Higher Grades VS Difficulty Increase in Climbing

[@nicholasmarshall5775]

Is it not that whilst grades increase linearly, our ability to adapt increases logarithmically? Then the "perceived" increase in grade is exponential

[@ironman4life89]

Bingo 👌

[@PetrFlosman]

yes! The same way we sense weight of things, sound intensity or light intensity logarithmically

[@unknownboulder1205]

makes perfect sense

[@ronmckay3322]

I've thought it is more of a logistic model. Either way, a grades vs time model that was logarithmic or logistic would seem to have an "inverse" model that was exponential, thus leading to the perception that grades increase exponentially (in fact, the time between grades probably does). Here is a graph for a logarithmic model: www.desmos.com/calculator/zcjnw6frq8 There are 3 parameters you can change: starting grade, "improvement factor", and max grade.

[@Glenburrows]

fair enough, good explanation

[@tomh5966]

9a on the way soon then

[@ПолинаКохно-г5с]

Trust me, your vocabulary is great =) Your pronunciation is cleaner than most native english speakers. Hello from Moscow by the way :3

[@ManitheMonkey]

Happy to hear that! Love hearing from the Russian audience :D Greatings from Austria!

[@DanielDavies-StellularNebulla]

Completely agree!

[@babsds0]

There is an exponential increase in difficulty to see any significant physical progress as the grades get higher. The difficulty between the routes themselves increases on a linear scale.

[@TheDutchPhysicist]

the difficulty is linear but our increase in performance (muscle, technique etc) goes logarithmically, resulting in an experience of exponentiality. Same is true for weigthlifting, weight increases linearly of course but getting gains at the higher weight is so much harder because increase in muscles and strength is logarithmically.

[@lasombreo2]

I think it’s a bit misleading, the climbs are getting proportionally harder each grade up but how difficult it is to get better to complete them is not linear anymore and this applies to other sports as well. The best example is how the grades developed over the years. It only took 7 years to get from 8b to 9a, but than it took 17 years to see first ascent of 9b and than another 9 for 9c (not confirmed yet though).

[@babsds0]

Yeah, exactly what I was thinking.

[@michael1]

Yeah, but since the only purpose of difficulty is the idea of progression - it's nonlinear isn't it? I mean if I start bouldering and day 1 I climb vb and v0, and within a week or 2 of going 3 times a week I'm climbing v1 and then in the first couple of months I send my first v2 - well my progression is nonlinear and thus the difficulty of climbing grades is nonlinear. Specifically too I'd suggest that if you get into the start of what people call 'intermediate' grades, depending on your initial fitness, how well you're taught - whether you have someone helping you or are trying to figure it out yourself / watching videos etc, in a few weeks or months, well you're very likely to hit a point where 6-10 hours climbing a week isn't enough and you need to spend some time training as well if you want to send higher grades. Whatever point that is, you've likely extended the time between grades by another factor - and it's very likely many of us reach a limit and make little or no progression from there to higher grades. So how can grades be linear? If it were linear and I climbed, say v0 my first climbing session and v1 on the second, well that would mean I'd be climbing v9 in a couple of weeks. There really is no objective measure of difficulty outside of either the setter(s) and the climber(s) for there to be a way of saying "well actually climbers progress in a nonlinear fashion but the difficulty increases linearly" - it's all very subjective and the entire idea of a grade is how difficult it is for someone to climb it - and that someone is going to take longer to progress between grades as the grades get higher - for pretty much everyone. Beginners progress through the earlier grades faster when there's more low hanging fruit of progression and it's significantly easier to improve fitness and technique. Intermediates slow down and, at the top end, well only a tiny fraction of climbers will climb for long enough and train hard enough and, yes, things like genetics will matter, to climb at the very top level - but there's no one with such good genetics that progressing was linear for them. Unless they're a monkey or a spider.

[@shoeonhead]

Handy tips from Mani. HANDY MANI!!

[@masonluedke9712]

Love your videos! Keep up the frequent uploads plz

[@MusicScala]

I think it comes from the fact that most climbers have a really quick progression until the 6C climbing grade in the first month's. Then it takes a bit more time to progress from 6c to 7a in comparison to the time needed for 6b-6c etc. But then the difficulty rises linearly. So it's more of an inversed exponential growth at the beginning which flattens of once the "beginner gains" stop

[@charmetroldendk]

I agree! One of the terms has to be linear and the other exponential. Our adaption to a linear difficulty rises exponentially, or you could say the difficulty raises exponentially and we adapt linearly. This must be the case since one usually climbs the grade ladder very quick in the beginning and then slows dramatically. How quickly you gain grades may be of inverse exp of your max grade.

[@botagas199]

Agree. Took me few months to get to 6c from a complete begining and i am still stuck on it. Feels like i need more core and finger strengh.

[@ManitheMonkey]

good point!

[@TheValinov]

6C in the first months? i dont know what kind of children routes are made at your gym. but i hardly made it to that grade, after over 3 years of hard training :'D have i reached my limit yet?

