7a Sport vs 7A Boulder: Which one is HARDER?

[@pocpoc47]

I was today years old when I noticed that bouldering grades have an uppercase letter and sport grades a lowercase!

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

I only realised because people pointed it out to me when I wrote the original article!

[@urabagofcells2228]

Omg

[@bprLogos]

Damn me too and I've been climbing for 17 years....

[@biomorphic]

That's true, because the scales used for bouldering are Hueco (V1, v2 up to V17) and Fontainebleau, (1, 2, 6A up to 9A), meanwhile for routes is mostly used the French scale and Yosemite Decimal System.

[@aracanthe7251]

@@ThatsMeOnOrange mean, it’s not true in France. We write the font scale and the French scale the same way in most topos.

[@eleanorshuttleworth9346]

These kinds of videos are really good. It's so rare to find statistics in our sport unfortunately

[@c.l.368]

The hypothetical Bob and Alice... Nice.... I salute you, fellow Physicist.

[@christophauer2347]

Nice video :) i know a single expirience is not a statistic, but i observed that most of the people who climb 7a route max cannot do a 7A boulder.

[@fabiopalma4429]

Super interesting video and statistics. Totally subscribed! 👌🏼

[@elremito]

Statistics and climbing in the same video, love it! Great job, I’d love to see more! I know this isn’t a scientific article and all but I think it’s good to remind people that these are self reports and they are not considered the most trustworthy data in science… These stats will however always be better than a compilation of anecdotes from the crag :)

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

Limitations will be an important section in the last episode of this series :)

[@tdludes]

Bouldering grades are way more inconsistent and stylistic. It’s easier to find a one-off problem that is graded poorly or fits your style, so it’s easier to get an inflated max grade.

[@isaacsnowcarini4808]

you mixed my two passions in one video, rock climbing and programming!! you just got a new sub :) excited to see more content from you

[@nhandao8836]

can't wait for the next video man, would love to know how i stack up against the 'average' boulderer in terms of grade progression over time

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

It's already out :)

[@jonadams8257]

I find that all very interesting. Thank you for doing that. I have had a goal of doing 8a and your data tells me I'm getting close :-)

[@Matszs1]

If you check the graph at 4:47 you can see that the percentages dont add up to 100%, as expected, since many climbers never reach 7a or especially 7A bouldering. Since the curve for bouldering is much lower, it shows that a much larger portion of boulderers never reach 7A, which indicates that bouldering 7A is harder.

[@viniciuscollaco]

I think you missconcept this, the bins on sport is higher cause on the dataset thers more sport climbers than boulderes. but the mean its the same

[@juandelacanal]

The table comparing max redpoint, max flash and avg flash is very accurate! My max rp is 8b, my max flash is 7c+ and my avg flash is 7b

[@lucaa4480]

It depends, a friend of mine, flashed like a couple of 7b at most but his max grade is 8c. If you train in the gym a lot and go outside like 10 times a year is difficoult to flash hard routes outside (you lack experience)

[@juandelacanal]

@@lucaa4480 and do you know know how many attempta took him to do an 8c?

[@lucaa4480]

@@juandelacanal well, consider that he is more a boulderer (he climbs 8b boulder) than a sport climber so the 8c route was short, but 2 days i think. If the route is long and pumpy in a day he climbs 8a/8a+

[@Cslteo]

Great stuff, man ... I love me some statistical analysis Already stoked for the upcoming episodes!

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

Next episode is live now

[@RVSAU169]

Interesting stuff, thanks!

[@armandoestrada-rodriguez7418]

super interesting! thanks for doing this, love it!

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

Thank you! Check out my latest video

[@adsnra]

Very interesting video but I feel like the second part contradicts the first part. At min. 7:00 the graph shows that women that can boulder 7a should be able to sportclimb up to 7b+. Even though the difference for men is way less, it is still (somewhat) noticeable. This should mean that 7a bouldering is somewhat harder then 7a sport for men and considerably harder for women. My suspicion is that maybe event though overall bouldering 7a is harder (considering strength and/or technique) it is easier to find a boulder that suits your exact style, where you practice your 6 moves and send your first 7a within your first year or so. Being a 7a boulderer throughout many different styles is a completly different thing though.

