's that I read years ago. It corrected for improved tracks and shoes and ropes and other gear allowing for harder things to be tried or more consistent surfaces etc and there has been negligible improvements in ability mostly attributed to far larger numbers of runners and climbers etc. Humans are not evolving into better climbers. They may be better at maximizing their individual abilities. This base composition of muscle and brain etc is what I mean by not getting "stronger". It's the same as it has been for thousands of years at least. For finger strength the last time our ancestors were "selected" for that ability we probably were still living in trees.

Chris climbed up to 5.15b without a single day of training other than climbing iirc. He did not "evolve" training or gear. He just "was" and is the perfect example of climbing mutant. He loves climbing and is exceptionally gifted. There just are more climbers (and typically there are also more that have the brains for training which is why we see more crushers). Chris absolutely detests training.

Please do some research on this John, you are incorrect in your statements.

Climbers across the board are stronger, and climbing higher grades. You can verify this looking at both World Cup comp boulder average grades, as well as just the average grades at any climbing gym that has been in business for over 10 years.

Saying Sharma didn’t train is completely ignorant. He trained/trains on the wall harder than most anyone else. Climbing is not a strength sport. Climbing is a skill sport, and top climbers like Sharma realize the most important training they can do is actual climbing on the routes they are trying to climb.

Please show us this old research. Let’s look at the numbers and then say climbers are not stronger.  I’ll bet the grades listed in any paper over 10 years old are at least two letter grades lower than averages today.  

Bruno Schull wrote:

I've been a teacher of young people for over 25 years.  

That's a useful perspective for gauging the 'stickiness' of climbing as an activity. 

The cynical aspect is saying "some" (6%? - more than a couple/few/handful) will die accidentally when the real rate is a 0.01% to 0.02% chance per year per the CDC.

I agree with Todd that once a young person locks in with a crew at the gym, even when it's a non-competitive club, the level quickly approaches V10 (kids enjoy bouldering more).

Kevin Stricker wrote:

Please do some research on this John, you are incorrect in your statements.

Climbers across the board are stronger, and climbing higher grades. You can verify this looking at both World Cup comp boulder average grades, as well as just the average grades at any climbing gym that has been in business for over 10 years.

Saying Sharma didn’t train is completely ignorant. He trained/trains on the wall harder than most anyone else. Climbing is not a strength sport. Climbing is a skill sport, and top climbers like Sharma realize the most important training they can do is actual climbing on the routes they are trying to climb.

Please show us this old research. Let’s look at the numbers and then say climbers are not stronger.  I’ll bet the grades listed in any paper over 10 years old are at least two letter grades lower than averages today.  

You don't seem to understand the difference between evolution and training and it's limitations but I'll try one last time. :)

There simply are more climbers and gear has improved. That's it. Scientifically derived training regimens are very, very modestly increasing performance and the gains are getting smaller and smaller. Sure, individual fatties can lose a ton of weight and get way better but that story is as old as fatties (like me).

When it comes to comp climbers, there are just more comp climbers so the outliers get a tiny bit further out.

For example: in the last 50 years men's marathon times have only increased ~7%. All the sports training science in the world you guys tout would make it seem like we are running twice as fast. We are not and increasingly close to ultimate human ability. I doubt we will ever see another 7% improvement in times.

Dura Dura (5.15c) was first climbed 13 years ago. We do not yet have a confirmed grade and second ascent of any proposed 5.15d. One letter grade and we can't do it. 5.16a if/when it comes will be done by an athlete that is one in 8 Billion humans....

Essentially, we are waiting for the next mutant (that maybe focus trained) to "advance" the numbers a miniscule amout.

Humans are not getting stronger; this is a simple fact of evolution (and perhaps this is where the misunderstanding lies) as you equate stronger with training, whereas I equate stronger with the base material (genetic inheritance) that people have. Anyone can get a little "stronger/fitter" and yes, training is very important for that, but there simply are limits that you seem to have trouble grasping. Despite the popular pablum that we are spoon fed that you can "do anything that you put your mind to" it simply isn't true that you can fly like a bird if you want it bad enough.

I don't have the time to watch this all now but will later. At least it will be interesting.

