Questionnaire to determine the correlation between APE Index and Climbing Ability

I'm doing this for an IB Internal Assessment and would love to receive responses to help aid me in collecting data. None of this data will be given to any outside sources or anything it is just calculated for me in a google sheets form. I will provide the report as an update when it's all done!

https://forms.gle/wpkRoytG3csn8XnL8

Thanks!

As they say, correlation isn't necessarily causation.  I feel like you'd need more data to actually determine whether ape index plays a role in climbing harder.  Strength to weight ratios, average finger strength, style of climbing all would play a factor.  This data might show you that people with longer arm spans generally climb harder (or not, who knows) but it won't show that it is generally the reason that people climb harder.  That being said, I've never heard anyone wish they hard shorter arms on any rock climbs...

My guess is that you won't find a strong correlation between the two, not nearly to the same degree as finger strength to climbing ability. This is not because there is no advantage to having a large ape index (IMO there definitely is a massive advantage), it's just that reach is a limiting factor only on some climbs, so that the limitation won't necessarily reveal itself purely just by polling overall climbing ability. For example, Ashima has climbed V14+, but certainly with her height/wingspan there are very many problems at much lower grades that she would not be able to climb. A survey then might show people with >179 cm arm span with a grade of V8 and people like Ashima with a wingspan <160 cm with a grade of V14, and incorrectly conclude that wingspan doesn't matter for climbing. So my thinking is that arm span doesn't necessarily affect the limit of your climbing ability, but rather affects the range and variety of climbs doable at your limit. I'm not sure what data would need to be collected to test this idea.

a general equation for this is going to be r=1/n, where n = number of people who fill out the survey.

Talk to lattice. 

Having a higher ape correlates to being weaker for the grade climbed. Ape and grade makes no sense, it's like saying height and grade or age and grade. 

Look at Lynnie!

I don't want to discourage you from learning about statistics, but in addition to some of the issues mentioned above there's a serious technical problem. The difficulty is that climbing grades aren't numbers, at least not in the usual sense; they're (at best) an ordered set of labels. If you ignore this distinction and try to plug them into a statistical regression model as if they were variables like height, weight or age you'll get all sorts of spurious results. You can of course try to map grades to a numerical scale, but there are infinitely many ways of doing so. For instance, is 5.10 twice as hard as 5.5? Is the difference between 5.5 and 5.9 the same as the difference between 5.9 and 5.13? Do those questions even make sense? There's an old Tami Knight cartoon that gets at these issues:

I went ahead and submitted my info for fun, but it’s going to mess up your data set. I’m an old fart built like an orangutan (+5 inch ape index) who doesn’t climb hard.  

Brian Wirtz wrote:

I went ahead and submitted my info for fun, but it’s going to mess up your data set. I’m an old fart built like an orangutan (+5 inch ape index) who doesn’t climb hard.  

I'm a young fart built like an ape who probably climbs lower grades than you, so the survey is off to an interesting start. 

I couldn’t even reach up to the survey shelf. Why must I live my life in this T. Rex agony?

Jonathan Walker wrote:

You do realize you just contradicted yourself, there?

Let me clarify,

If I have a span of +2 and climb 8a let's say statistically that means I can hang -15% body weight on the one arm 20mm hang. If I had an ape of -2 I might statistically need to hang -5% of my body weight on the same edge to put me in a similar position on the bracket. 

What this means is I probably need to be stronger if I have shorter arms. This doesn't mean that if I have a +4 ape I statistically will climb harder or -4 ape I will climb 5.5. It also doesn't mean if I can do the -15% hang and have a +2 ape I can climb 8a, strength isn't the only contributing factor to grade climbed. 

With this being said, lattices data will be represantive of advanced and elite climbers, among the general population you will not find a corellation between ape and grade, and I doubt you would even find a corellation between ape, strength, and grade climbed until you reach at least 5.12.

Jonathan Walker wrote:

For my part, I think there are obvious advantages to being tall and/or having a farther reach. Sport science is a real thing, and there are inherent qualities to certain sports that align with certain inherent qualities in a person's physique.

At the same time, I get tired of hearing people make excuses for why one person can climb better/harder than another. To me, the best indicator (and the only noble one) is how much time and effort you're spending, putting in the work. Can we not just accept that as the real benchmark of a person's ability?