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

You're right, there's definitely some contradiction, and the problem is that "Which one is harder" is an ill-posed question. What does "harder" even mean? It's not like we're measuring the hardness of a material on a standardised test or something. Because of that, the two plots that you're referring to answer two slightly different questions. The real question I'm answering in the first plot is "Does it take longer to climb a 7a route or a 7A boulder?", and I'm using "time required" as a proxy for difficulty. In the second plot, I'm comparing grades without the time variable. Because a 7A boulder has physically harder moves than a 7a route, and I'm considering climbers who practice both sport and bouldering (so they have enough endurance), if someone can climb 7A boulder, chances are is strong enough to climb a 7b+ route.

[@alexenders6839]

So interesting! Thank you for putting in the work and posting this😊

[@sishacar]

Great analysis! I want to see more!

[@xRIFF9]

Very interesting video. I think is difficult to measure other aspects, as style of the route, type of rock, exposition, lenght... Also, is very different en you are used to climb one specific style. Me, for exampme, mostly climb sport, and I found the way to onsight many 7a, 7a+, but I haven't figuerd out how to flash the same grade on boulder. I'm not saying I can't redpoint a 7A boulder, I mean I like to onsight, and maybe I need 10 tries for a 7A boulder. Maybe is because I've learned this way, or maybe we have to considerate that bouldering is a more compressed climbing, where you cannot make the aame mistakes while you are sporting, and that makes a bit difficult bouldering. Anyway, waiting for your next video, and hoping this numbers can become something more than an orientation

[@Luishernandezescalada]

What a great video !!!🎉

[@rossgardiner2197]

Great video! Really interesting too!

[@tectaljungle]

Great article btw, interesting read.

[@Amatsuichi]

have many 7a routes on rock and in the gym, a few 7a+, 7b, even a 7b+... but when I recently entered a pure bouldering gym in my town (I usually do not boulder at all), I was surprised by the difficulty scale... 6As and 6Bs being quite harder than I would expect, didnt even manage to do some of the 6Bs... 6Cs were already harder than 7a on rope and 7As were just out of my league completely.

[@spicyoliveroll]

as a climber and a data scientist this makes me feel so seen

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

Then you'll like my latest video on grade progression using extrapolation :) Check it out

[@mattsmitt00]

Absolutely amazing analysis using a great data set!

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

Thank you! Check out the latest video, very similar content

[@hoppinhighley1231]

Great video man! V interesting

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

Thank you! Check out my latest one on grade progression, I hope you like it

[@jkraemo]

Im confused about the last 2 graphs, isnt it just swapped x- and y-axis? Shouldnt the graph not just be mirrorred then?

[@nurfuerdieplaylist]

Great video! That correlation between bouldering and sport grades is mindboggling somehow🙈 but it does kinda make intuitive sense to me that women on average will be a tiny bit weaker on boulders, since they tend to be more bottlenecked by strength, whereas sport routes aren't, at least to the same extent. That is waht the graph is telling us, isn't it?😅

[@RossPotts]

@ThatsMeOnOrange, are you using French grades or UK grades? They are wildly different on conversion charts, and at the moment, I can only really read YDS.

[@RossPotts]

Never mind, I just saw your 10a video. Judging by the YDS grade in the title thumbnail, 10a being 5.16+ makes it look like you’re using French grades…

[@abhishekrajkumar8410]

Great analysis!

[@333deejay333]

As a boulderer/sport climber and Data Scientist, I approve :D. Some clustering would be cool. Predicting/extrapolating 10a, or plotting grade distribution/density per (geo) location/country would be interesting too. Which countries are more “performant”, and is there a relation of m2 of mountains with climbing potential?

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

Coming in the next video soon :)

[@climbing_thomas]

That is an awesome video, thank you so much! Unfortunately the dataset is not available anymore, any chance you could share it with us?

[@simondelacanal4543]

Something people never seem to take into consideration is that 7a and 7A are different grades and shouldn't be compared directly. Font and french scale just happene to be written the same way, but aren't measured equally. This becomes much more apparent the higher you go on the scale

[@lofizp1062]

great vid! very underated 💯

[@tofu.delivery]

this is absolutely amazing

[@MrMiguelangelteran]

wow really cool vid please do more like these!!