[@jsl2phdx]

@@TheValinov gym grades are not accurate anyways...and outside is a different game I think. The hardest I climbed outside is 7c but it was my style and it stil happens that an oldschool hard graded 6c is really hard for me too :)

[@GrinchSMB]

1:40 epic name for a climb :D

[@terraflow__bryanburdo4547]

How it works for me right now, after 42 years of climbing (so at a plateau with slight improvement each season still): 7b- onsight (so less than one hour) 7c-one day work 8a-a few weeks 8b- one full season 8b+- several full seasons (haven't completed yet after two seasons)

[@kylem_climbs9988]

Not to sound like a youthful comp climber or anything, but the whole "genetic set point" thing based on starting age and genetics is kind of just bs. There are many more things that will determine how strong you will be such as fitness level, frequency of climbing, and quality of training. From what I have seen (with bouldering) is that most people start out comfortably and quickly progress to V4/5 easily with little training. Only those who push themselves past this reach into the next grade. There are few climbers at my gym who can climb V10, and if climbing difficulty was linear than everyone should be getting stronger and climbing the next grade as soon as it took them to get the last grade. However, even with pros, we can see that projecting a new grade level may take years of time, effort, and training. All of this new time spent on achieving a new difficulty added on to the past years of climbing suggest an exponential increase. Also, by using a linear difficulty system, a V8 should be twice as hard as a V4. However, many people would agree that V8 is much much harder than V4 and demands more than twice the amount of skills to pull off.

[@BomberBeta]

Very good points. Great video as always!

[@ChrisHaileyTrainHardDiveEasy]

Nice episode Mani, always quality and helpful content :-)

[@LFSJack]

you didn´t listen - its an epicsode ;)

[@ChrisHaileyTrainHardDiveEasy]

@@LFSJack damn auto correct... I meant epicsode hahaha well played ;-)

[@LFSJack]

@@ChrisHaileyTrainHardDiveEasy i thought so ^^

[@fxc5313]

Superb video!

[@adriensanz2354]

I disagree with you on this one Mani : in my opignion every time you reach a certain grade, the grade bellow (n-1) feels easy while the grade above (n+1) feels impossible. Speak to that same climber again 2years later and both grades are easy while grade n+5 feels impossible. You give too much value to genetics, it certainly has importance but I doubt it has as much importance as you want it to have. In my opigion, willingness and structured healthy training weight way more than that.

[@thenayancat8802]

lol, so presumably you went from 4a to 5a as quickly as you went from 7a to 8a? If not, it's not linear

[@yevgeniyshevchenko9120]

Difficulty increases linear. It's kind in bench press from 20 to 30kg the same interval from 100 to 110kg. But getting from 20 to 30 it's one train from 100 to 110 might need several months or even more.

[@andersonboy620]

Quite interesting analysis man, great job!

[@behard8921]

Your opinion on that matter totally makes sense to me and I must admit that I see things differently now. Will try to keep your arguments in mind next time. Thank you and climb well

[@DanielDavies-StellularNebulla]

Oooh I love when I find videos of this type on KZbin! And it's by Mani so it's even better!

[@floriancalura1380]

Danke für die coolen Videos! Lebe in Österreich ;) und habe vor 2 Wochen wegen einem Video von dir und eines von Magnus Midtbo angefangen bouldern zu gehen. Habe dank deinen Tipps viel schneller progressieren können und habe nun 6c+ redpointen können :) Arbeite gerade an meiner ersten 7a Route, aber habe das Gefühl meine Fingerstärke reicht gerade mal für 1-2 gute Versuche und wollte fragen, ob es eine gute Idee wäre nun mit Hangboards zu trainieren, da ich gehört habe am Anfang sollte man davon die Finger lassen (wortwörtlich haha) LG & Danke falls ich eine Antwort erhalte!

[@jacobscharfman2068]

I am curious as to your thoughts as to if this translates to the Font scale as well?

[@sentfromdaniel]

I get what you’re saying. I just need to change my technique a lot if I’m going to jump from 5.9/5.10’s to 5.11c and 12’s by end of next summer. Is this possible in such a short time period for someone like me that’s been climbing since the spring?

[@christianschumy8199]

thanks again man for this perfect video! As i am pretty sure that you will send your first 9a in the near future i would like to ask you if you could make another video about your Beastmaker 2000, as you did in the past. Specially i would be interested in some stuff about the 45° slopers and if you can feel a difference to prior days. For me the 45° sloper is far beyond reach but i also did not see anyone who could hang on it in reality except some (two?) guys in KZbin. All the best, stay healthy and keep on crushing!

[@pilorom]

Another great epicsode...always interesting to hear your insights, greetings from Brasil

[@romanfusser874]

Nice video! Would be interesting to quantify your thoughts. E.g. relative finger strength per max grade and see if the trend is actually linear. And especially at which gradient... Probably the guys from lattice have that data available.

[@НиколайН.Косовский]

I think the numbers of climbers that can climb some categories drops exponentially.