(ps the TED leads with Jesse Owens 10.2 seconds world record in 1930 and Usain Bolt WR holder currently at 9.77 seconds a ~4% improvement in ~100 years....hmmm...that is entirely ascribable to more runners and better shoes and maybe a tiny bit to training and that's it.)

(pps the video essentially nails it. between technology and greater numbers participating in all sports there are essentially no advances (maybe 1%) in athletic performance which should not surprise anyone because the human race is most certainly not evolving based on these criteria.)

I'm looking for the Nate Silver statistical study that demonstrates that there really are very, very tiny advances in ie World Records that are mostly attributable to vastly more people with the time to be athletes instead of having to be farmers and improved equipment. I'll post it if I can find it.

Any individual will have dramatic improvement from a couch potato baseline, but their potential is not unlimited as should be obvious if you follow something like baseball, with tens of millions of kids that participate, nearly all of whom try to be a pitcher, yet the "world class" professionals are one in a million and people threw 100 mph decades ago (Nolan Ryan in 1974). While it is more common today (more people play baseball!) the current fastest pitch ever (105.8 mph) is that same ~6% improvement in 50 years despite "advances" in training pitchers. A very large part of that 6% gain is just due to more kids playing baseball.

Brendan N wrote:

I agree with Todd that once a young person locks in with a crew at the gym, even when it's a non-competitive club, the level quickly approaches V10 (kids enjoy bouldering more).

It's not about the "stickiness of climbing."  

It's about understanding the range, diversity, potential, capacities, and unique circumstances of young adults.  

Also, look up selection bias. Why is this concept so hard to understand?

Somebody who "locks in with a crew" at a gym is far from average. 

I agree with Bruno here. According to his profile Brendan N is flashing 5.13 outdoors and getting V10 in four tries...not surprising he feels "anyone can do it" and his personal selection bias. 

Kevin Stricker wrote:

Please do some research on this John, you are incorrect in your statements.

Climbers across the board are stronger, and climbing higher grades. You can verify this looking at both World Cup comp boulder average grades, as well as just the average grades at any climbing gym that has been in business for over 10 years.

Saying Sharma didn’t train is completely ignorant. He trained/trains on the wall harder than most anyone else. Climbing is not a strength sport. Climbing is a skill sport, and top climbers like Sharma realize the most important training they can do is actual climbing on the routes they are trying to climb.

Please show us this old research. Let’s look at the numbers and then say climbers are not stronger.  I’ll bet the grades listed in any paper over 10 years old are at least two letter grades lower than averages today.  

Climbers are climbing higher grades because of improved knowledge and training, it's not from the human race as a whole having better genetics in a generation or even two.  Evolution simply does not work that quickly.  More climbers climbing what was once considered hard isn't the result of biological evolution, it's from the wisdom of decades of sport science, and a simple numbers game from more people coming into the sport, not just the misfits of previous generations.  What would someone like Hidetaka Suzuki be able to climb if he actually had a coach and ate something other than cat food?

I don't think anyone in this thread is saying people shouldn't try hard or train.  But try as you might, most of us ain't climbing 5.14 or 5.15 in a year or two like Chris even if we won the lottery and had all the time in the world.  And if we started off from childhood, most of us will never swim like Michael Phelps or run like Usain Bolt.  Doesn't mean we shouldn't try.  Doesn't mean we can't do amazing stuff.  But the upper echelon will never be reached unless you have the genetics for it, and humans as a species aren't going to magically evolve to crimp 10 mm edges any better in a few generations.  

Daniel Shively wrote:

So you don’t think that Buhl or Sharma would have progressed to a higher level of genetic potential if they utilized optimized nutrition and training protocols? 

In my opinion, no. Because Buhl did train iirc (or whatever you would call it back then) and Sharma did and does by climbing a ton. Chris simply hates training other than climbing on rock. He simply followed his bliss and, imo, that was more than enough to take him to the limits of human achievement. That mental component is so important (aptitude for training) or determination to climb and climb and climb.

Buhl would have benefited more from ropes, bolts, chisels to dial in the difficulty :) and climbing shoes more than anything else, imo. He climbed in mountain boots with hemp ropes and such stone age tools.