[@christophh9477]

Think its quite obvious boulder grades are harder when looking at the hardest routes ever climbed. 9c in sport 9A in bouldering. Personally it can however vary alot depending on what you do. I used to only sport climb and my max grade was 7c+. Due to my climbing partner having health issues I started bouldering and at first could barely climb a 6B. Now I mainly boulder, my max is 7B+. But on the very rare occasions I do find a partner to sport climb I cap out at 7a, if its a really long and pumpy route without rests I have even failed to climb some 6c's. That being said I can quite easily do all the moves on an 8a if I hangdog. I just dont have the stamina anymore to free climb sport routes because I so seldom do them.

[@tescovalueclips]

Nice vid masullo ;)

[@patrykcwiertnia7768]

well - i believe if you can flash 6c - than you are able to rp 7b in couple sessions

[@gewinnste]

First, the chart at 4:30 seems weird. Shouldn't the percentages each add up to 100%? I added them and they don't, at all. Second, neglecting this normalization issue, we can still look at the peaks/maxima and they are at 2 years for climbing and 3 years for bouldering. Third, bouldering is much broader in terms of finding a "lucky one", a boulder that caters to your physique and style. E.g. since I'm tall and have a high reach, I did a 6C+ dyno (boulder) on my second attempt, i.e., I probably could have done a special 7A or even 7A+ boulder with more work. But on average, I could boulder only ~5C-6A, so more than a full large FB-grade lower, at the time. Also, at that time, my hardest redpoint route was 7b and my average ~6c+, so only half of a large French grade lower. So I would advise to redo the analysis for the average achievements, not the hardest. I'm absolutely sure that the average 7A boulder is a lot harder than the average 7a route, for the average climber/boulderer.

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

You're right, there's an issue with the percentages! I used seaborn.histplot with stat=percent to generate that plot, but I never checked if the results added up to 100. The most likely reasons are (1) the plot was cut between years 0 and 20, so the tails are missing and (2) maybe seaborn normalizes the percentages using both sets of data, so boulder+sport might add up to 100 (which would be weird, but I haven't checked). Anyway, like you say the normalization doesn't change the shape. The position of the peak is very similar between the two plots, but I ran a t-test on the number of years required to climb a 7a sport and the number of years required to climb a 7A boulder. The result (t=1.172, p=0.241) shows that there is no statistically significant difference between the two distributions. It would still be interesting to look at a comparison between average grades, I might do that in the next video, thanks for the suggestion :)

[@gewinnste]

@@ThatsMeOnOrange I'm pretty sure that's a typical example for drawing wrong conclusions from statistical analysis (or using inadequate tools/methods). E.g. if you take your 7a-data and analyze it the same way against data for 7b (that you retrieve the same way you did for 7a), I'd be very surprised if you get a p-value

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

@@gewinnste ​ Thank you for the insight. I just compared 7a sport vs 7b sport out of curiosity, and the result is very clear: 7b takes longer than 7a i.snipboard.io/vhGHVo.jpg If I run a t-test on the two curves, the p-value is

[@gewinnste]

@@ThatsMeOnOrange I definitely disagree with that statement, alone because of the third point I made in my initial post (the comparison should be made between the _average_ routes/boulders). But even regardless of that (and the normalization) issue: I looked in more detail at the data in the 7A vs 7a graph and calculated a median of 3.46 y for 7A (bloc) and 2.80 y for 7a (route), so 0.66 years difference (and that is highly influenced towards a _lower_ difference by very noisy data for 8-19 y and also by the suspiciously sharp drop for 7A bloc from 3y to 4y (is it possible that the 4y data point is wrong?)). If you look at the maxima, the difference is higher, namely ~3.5 y (7A bloc) vs. ~2.4 y (7a route), meaning more than 1 year (or ~45% more time) difference. So why are the maxima of the fitted curves in the graph at 4:30 almost exactly at the same x-coordinate? If the maxima were where they belong, the difference would be higher than on the graph you linked for 7a vs 7b (~0.8 y) (and what I would expect). For similar monomodal distributions like that, this should result in a _lower_ p-value for the 7A vs. 7a data than for the 7a vs 7b data, not 0.241 vs. >0.01. I don't know what happened there, but it doesn't seem right. But apart from that, it's actually enough to just look at the proportion of success in the first 12 months (the first data point), which is _more than 4x higher_ for 7a (route) than for 7A (bloc): 14.7% succeeded climbing their first 7a route vs. only 3.5% climbing their first 7A bloc. If 7A (bloc) were about as hard as 7a (route), then the fraction of climbers succeeding within the first year would be about the same. But it's wildly different. But by including lots of questionable data (e.g. the long term data include time spent not climbing, but is also very noisy) and probably making a couple of mistakes in the analysis (we already know of the normalization issue, the 7A 4y-data point seems wrong and the curve-fitting can't be correct) you arrived at the conlusion that 7a route is as hard as 7A bloc. This is what I meant with "drawing wrong conclusions from statistical analysis". Edit: I misread the first value for "7a route" (8.15 instead of 9.15) and had 1 year less calculated for the medians and peaks. I corrected the values now (The median difference is 0.66 years, up from 0.61 years, the time increase for the maximum of 7A vs. 7a is ~45%, not ~70% and the success rate-ratio in the first year is 4.2x, up from 3.8x).

