Whoa yeah it does. About 5.8 feet, which is around 5'10". I was definitely towering over him that day, though :)

Well, as we know, height estimations are rather inaccurate. I am still chuckling fondly about the lady who thought i was 5'7". She wasn't standing very far away from me, either, when she made that statement.

Dave could be 5 11. He's definately light, which was my main point. I think it's more likely someone would say they way more than they do for two reasons. One, If your a 5 11 guy do you want to say you weight 135? Two, I think it's common for people to weigh themselves during the day with some clothes on which usually add a few pounds. My 6 1 buddy has been telling me he weighs 170 to 175 for years now. It's with clothes. He got on my scale the other day and was 168.

I think shorter fingers makes a big diff on edges as well also the articulation of your hand when in the crimp position.

Damn, I think I stand corrected. Here's the final proof:

[image]http://static-dev-climbing.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Graham-Harrington-Sharma-08_7008.jpg[/image]

This is the first time that I have been wrong, ever.

The patently false title of the article is Why Women Can't Do Pullups, but the research reported tells us nothing about the issue of gender differences and potentials.

What the study says is that of a small and almost certainly non-random sample of women who couldn't do a pullup, 24% could do a pullup after three months of training. We don't know what would happen with several years of training, we don't know how an analogous group of men would have fared, we don't know how anyone would have done with a different training regimen, we don't know why the trainers were surprised that the percentage wasn't higher, and we don't know why they thought it should have been higher.

I think most men who have worked on a gymnastic strength element will tell you that three months isn't even close to enough time for their mighty testosteronic systems to adapt.

It is certainly difficult to know just how much effect cultural norms have on strength statistics---my suspicion is that for strength-to-weight measures, the differences are primarily cultural rather than physiological. For many purposes, it is misleading to look at average results without considering how much the distributions actually overlap, and whether the spreads are comparable. In this regard, no discussion of the tremendous spread of human abilities is complete without Lillian Wetzel's 26 one-arm pullups (only 13 on the weaker arm), which far exceeds what most men can do on two arms, kipping or not.

In climbing, where a combination of technique and strength is involved, I think it is fair to say that the differences between the genders are nearly indistinguishable, and are only really detectable at the highest ends of achievement. Except for the most elite levels, men and women are basically equal when it comes to climbing, and even at the elite levels the difference is small and not always decisively in favor of the men (think about Lynne Hill's free ascent of the Nose).

As for any correlation between high numbers of pullups and climbing ability, I've never seen or heard a shred of evidence suggesting there is any.

And by the way, I haven't read the book, but would be interested to know how Willoughby comes up with strict vs. dynamic pullup equivalences. He seems to be suggesting that appropriate body motions can more than quadruple your pullup numbers, a claim which, to ignorant folks like me, sounds outlandish.