The point is not that training is unimportant to the rest of us schlubs (it is) but that genetics are the most important of all for the highest personal achievement.

i don't agree that climbing is not a strength sport. it is an everything sport. if you want to be really good at it you need everything - strength, skill, confidence, endurance, discipline, supportive partners, etc.  if you look at any climber that is climbing 14a or harder, they are really, really strong.

one of my favorite stories about this is how paige claussen was seen as a skinny girl who wasn't strong and could just stand on her feet. when the first prodigy board was being made she walked in and said "oh wow, look at this cute little crimp!" and proceded to dead hang it and carry on a giggling conversation.

i trained for years on that board and i never could come close to dead hanging that hold, and no matter what voodoo i devoted myself to there is no way i ever would be able to do it. she is strong as fuck. some people just have that. i think we all know somebody who has that. obviously she has a lot of other attributes that are very helpful as well.

it was mentioned that the average grade is 11c. average and median are two different things, and you are trying to overlay this at a sport where the grades are basically exponentially harder in difficulty. obviously the math doesnt math here.  but, interestingly enough i think an average person could climb 11c. that sounds about right.

People are better at climbing in general than they were 20 years ago.  Kids climb harder, more hard routes get put up and more adult climbers achieve personal records into middle age.  Like you said, climbers are not genetically getting stronger, and yet they are climbing harder. I have witnessed the progression as a member of climbing gyms going back to the mid 90's.  More people climb 5.13 than they did in the 90's, 2000's, and 2010's.  Your hypothesis is that so many more people are climbing at these higher grades because there are more climbers and therefor a higher chance genetically that people will climb that grade?  

I believe we have more climbers realizing higher grades through training and prioritizing climbing.  These dedicated climbers are establishing more hard routes.  This group of higher performing climbers teach others their advanced tactics, and as a result new climbers are learning these tactics earlier and applying them.  Kids who are surrounded by these athletes have a much higher chance of becoming better climbers themselves.  When more people climb hard routes, more people believe it is possible.  It's not genetics, its progress.

It's just more climbers. There is nothing wrong with that. It may be a peak or golden age of sorts but my next thread will be about how we are actually "post climbing" as a a traditional shared goal oriented activity.

There are no "last great problems" left. It's all been done and we can only imitate the achievements of the OG past.

And have fun.  

Climbing is dead. Long live climbing.

In my 20s and 30s, I climbed a ton, and I tried really hard. I was never able to climb harder than .12c, but at least when I was in my 20s, mid to high .12 was actually considered somewhat difficult for a recreational climber. I climbed my first .13 in my late 50s. I definitely was not and am not a stronger climber than when I was twenty seven. I can’t hold as small of an edge, I can’t do as many pull-ups and I certainly do not recover as fast. However, the biggest difference is that I saw more and more people around me climbing into the 13s and 14s. Suddenly, 5.12 just didn’t seem that hard anymore and 5.13 felt attainable.  Same thing happened to my wife on the same timeline, who went from mid 5.11 to 5.12+.  This is just a sample of one or two, but I think that this is what happened to the climbing community in general.

Obviously genes are ultimately a limiting factor to how hard someone can climb, but I think the average persons genetic potential for climbing is probably pretty high, I would believe hard thirteen or easy 14 would be achievable by most bodies if they started young and had all the resources at their disposal, especially if they picked appropriate objectives to maximize their particular genetic strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Thin vert, pure endurance jug hauling, 3d kneebar crawling, friction slab, these all have very different demands. 

You can't walk into a gym and look at a population of people most of whom started climbing as adults, don't train, and aren't trying to achieve their absolute human potential in the sport and draw conclusions about maximum genetic potential. 

Genetics isn't just written in stone-epigenetics and gene expression exist. Queen bees start out life genetically identical to all the other female bees in their hive and and the nurse bees manipulate their gene expression to make her a queen. Periods of malnutrition in parents lives affect the way their childrens genes are expressed. Periods of malnutrition or other high stress scenarios effect the way children own genes are expressed. I think its quite likely that exposure to climbing at a young age dramatically increases ones maximum achievable finger strength. climbing is fairly unique in this respect compared to other sport- there are few other activities and sports a child can be exposed to which provide that sort of stimulus compared to the high crossover between various ball sports and running for example.