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

​@@gewinnste I think the main issue with the plot is visualization. There definitely were some issues with seaborn and the axis, so don't trust the actual numbers too much. Also, because seaborn puts data left and right of each year, and I started the visualization from 0 years, the first bin for sport climbing was cut out (sorry, my mistake). The full plot looks like this: snipboard.io/yaRSGc.jpg I also calculated the median using the raw data for both sport and bouldering: Median sport: 3.0 ys Median boulder: 3.0 ys Average sport: 4.61 ys Average boulder: 4.33 ys For the fitted curves, I used the kde setting in seaborn, which "compute a kernel density estimate to smooth the distribution"; I haven't looked at the source code, but I use the same line to plot both distributions. As you say, there probably are some more mistakes, either in the data, in the code or in the meaning of the interpretation, which is why this analysis ended up being a blog article/video and not a scientific paper. But I'm glad to see peer review on youtube as well :)

[@yevhenii.khlopin]

Well, finally a near scientific evidence that most boulder problems in my gym are sandbagged Thanks for the interesting statistics

[@jesperdemiranda2435]

Great video, really liked how you laid out the data to make it very easily understandable. I’d be really interested in seeing the average time to get to grades!

[@EyYoMrWhite]

Thats useless

[@stefslyfe]

Do you consider sending on top rope to be actual sending? Or do climbs need to be sport climbed(lead) (on rope) in order to actually be counted as being sent? Also, when grading climbs, do you think that setting a climb, top roping it, and then giving it a grade is accurate? I was always told that sport routes are graded after having been sport climbed, not top roped, but I know setters and climbers who feel differently. What do you think?

[@UnicycleSoul]

Top roping != sending. It's significantly easier than lead. I've seen people claim otherwise, but it's simply ridiculous. Even funnier is when people climb top rope, take breaks on the rope, and after finishing the climb, say: "noice route, it's my best send to date". What...?

[@Lucroz94]

Top roping isn't sending. It's ok for practicing the route and then redpointing or just if you don't take climbing too seriously (which is ok, don't get me wrong)

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

It depends. If we're talking about indoor climbing, on routes that are set ONLY for top rope (some gyms intentionally remove quickdraws), I believe the grade is for the top rope, although you should confirm this with the setter of your gym. Same thing for the autobelays, if the route is set and graded for autos, it *should* keep into account that you're not clipping. As for outdoors (which is where data from the video is coming from), the story is different. Clipping quickdraws while leading constitute additional moves that can sometime even be the crux, so top roping makes it definitely easier. Top roping also removes the headgame factor, allowing you to climb without fear or falling. Anyway, every setter is different and you should ask your local gym for more info :)

[@stefslyfe]

@@ThatsMeOnOrange cool, thanks. I wish there was more uniformity in climbing. Can’t have a conversation with anyone about your climbing levels because there are soooooo many factors that make the exact same “grade” extremely different.

[@jkraemo]

​​@@UnicycleSoulust to play devil's advocate: would a free solo ascent then not count as a send as well? I mean you didn't have to clip at all!

[@AndyBizzzle]

I sent a 7A boulder before a 7a sport, that being said, I've sent way more 7a sports than 7A boulders as I'm mostly a sport climber

[@agnulittumc]

To me sport routes are much harder than boulders. I can red point a 6b route and a 7a boulder. My flashing grade on routes is below 5c.