Overall this is true, but in certain situations it's helpful to understand why something is hard for you but easy for someone else or vice versa. Tall people are heavier and struggle on very thin crimpy stuff and handholds being very near the footholds for example, as this pushes their center of gravity further out from the wall than with shorter people. 

However tall people will have advantages in other scenarios, making it predominantly a wash overall. We should still understand these nuances, though. 

I worked at a gym years ago.  We determined the biggest factor in climbing "talent" is finger tendon diameter.  The bigger the tendons relative to your body weight, the smaller the hold you can hang on.  Having a huge ape index does not necessarily help if you are tall, have a thick torso, and skinny fingers.... sure you can reach to the next big hold, but if it isn't there, you can't make as much use of intermediate holds.  All told, it's a wash.

Today I climbed a 5.11- sport route and a 5.8 offwidth trad route, and to me they were the same difficulty. Point is, grades are too messy and subjective to ever be able to analyze in a way that makes any sense

abandon moderation wrote:

Progressing to the grades where there's often no good holds, it's less obvious that the height is still helping and the weight is still costing you on every move. IIRC for male pro climbers 5'10 or so is the average height. At least, this is what I tell myself as a firmly plateaued tall climber.

5’10” seems pretty tall for an average. Aside from Ondra, Matty, JWebb, and Sharma I can’t think of many other pros over 5’10”…considering there are so many shorties out there that are 5’8“ or below (Megos, DWoods, JStar, Shawn Rabateu, Stefano) it surprises me that the average would be so high.

A high ape index, however, basically gives the benefit of being tall with almost none of the associated extra weight. I'd have a hard time arguing that it's not beneficial. Likely not the deciding factor in determining climbing ability, but certainly a benefit.

I agree, ain’t no way ape index would ever be detrimental. With the exception of a very small amount of “scrunchy” moves the advantages far outweigh any disadvantages. I would also argue that mobility is far more beneficial (and achievable) than ape index.…mobility would also negate any limitations that someone with a positive ape index might encounter. 

All this discussion, and nobody pointed out that the survey question of “What is your highest grade you can consistently climb?” Is so nebulous that, even if there was a correlation between ape index and climbing grade, it would completely obscure it, just because people would interpret it differently.

How consistent is “consistent”? >50% of the time? More than 80%? Or 90%? And by “climb”, do you mean send? Or Onsight? Are you separating boulderers from route climbers, based on whether they choose to answer on a V scale, or YDS? What if they answer “7a”? Are you going to guess whether they meant boulders, or routes? Or just exclude them? And are you lumping together the guys who just started climbing, and people who have been climbing for  a decade or more, because you think that would have no bearing on the “max grade consistently climbed”?

Hope the teacher knows nothing about climbing, and doesn’t fail you for a poorly constructed survey…

Of course I don’t expect there to be a correlation  in the max grade redpointed, or max grade onsighted with the ape index, because there are routes out there of the same grade that would fit someone, no matter what their height, weight, ape index, hip flexibility, etc, etc. 

But on specific routes/problems it can make all the difference, as I was reminded just the other day on a little V3? Tension board problem. Can I jump sideways between two punches placed wider than my arm span, and with no feet? No, I can’t. And if someone can, pretty sure they wouldn’t think it a V3. But a guy with my height and +5 ape index was able to reach it with no jumping required. And the guy who’s 10 inches taller than me, with a neutral ape index was also just fine.

I climb often with another lady who’s couple inches taller than me, but has T-Rex arms, so standing up and reaching straight up our reach is very close. We boulder the same grade, overall, and climb often together on Kilterboard. There are about 5-10% of Kilterboard problems at our max Redpoint grade where our different body morphology makes any difference whatsoever. Otherwise, if I can do it, she can do it, and vise versa. On the other hand, she doesn’t climb on Tension board often. So on Tension board I redpoint 3 grades above her max. Exposure/experience makes a lot more difference than ape index. 

6'4, plus 4.... Suckas!

edit to say that I'm heavy as hell and that proportions really do matte: proportions include ape index, weight, technical skill on specific rock types, aspect, conditions, etc. 

i would guess that there is more of a correlation based on having fingers that are more of equal length.  if all your fingers are the same length it would be easier to get them all on the hold in some sort of reasonable fashion.