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Finding the right weight at an older age
Santa Claus wrote: BMI is a crock of shit. It’s skewed against muscle. I’m 6,0, 200 pounds, mostly muscle, low body fat and per BMI am nearly obese. The old school height weight charts and body fat ratio are more accurate. I absolutely agree with BMI being a bad predictor of health for people who exercise regularly. Back when I was lifting heavy I weighed 220 lbs at 6'2 that meant a BMI of 28 (overweight). I had my fat measured and I was at ~10%. There is no way anybody would have said I was fat. Right after getting out of Airborne school I weighed 137 pounds, everybody said I looked terrible, like I survived a death camp. But the BMI index says I am barely underweight??? But for me personally, now, less weight means better climbing ability. Unless I get some pharmaceutical help(deca, tren etc..), I won't put on mass like I used to be able to, nor would I want to. |
John RB wrote: Regarding Vail, I bouldered alongside 2nd place finisher Sean Bailey at the Boulder Rock Club on Sunday and he is probably 5' 6-7" and 120-something. I doubt the two Japanese males who also podiumed are much different. I'm still undecided if bouldering comps lean toward favoring bigger climbers but that could just be a byproduct of setting trends. For climbing outside, being shorter, lighter, with mega-strong fingers remains the paradigm for most situations |
Peter Beal wrote: Interesting. I was struck by how thin Bailey was, especially compared to someone like Hojer (who is admittedly on the heavier side). The best outdoor climber in the world is tall (6'1"), but I think you're right that shorter is probably optimal. Tom and Ollie's data claim that if you're shorter you must have stronger fingers to climb at the same grade... in fact, taller climbers need less of every kind of strength except core, where they need more. ------My take, after a lot of reading and podcasts: losing weight is not always going to help your climbing. There is no correlation between BMI and climbing performance. Obviously there is no advantage to carrying fat up a climb, but muscle is often useful even though its heavy and even though it may not be directly connected to your fingers. Of course there's a limit to this, and bodybuilders won't make good sport climbers, but when Ondra put on 20lbs of muscle, he got BETTER on the hangboard, not worse. If anything Jonwong Chon's 17.5 BMI is probably a liability rather than being an advantage... he might climb better with another 10 lbs of muscle. |
Peter Beal wrote: On Sunday, I was watching the Vail video. And, oh, that Alex Puccio! |
reboot wrote: It's easy to find the exception; here are the last 5 (unique) male world cup overall winners and their BMI: Last sentence especially. Having excess body mass is a disaster for high-end outdoor climbing and no, John Dunne doesn't count. |
reboot wrote: It's easy to find the exception; here are the last 5 (unique) male world cup overall winners and their BMI: When I said "no correlation between BMI and climbing performance" I meant that you can't find a statistical correlation that shows BMI as a predictor of climbing performance. In other words, a correlation that shows that as BMI decreases, climbing performance increases. To show a correlation, you'd want to be able to draw a graph that shows every 5.15 redpointer has under a (say) 17.5 BMI. Every 5.14c redpointer is under 18.2 BMI, etc. Of course you aren't going to find any high-end climbers with a 28 BMI, even if he's at 8% body fat. I'm not saying that you can climb 5.15 regardless of your bodyweight... that's clearly false.-------- I'm not the source of these opinions... this is from Lattice Training's various surveys of their clients and of 8a.nu data. For example, take a look at this article: https://latticetraining.com/2017/10/04/bmi-and-climbing/ Relevant section: It is well known that climbing (both bouldering and sport climbing) is a sport that is affected by power to weight ratios. The biggest factor that bodyweight affects is the percentage of bodyweight that we’re able to hang on a climbing hold – simply put, if you reduce body fat and retain lean muscle mass you’ll be able to hang poorer holds for longer. And the correlation between BMI and route grade is slight negative but close to level:  The article concludes: While there is a slight negative correlation it is not substantial. Of greater note is that the line of best fit in all cases lies within the ‘healthy’ 18.5-24.9 range, this suggests that maintaining a low BMI is not necessary for climbing hard. |
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Since when is the ability to climb plastic an indicator of anything? And what’s honolds BMI? What are very tall climbers BMI s? |
