Bouldering Competitions: Does Size Matter?

The big show in town this weekend is the ABS National Bouldering competition, being held at a dedicated location, not at any of the gyms in town. John Stack and a crew have been working very hard to get the new walls up, a glimpse of which is available at Jamie Emerson's site. It sounds like it will be a good time though I will most likely not be there. You can check out the comp live online at the UBC site.

I have already discussed the problem of getting the general public interested in climbing competitions and the press locally has been relatively small about this event. The event is being marketed mostly to local climbers as far as I can tell but the venue, a warehouse space not far from the Spot Gym, is not very big so everything should sell out and go OK. There is a tour of four events, the majority of which are in summer and early fall and again have the feeling of being sold to climbers at climbing venues, like Salt Lake City's Outdoor Retailer. Whether this kind of event can generate mainstream media attention is a very open question. I am thinking that it may take some more time.

I think the more interesting issue is what kind of sport is going to emerge from this kind of competition. Everyone knows that a certain type of problem is beginning to emerge from bouldering competitions, in the same way that routes began to get very similar in roped competition, even to the point that chipping routes on rock to "even out" difficulties became common in the 1990s. The classic comp problem involves big spans between big non-positive holds. The focus is on core strength, bigger arm muscles, and speed. I wonder if increasingly competitors are going to be sorted according to size moving forward, resulting in a relatively homogenous set of body types, reminiscent of trends in gymnastics but without the wide difference between women and men.

Because climbing is more often than not point-to-point specific in terms of its movements (a feature shared by no other sports I can think of), in any given case where the strength of the climbers are equal, the taller climber will usually have the advantage in moving between holds. This is due to increased leverage available by not being fully extended between holds. Some have argued in the past that being shorter has the advantage of being lighter and more easily able to use small holds. This argument is losing steam in the world of competition bouldering, and increasingly in outdoor bouldering as well. Reach and the ability to exert power, not just in terms of pulling on holds but in exerting pressure while moving between them, is key to comp success now. The holds in comps are often very large and sloping, requiring as much skin friction as possible to stay in contact. Smaller hands have less surface area and less leverage in the pinch position. While routesetters can compensate for this to a limited degree, fundamental truths about the physics of climbing movement are beginning to make themselves keenly felt.

In the future I think the top male competition climbers in bouldering will be between 5'10" and 6'2" on average, relatively athletic in build, neither heavy nor super lean. Women will tend to run in the same direction, albeit slightly smaller. Outside, you can pick the boulder problems that suit you at a given level of difficulty but the inside scene will exert a very real pressure on those outside the average. The problem with this over time is whether professionalization in climbing will require, for the first time in the sport, a much more specific body type than in the past, especially in regard to height.