[@zigzag1906]

what about the people who never achieve the grade? couldn't you have a case where the people who do achieve it all do it a similar type, but one could have a lot more people that have been climbing for a while but never reach it

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

It will be discussed in the next video coming out soon :)

[@sarahquinn4679]

The difference between bouldering and sport climbing grades, between men and women who predominantly sport climb is really interesting. I wonder if the difference is because women tend to have more slow-twitch muscle fibers, and men have more fast-twitch muscle fibers? Slow-twitch fibers mean that the muscles are more resistant to fatigue and recover faster; fast-twitch fibers create more explosive strength. Great video!

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

That's a very interesting point! Thank you for the insight!

[@valito168]

Its fur sure also a matter of reach. Many boulders have only a limited amount of holds in total. And the distance if holds is an destinctive factor in dificoulty. In routes you find often little crimps or alternative holds that make the climbes possible for different types of bodysize.

[@valito168]

I guess also weight is going to play a roll. Tall bodys are more heavy. Also big packs of muscle that bring you up some three move problem but drag you down on induracerouts.

[@soccutd77]

It’s definitely a style thing: for bouldering the difficulty curve is clearly about strength and power which is more difficult for women on average. However sport is about endurance which favors small frames, endurance, and technique, which women tend to have over men (at least up to the intermediate level).

[@kairone322]

1st time in my life i saw my name used as exemple for something

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

And did you climb 7a in 3 years? 😬

[@kairone322]

@@ThatsMeOnOrange still got 3ish years to try 🤣 I've been climbing for just a couple months

[@aasmundnrsett8751]

Great video 💪🏻

[@hermannwigers8321]

It's quite interesting stuff. When checking whether climbing 7a sport or 7a boulder is the hardest I think it could be an idea to compare people who have done their first and 5th or 10th 7a in lets say the span of one year.

[@stephanevautrin7317]

I've been bouldering for 8 months and have done multiple 7a and maybe some 7b. I've recently tried sports climbing and did a few 6a which were simple but a 40m tall route is so tiring compared to bouldering. The moves are not hard but past the first 20m i really have no strength left, i have yet to try harder routes (6b 6c maybe even 7a who knows). But i do think i'd really struggle to redpoint a 7a route. Maybe a more experienced boulderer with the same max grade would struggle less cause i'm still building muscle and stamina

[@jkraemo]

​@@stephanevautrin7317have you done 7B outside? I think indoor sport routes tend to be a bit more realistically graded compared to indoor boulders, indoor boulder grades are horribly inflated in most gyms

[@hermannwigers8321]

@@stephanevautrin7317 If you are strong enough for 7b then you can easily do 7a sport route. If it's a short route with only one boulder crux I can promise you that the boulder will not be harder than 6a+. 40 meters is super long so you just have to find something that's 10-20 before you get more endurance.

[@maxdilcon5679]

7A Boulder is super easy 7a sport route is brutal… for me atlases as a 7c+/8a boulderer

[@dizietz]

Do it for 8a next :)

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

I looked at higher grades and progression in general in my latest video, check it out

[@HochstartHarry]

Is this french grading?

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

Yep

[@nopro_films]

Super interesting!

[@rossanamarino7518]

Questo video fa venire la voglia di provare ad arrampicare

[@garywheaton7112]

I hope a 7a boulder is harder considering a 7a sport route is around a 6a boulder. Pretty dumb title.

[@Exi01]

Seems from your graph that a smaller percentage of boulderers even get to 7a

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

That's true, but there is also a smaller percentage of users who simply logged boulders compared to routes. I have to say I'm one of them, I log all my routes but I've never logged a boulder.

[@23nexete]

I think there is another variable you should add, experience. (Lets say i am a 7A boulderer, from your chart i will 6c/7A on sport.... NO WAY on my first 20 sport climbs, maybe if i have al ready done sport climbing for 2 years, after only 1 year doing sport i shit my pants on 6C+.),

[@ThatsMeOnOrange]

I'm covering this topic in my latest video, check it out :)

[@willienelson5817]

7a boulder is miles harder

[@rolandjung8297]

i watched the video and found it completly irrelevant to my climb , my Life has nothing to do with any of these statistics

[@kid5Media]

Absolutely depressing to see that line of bolt/quickdraws right next to a perfectly protectable crack. Disgusting, even.