reboot wrote: Except it did, for a data set across climbers (which is a very large self-selection bias) of all ability. "Healthy" BMI range is only 18.5 - 25 and 2.5 under that is considered severely under weight. So it's not like there's a lot of range to play with (and certainly the Y axis should NOT start below 15, as below that is not a survivable BMI in the long term).Ok, but surely a sample size of 10 climbers makes you a little hesitant to draw too many conclusions?! Lattice has another article with the top 100 route-climbers and top 100 boulders, both male and female, charted against BMI. (Here "top 100 route-climber" means they were in the top 100 for the hardest redpoint in the last two years, same with bouldering). Surely you'd agree that's a reasonable sample size and a reasonable thing to look at? For males, there was a slight correlation between route grade and BMI:  Here, 25=8c, 27=9a, 29=9b. The one climber at 9c must be Ondra (with a BMI of 20). For bouldering, there was a slight positive correlation. Here 25=V13, 26=V14, etc.  So, if these data are to be believed, I should increase BMI above my current 21.5 if I want to boulder at the V15 level, but decrease it if I want to climb 9b.
Ok, let's talk about that. What do you think is the OPTIMAL build, reboot, in light of the data above?! |
reboot wrote: He's sent 8c+, which is "elite" in most people's book. But if that were his proudest achievement, he wouldn't be a famous climber. He mentioned after his FR solo that he was going to try and send 9a. I doubt he's capable of 9b... but who knows. Angy Eiter sent her first 9b at age 31. |
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I wonder if your inability to go hard all day has less to do with your weight and more to do with your diet and the sort of training you've been doing? Even if you have very low bodyfat, you should still have plenty of reserves of energy available from fat unless you are getting below 5 or 6% BF. Even then I am not aware of any metabolic reason why your body would be unable to tap into these fat reserves. However, the same metabolic conditions will also trigger utilization of protein for energy, which is particularly undesirable when you're over 30 and have the associated decrease of testosterone and decreased ability to build muscle. Personally, I am 40 years old, 6' tall, and currently around 160-165lbs, 11-12% BF, but I have definitely climbed (and run, and pretty much everything of interest to me) much better when I am closer to 150lbs and <10% BF. |
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Here is a bit of perspective on bodyfat, weight and bmi. Grand tour riders generally have body fat between 4 to 6 percent, and they go hard day after day for up to 7 hours for 23 days with only 2 rest days. Yes, it is not sustainable, and they may be on dope, but it does illustrate what human capacity is. |
Ryan Pfleger wrote: I wonder if your inability to go hard all day has less to do with your weight and more to do with your diet and the sort of training you've been doing? Even if you have very low bodyfat, you should still have plenty of reserves of energy available from fat unless you are getting below 5 or 6% BF. Even then I am not aware of any metabolic reason why your body would be unable to tap into these fat reserves. However, the same metabolic conditions will also trigger utilization of protein for energy, which is particularly undesirable when you're over 30 and have the associated decrease of testosterone and decreased ability to build muscle. Personally, I am 40 years old, 6' tall, and currently around 160-165lbs, 11-12% BF, but I have definitely climbed (and run, and pretty much everything of interest to me) much better when I am closer to 150lbs and <10% BF. One of my climbing partners practices going Ketonic before triathlons so he doesn't "bonk". He feels that his body needs to become familiarized with ketosis, so when it happens he still gets the energy he needs, albeit less than the regular method. |
Ryan Pfleger wrote: I wonder if your inability to go hard all day has less to do with your weight and more to do with your diet and the sort of training you've been doing? Even if you have very low bodyfat, you should still have plenty of reserves of energy available from fat unless you are getting below 5 or 6% BF. Even then I am not aware of any metabolic reason why your body would be unable to tap into these fat reserves. However, the same metabolic conditions will also trigger utilization of protein for energy, which is particularly undesirable when you're over 30 and have the associated decrease of testosterone and decreased ability to build muscle. Personally, I am 40 years old, 6' tall, and currently around 160-165lbs, 11-12% BF, but I have definitely climbed (and run, and pretty much everything of interest to me) much better when I am closer to 150lbs and <10% BF. Well, I just had