By the end of the training program, the women had increased their upper-body strength by 36 percent and lowered their body fat by 2 percent. But on test day, the researchers were stunned when only 4 of the 17 women succeeded in performing a single pull-up.

...an interesting phenomenon: if you compare a smaller athlete to an athlete who has the same exact build but is 30 percent bigger, the bigger athlete will be only about 20 percent stronger, even though he has to carry about 30 percent more weight.

I think that the "researchers" missed an important idea of why there is this gap between men and women in terms of brute strength: women are disscouraged from doing manual labour and other heavy physical activities in society.

NY Times blog published a summary of "research" on the topic

A few really amusing paragraphs:

Perhaps increasing upper-body strength by 36% wasn't enough, and the ladies should've trained for another three months? ;)

This one is a bit more relevant to the climbing community's discussion short vs tall -

Sounds like solid reasoning to describe the general population
For full disclosure - my comments are regarding the blog entry, not the actual article, and I am not taking it seriously nor would I suggest anyone does.

They state than women increased their upper body strength by 36%, I find it remarkable result for 3 months worth of training. Unfortunately, it better demonstrates how lacking the upper body strength was before the exercise regime, since gaining 36% muscle mass on top of anything is very significant - if there wasn't much to start with it stops being impressive. Also, not knowing what the starting point in terms of muscular strength was makes it impossible to judge whether 36% gain would be sufficient - if the initial pull down on lat machine was 100lb to start with, 136lb at the end won't result in a pull-up if the "normal" weight is taken for 164lb or so ( average weight of US women in 2002, according to this)

And don't get me started on that 30% bigger, yet the same built stuff :)

As teens it certainly isn’t lady like to be grunting a sweating.

This part of the article is also relevant to short vs tall-

"“We’re a combination of levers; that’s how we move,” Vanderburgh said. “Generally speaking, the longer the limb, the more of a disadvantage in being able to do a pull-up."

I believe the same thing applies to front levers another part of steep climbing, and this is compounded with smaller holds in proportion to finger size and more torque on the climber making it harder to hold onto holds.

This is all excuse making bull. Tall climbers like Jimmy Webb and Ethan Pringle have developed a style that works for them. While they may have disadvantages in certain movement styles, they have advantages in others. It all comes out in the wash (coming from a tall guy that refuses to make excuses.)

Good for you for not making excuses. There's one undeniable point though when comparing people or animals of different size and their relative power to weight ratios. Muscle strength is proportional to its cross section and increases proportional to the square of size, while body mass increases with size to the third. That's why frogs and small animals can jump that far or ants can lift ten times their weight, while an elephant cannot even jump. Same goes for two people, just look at the weight lifting world records divided by the lifter's weight.

The average strength of an average person in our sedentary inactive society is abysmally low, and if you start with a really low number, it is easy to get a significant percentage of increase, with just a slight increase.

Anecdotal evidence: when I tore a muscle in my forearm, it reduced my pinch strength in that arm to a small fraction of my "normal" strength. Yet, when a physical therapist ran a series of tests to get an idea or roughly how weak I was, she told me that my pinch strength (in my NON_dominant AND injured hand) was actually higher than the average "normal" strength they expect to see in a dominant hand of an uninjured woman of my age. Pretty pathetic!


And I wanted to add more about this:


I was stunned this summer by the following exchange with my niece:

As a background, she is almost 12yo, and was very active as a younger girl, participating in gymnastics, swimming, etc. During the previous year, when I spent a week with her, she really enjoyed monkey bars at the playground. She absolutely loved climbing when I took her, and was actually good at it, too.

Imagine how STUNNED I was to hear from this girl, only a year after I watched her happily swinging on the monkey bars and cartwheeling around the yard, that "girls don't do pushups like that (normal pushups on your toes and hands)".

But yes, she is now in a new school, she is surrounded by new friends, she is much more "lady-like", and she, honestly and truthfully, believes that she CANNOT do a normal pushup. She showed me the pushups that "girls" do-- on her knees, or against the wall. And No pullups for girls!

When I tried talking her into trying to do a regular pushup or pullup -- by pointing out that only a year ago i saw her do handstands and monkey bars, and that probably means that he CAN manage a pushup and a pullup-- she got slightly upset, and said that she didn't want to, because she is not a little kid anymore.

First of all I did not mean to imply that you were stupid.

Of course at the level where 99% of the climbers are, say 5.12 and under, height is a non-issue. But it's also telling that the tall end of the examples you're giving for world class climbers is say 6'1", which is the average height of a male in the Nederlands.

And that tall guy seems to climb pretty well!

That tall guy is 5'11", so average height. And weighs 130 pounds, certainly not something an average guy can achieve.

Obviously it isn't all the difference in the world, or even half, or even a quarter, or even an eighth. You get the idea, but i think there is still a difference.

When you refer to 5'10 and 5'11 averagish guys as tall climbers, I think it says something about height in climbing. These guys are tall climbers. If you average the heights of bouldering comp winners (1st 2nd and 3rd or whatever) I bet it would come out shorter than average 90%+ of the time.

Exactly, if the top 100 climbers on 8a.nu avg. only 5'6 then that means that the majority of elite climbers are short. What else do i need to say?

Of course there are lots of exceptions and avg-ish, small, and even a lil on the big side can still be elite climbers. That's what i was saying before, height is only a small piece of the pie. So it's not suprising that a couple inches above average 6'1 guy like sharma can climb 9b and onsight 14b, and a tiny 5'2 ramon julian can climb 9a+ and onsight 14c, even though they are very different.

And about the jimmy webb thing, I think in general the advantages of tall climbers are much more pronounced than the advantages of short climbers. If you ask a new climber they will probably say it's easier for the tall people.(especially if the new climber is short) We hear "height dependant" a.k.a. hard for short people (most of the time) b/c it's blatantly obvious when you can't reach the next hold easily.

However the disadvantages of tall climbers are much more natural and ingrained. Every time they make a move on overhanging terrain the holds are smaller for them, they are fighting poorer arm leverage and a worse weight/strenght ratio, as well as more torque. However it's never really seen as them being disadvantaged (even though they are), it simply seems and looks like their not strong enough and not a good enough climber.

You're not really following the argument.

If the majority of elite climbers are 5'6" tall, then Ondra IS above average for this subset. Your argument suggests that he has a 'disadvantage.' While he may have a slight disadvantage in certain styles, it is clearly not enough to matter. He doesn't have to be taller than the average man to be significantly taller than the people he competes against.

You're right, by the way, that tall climbers have a disadvantage on certain climbing styles. They have advantages on others. Again, it comes out in the wash. It doesn't matter.

Your 'new climbers' argument is also bull. I'm not new by any means, and am better able to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of climbers at and above my level as a result.

If Sharma is 6'+, there is just another example of a person taller than the average of elite climbers excelling. I wonder why his natural disadvantages didn't hold him back on Witness the Fitness or Practice of the Wild (two VERY steep boulder problems.)

Argue advantage or disadvantage all you want. The fact is that people wh you claim should have a disadvantage still excel. If this is the case for people that are 6' tall, why not someone who is taller? It will just take the right individual with the right motivation to make it happen. Height is not an acceptable excuse in a general sense despite specific difficulties in specific routes.

Why are the two best climbers in the world significantly taller than their average elite contemporaries? Bueller?

there are tall people who climb significantly harder than anyone on RC ... there are short people who climb significantly harder than anyone on RC ...

the trick is to go out and go climb, so one doesnt make excuses about "too tall", "too short", "too fat", "too lazy", etc ...