It's very difficult to draw comparisons from  technical rock climbing which has an incredibly large skill component to something like competitive running which has a relatively much smaller skill component as well as the fact that climbing isn't nearly as mature of a discipline-100ish years versus thousands for competitive running. 

Grades are being pushed not just because more bodies are in the sport. When I started climbing almost thirty years ago I was taught three points of contact, don't fall. now kids are doing paddle dynos. that's not because they genetically know how to move like that or because their shoes are better, it's because techniques have improved drastically over those three decades. 

Yes casting a wider net will uncover more freakish outliers who push the absolute human boundary further, but ALSO improvements in technique, training and coaching will improve the level achievable both by the freaks and the "average joes".

grug g wrote:

I agree with Bruno here. According to his profile Brendan N is flashing 5.13 outdoors and getting V10 in four tries...not surprising he feels "anyone can do it" and his personal selection bias. 

I also wonder if the opposite is true. Folks who feel genetics defines almost every aspect of greater than 13a performance have subconscious regret about not pushing themselves hard enough. 

Daniel Shively wrote:

Look at world tour cyclists, records are being eclipsed on famous climbs that were previously set during the era when PED‘s were in heavy use. Sure there are improvements in bikes, but the difference is in fueling and training. 

These factors sure seem to be helping humans reach their potential. 

I think a lot of the improvement is due to the larger pool of cyclists that have preselected due to improvements in training techniques that are widely known.

Victor Creazzi wrote:

I think a lot of the improvement is due to the larger pool of cyclists that have preselected due to improvements in training techniques that are widely known.

I somewhat agree but often the former records are being beaten by the top 10 or more riders in certain stages. Former pros and current riders and teams also speak in great detail how modern high carb load fueling is directly attributed to the overall increased speed and daily intensity within the pro peloton. Modern fueling protocols also result in efficient recovery which likely contributes to higher average speeds over the course of a grand tour. Ultimately improvement is due to the combination of many factors. 

Daniel Shively wrote:

I somewhat agree but often the former records are being beaten by the top 10 or more riders in certain stages. Former pros and current riders and teams also speak in great detail how modern high carb load fueling is directly attributed to the overall increased speed and daily intensity within the pro peloton. Modern fueling protocols also result in efficient recovery which likely contributes to higher average speeds over the course of a grand tour. Ultimately improvement is due to the combination of many factors. 

If you watch the TED video the presenter emphasizes that improvement in ultra-endurance sports is an area of untapped human potential as our physiology is uniquely suited to it as compared to other land animals and it has been less popular. I can see how sport science could easily make great strides here (pun alert) :).

None of which effects finger power per se, though super carb loading etc may be useful for super endurance type routes which very few climbers are concerned about. I will concede that this would be an interesting area for those interested in the first 5.16 perhaps ie stack two 5.15s on top of each other. 

But what is 5.15c v. 5.15d...a tiny percentage overall increase likely similar to dropping the 100M record by a fraction of a second? Look at the chart presented in TED on swimming times advancing. The big jumps are always technological, but the overall trend is tiny increments of increased speed easily attributable to mostly just a larger pool (lol) of athletes and some tiny amount to better training.

John Tuttle wrote:

If you watch the TED video the presenter emphasizes that improvement in ultra-endurance sports is an area of untapped human potential as our physiology is uniquely suited to it as compared to other land animals and it has been less popular. I can see how sport science could easily make great strides here (pun alert) :).

None of which effects finger power per se, though super carb loading etc may be useful for super endurance type routes which very few climbers are concerned about. I will concede that this would be an interesting area for those interested in the first 5.16 perhaps ie stack two 5.15s on top of each other. 

But what is 5.15c v. 5.15d...a tiny percentage overall increase likely similar to dropping the 100M record by a fraction of a second? Look at the chart presented in TED on swimming times advancing. The big jumps are always technological, but the overall trend is tiny increments of increased speed easily attributable to mostly just a larger pool (lol) of athletes and some tiny amount to better training.

The hardest climbs are the epitome of power/endurance. They are generally described as a series of high level boulder problems separated by often marginal “rests.”

I’m intrigued by your idea about “post climbing.“  When are you going to get that one going? That topic should undoubtedly stir some unique perspectives.