a full (16 hour) day today without bonking, and I came home at 155lbs (almost all the weight loss from sweating of course). I really think my issue with hard days has to do with tuning my fluid and calorie intake during the day. I'm still getting that figured out (when I was younger, I could go all day on a few gels and some water... that seems not to work anymore). My bodyfat isn't that low right now... I'd guess 12%. There is a water-displacement test down the street for $50 that I've been tempted to get, but I've read it's not very accurate. And I don't know of any DEXA testing places in the Boulder area. So that 12% guess is just from looking in the mirror.Interesting that you have more endurance at lower BF. My mom keeps telling me to "keep some fat reserves once you're over 50... in case you get sick, you want something to fall back on... you're not 20 anymore." Of course my mom isn't a doctor, she just read that somewhere... |
John RB wrote: I think you hit the nail on the head with the need to fine-tune the calorie/food intake for full day of going hard. |
John RB wrote: Interesting that you have more endurance at lower BF. My mom keeps telling me to "keep some fat reserves once you're over 50... in case you get sick, you want something to fall back on... you're not 20 anymore." Of course my mom isn't a doctor, she just read that somewhere... I wouldn't say I have more endurance at a lower bodyfat, I am just doing less work. If your goal is longevity, then current science says your mom might be right. |
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It sounds like you’re good but I know what you mean by the gaunt look. If someone hasn’t said it yet, grow a beard if you’re inclined. |
John RB wrote: On the whole the left picture is a better bet for most people if they want to climb harder |
Peter Beal wrote: What's the definition of "harder" and most people though? If it's slightly overhanging techy sport the weight portion of "power to weight" is obviously the ticket, but there are plenty of routes that are assisted by the ability to burl through a bit. I'm thinking of Alli Rainey's change in style and physique here. My thought would never be to go out and intentionally target hypertrophy, but simply to not be so concerned over weight that I'm in a constant calorie deficit. Allow enough recovery to get more frequent high quality climbing in. At the end of the day though I also think weight/BMI gets focused on far too intently. I would say that for majority of climbers tactics and head games are the elephant in the room (that's hard to focus on with and quantify). It muscle nor fat mass doesn't matter if you freak out 4 feet above your last bolt, they don't matter if you are just campusing through moderate feet, your precision of footwork is shit, if you try to tech/intermediate your way around any power move, if you try to power move through any technical sequence, or if you're me and you spend weeks on the same damn route because you're blind and miss a key hold that turns a V5 move into a v3 move....... I see these things happening in the intermediate 5.11+ to 13- range, even from a few partners well into the 13s. A lot of them have had the specific habit their whole climbing career and never address it. Most of them get sucked into weight management and physical training. If you're putting 80% of your effort into getting minutiae of physical training that might account for 5-20% of success while not addressing the psychological and technique factors.I know you see a much broader spectrum of climbers and certainly have a hell of a lot more time on the rock. Am I way off base here and just projecting my experience on other people? |
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I see a lot about BMI on this thread. BMI is a TERRIBLE measure of underweight to obese on the individual level. Speak with an epidemiologist. BMI is a population statistic, not an individual. It does not account for body types and morphology. Say someone 5ft zero with broad shoulders. Their frame is larger which means an artificially inflated BMI right off the bat regardless of if they have 10% body fat. Same goes the opposite for a slender frame who is 6ft will have a natural lower BMI. Same also goes for someone who is what ever height and pure muscle, they will come up as overweight on the chart. When you take a large enough population (thousands if not more), these morphologies average out and then BMI is a good, easy predictor of total population health. It can be useful for a quick guide on the individual level but not much stock should be placed in this number. Look at body fat if you want a more objective individual number to assign to yourself. I do have to agree with the sentiments previously echoed: do you feel good? then who cares!!! your girlfriend is loving the new you? even better! |
