Hey little miss sunshine, we need to talk. Your tone has been visably more snotty from an outside perspective than aerili's who has remained quite professional in dealing with doubters. But carry on.

Also, for those interested, I found a great resource (replete with fancier formulas) for examining strength-to-weight ratios and which talks about body dimensions in relation to sports performance, authored by the venerable Zatsiorsky and Kraemer.

Basically, it says for athletes who only have to lift their own body weight in their sport (like climbers!), RELATIVE strength is most important, not absolute strength. Helps explain why many elite climbers are either smaller in stature or tall and lanky.

http://books.google.com/...-i81JsQNoUncdt-9pkE4

There's some math thing about scaling of load-bearing structures (i.e. bone) as well. Making a bird twice as big means the bone area and volume gets MORE THAN twice as big. No, I can't provide more detail or a reference for that; it's something I came across years ago. Anyway that little tidbit offers yet another reason why it's good to be small in gravity sports.

...The zero sum argument might seem theoretically interesting but try convincing someone that has just done a pullup that he/she didn't put energy into both parts of the motion - you'll get slapped in the face.

Gunkiemike is getting at what I think is the central issue here. Think about high end climbs - what makes them hard. In general it means the holds are further apart, the holds are smaller, and the angle is steeper. Height might give you an advantage with the first, but it usually will be a disadvantage with the other two. As the holds get smaller and the angle gets steeper the connective tissue and bones in your hands have to get stronger to enable you to hold and move.

I'd like to play this up a bit more. Here are some assumptions:

1) more and more people are learning to climb by learning to boulder in a gym rather than the old way of finding a mentor and getting on a wall outside.
2) the average climber wants to climb harder, but generally climbs far below his/her genetic limit.

With those two assumptions in play, to most climbers, height seems like an advantage because gym problems only offer the holds that are bolted to the wall thereby forcing climbers to climb at the height of the setter. Because of this, it seems that being tall is an advantage because height is often the only variable that allows climbers to escape "the sequence" a setter is trying to force. In essence, height enables cheating. Outdoors, this often is not the reality because climbers can find new sequences that take advantage of unique footholds or hidden holds.

Second, most climbers want to climb hard but are a bit misguided about how to get there. Because of that they see tall climbers "cheating" (as described above) and assume that the tall climber will always have an advantage. This assumption seems true because, on average, neither the short nor the tall climber will pursue climbing to a level where they are reaching their genetic limits - so neither will get on problems/routes that expose the fact that the structural strenght of the hand cannot keep up with height.

I'd like to play this up a bit more. Here are some assumptions:

1) more and more people are learning to climb by learning to boulder in a gym rather than the old way of finding a mentor and getting on a wall outside.
2) the average climber wants to climb harder, but generally climbs far below his/her genetic limit.

With those two assumptions in play, to most climbers, height seems like an advantage because gym problems only offer the holds that are bolted to the wall thereby forcing climbers to climb at the height of the setter. Because of this, it seems that being tall is an advantage because height is often the only variable that allows climbers to escape "the sequence" a setter is trying to force. In essence, height enables cheating. Outdoors, this often is not the reality because climbers can find new sequences that take advantage of unique footholds or hidden holds.

Second, most climbers want to climb hard but are a bit misguided about how to get there. Because of that they see tall climbers "cheating" (as described above) and assume that the tall climber will always have an advantage. This assumption seems true because, on average, neither the short nor the tall climber will pursue climbing to a level where they are reaching their genetic limits - so neither will get on problems/routes that expose the fact that the structural strenght of the hand cannot keep up with height.

...If what you are saying (disadvantage in reach is offset by some advantage on small holds and steep angles) were even remotely true then women and men would be climbing at the same level on average, which they very clearly are not.

You should take a look at Lisa Rands' interview in Urban Climber where she talks about this very subject. She was asked why women aren't keeping up with men at the highest levels and her reply was pretty simple: men are taller...

Think about high end climbs - what makes them hard. In general it means the holds are further apart, the holds are smaller, and the angle is steeper. Height might give you an advantage with the first, but it usually will be a disadvantage with the other two.

Curt-

I wasn't making a generalization about men and women at all levels, I was responding specifically to the above comment about high end climbs.

--M

So you're saying that only high-end climbers can use the short excuse?

Absolutely yes.

Wish you could walk (climb) a mile in a tall person's shoes

I'm trying to make a very narrow point, not a wide generalization. I know that sometimes some moves are easier for short people. I'm also not complaining about being short. My point doesn't even really apply to me, because I am talking about the very very top end of our sport.

My point is that very high-end climbs favor people who are not little dwarfs like myself and many girls, because one of the three factors that makes a really hard climb really hard is the distance between the holds, and it's always going to be harder for a short person to span that distance.

There are always climbs at every grade that are reachy, but as they get harder it becomes more and more difficult to use strength to find ways around that reachiness. Intermediates are by definition harder to hold onto, otherwise they would be holds, not intermediates. So extrapolate to a truly high-end climb, the holds themselves are small, the intermediates are essentially nonexistent.

Consider a non high-end climb. On a V8 boulder or route crux with a span that is too great for a smaller person, that person might need to have V10/11 strength to use intermediates to find a way around it. No problem, plenty of people have that kind of strength. Thus being short is no excuse.

However on a truly high-end climb with a span too great for a smaller person, that person might need strength that is beyond the physical limit of what a human can hold onto to find a way around it. This is what Lisa is talking about in reference to why there is a gender gap at the very top end.

My point is that very high-end climbs favor people who are not little dwarfs like myself and many girls, because one of the three factors that makes a really hard climb really hard is the distance between the holds, and it's always going to be harder for a short person to span that distance.

Empirical evidence trumps supposition every day:

I'm 6'5". I suck at climbing, and have fallen on 2nd class approach hikes.

(n=1, p<0.01)

There. Settled once and for all.

But that is an artifact of the size of the folks putting up the first ascent, not a natural phenomenon. If most of the folks putting up the hardest lines are all 5'7" to 5'10" with plus 2 or 3 ape index, and they are seeking out routes with maximum stretch dynos and lock-offs, on types of rock offering few intermediate features, then you will get (as we may currently have) a large cluster of routes that may indeed be out of the reach of folks who clock in at, say, 5'1." But that's simply an artifact of the necessarily tiny pool of top-end routes and ascentionists.

But that is an artifact of the size of the folks putting up the first ascent, not a natural phenomenon. If most of the folks putting up the hardest lines are all 5'7" to 5'10" with plus 2 or 3 ape index, and they are seeking out routes with maximum stretch dynos and lock-offs, on types of rock offering few intermediate features, then you will get (as we may currently have) a large cluster of routes that may indeed be out of the reach of folks who clock in at, say, 5'1." But that's simply an artifact of the necessarily tiny pool of top-end routes and ascentionists.

If tallness were consistently advantageous, then we should (at least in sport climbing and bouldering) see a consistent bias towards climbers over 6 foot. Instead, we have to search really hard for top-end folks at that height. Loskot and Willenberg are the only ones I can name off the top of my head. I suppose one could argue that there is a critical height, say, 5'3," that is simply too short for someone to hope to compete as a first ascentionist. But that would require us to believe that God is, say, 5'9" and has selfishly arranged all the natural features of the world's rock so that it perfectly accommodates the reaches of folks close to His size.

But even if 5'1" climbers were putting up all the high-end routes, taller climbers would not be disadvantaged as a consequence of hold spacing. In fact, the hold spacing would generally still favor the taller climber; the moves won't be as reachy for him, and he may even have more holds to choose from. Thus, overall, difficulty is naturally an increasing function of hold spacing.

Jay