[@jeanf6295]

What does it mean to have an exponential or linear measure for "difficulty", the logarithm of such a difficulty can still be interpreted as a difficulty, and it increases linearly with grading. One way of seeing things is to see how a sequence of boulder problems of different grades is graded, and it seems to me that the number of 5a you need to chain to get to a 6a, 7a, 8a or 9a does not follow a nice linear law. What you describe can be explained by the difference in sensitivity between individuals due to training and other factors, "grade = exp(d/d0)" is almost equal to "grade =1+d/d0" when "d/d0" is small, training just makes the reference difficulty "d0" bigger.

[@el3xg373]

I feel like you've been mentioning "genetic" factors a bit too much. Sure there's a difference, but most climbers, especially those who are not full professionals, never even come close to their theoretical max lvl training/strength/conditioning wise.

[@jacobpenner1923]

I agree with you, but I think he means that genetics affect your climbing ability from the time you first start all the way up to your theoretical max. I've definitely seen that in the climbers I come across, we all know those new climbers that are crushing harder than experienced climbers just based on their given strength, weight, athleticism...

[@TheValinov]

of course most people can't reach their max because you would need to change your whole life for climbing - and then *surprise* you will be a professional. it's like this chicken/egg logic. the funny part is, when you think about it, what is the theoretical limit? is it what is the actual hardest route? the hardest route of the future? what let you think that in some generations maybe some climbing kids from a whole family of climbers wont have the gens to reach stuff that seems impossible nowadays? will it end when willpower strikes physical laws or before?

[@ПолинаКохно-г5с]

​@@TheValinov Theoretical limit heavily depends on genetics + age + coach training program, i believe. Just take a look on young female figure skaters from Russia. Kostornaya, Sherbakova, Trusova. At the age of 15/16 they are performing 4-loop jumps. This is an incredibly difficult element not every male skater can do! And all this because of 3 parts: 1) genius coaching from Eteri Tutberidze. 2) young age, when body have extra powers and recover abilities 3) unique genetic of athelets And to be honest, let's think about the price these little girls must pay for victories. Do you remember Yulia Lipnitskaya? She is the youngest women figure skater to win a gold medal at the Olympics. She was 15, so small and cute kid. Few years after she retired, too exhausted from psychological pressure and anorexia. We speak in Russia ''there are no irreplaceable people''. And this is a big question of morality....To reach a gold medal coaches choose the most talented children and take away their childhood....

[@TheValinov]

@@ПолинаКохно-г5с that is not a theoretical limit. just a border someone set, which may or may not will be broken in the future. for me, when i startet bouldering i wanted to get the blue problems in my gym done. it was my theoretical limit. now i crush 2 colors higher and see that there is still so much more to get. i possible never want to go through the struggle to get the last color in my gym, after all i tried to get this far, but who knows. i'm sure i will still get better with time, but i may never reach my theoretical limit, but my physical i reached and overcome quite often so far. until i lose interest in climbing, i can't realy see a limit. *edit: or maybe tell me, what is your opinion about a theoretical limit for a 26 year old, 96kg heavy unsporty student.

[@ПолинаКохно-г5с]

​@@TheValinov I have no idea)) I am not a professional athlete or a doctor. I can only say that 96 kilos considered heavy in climbing. I am 23, heigh 170cm and 47 kg weight. Level = beginner (3-4 months). Currently at 6a+ lvl Weight matters. The lighter you are - the stronger your grip!=)

[@Paul-es5tz]

Yeah you’re right and also, linear doesn’t mean proportionality, therefore the incline of the linear function depends on everyone: their genetics and how they train etc. Sorry for the bad vocabulary I still struggle with English

[@rara58524]

The difficulty is just sequential/linear - each grade is just "the next distinctly more difficult type of climb". But our own development in time is based on diminishing returns (or is logarithmic in time). That's why to reach each next level of difficulty requires exponential amounts of time. That is true not just on a personal level, but kinda in a way historically too as it becomes more and more difficult for humans to find ways to significantly improve their styles of climbing. So it might be that new grades take more and more years to establish, which also contributes to the feeling that the grades themselves get exponentially more difficult, but it's really that the rate of our own development is logarithmic. (and then again, there are the Adam Ondras that break even that trend xD and just rush through a couple of completely new grades) @Sebastiaan van Rijk gives really good example bellow with weightlifting. I can also add to that the reducing of seconds in the 100m sprint world record (or personal best results). Shaving off seconds becomes harder and harder, even though the seconds themselves are the same metric. It's similar with most measured activities where a progression can be noted in time. That's why the term "diminishing returns" is so pervasive in so many other areas of human activity and not just in economy where it originates from. Another example is weight loss - each next 10kg you lose becomes harder and harder, and as you get slimmer, even losing 1kg becomes a huge effort.

[@dannygrout92]

Good video but I think you're missing probably the most important factor in what makes people climb a particular grade. That would be environment and peer group. If you revolve in circles of people that climb "hard" you will naturally be pulled up to their level quicker than if you tried to make that level on your own. Every Jerry needs a Ben.

[@charlottenordset3180]

I love your channel, you are so good at this kind of analytical and scientific approach to all things climbing. May I ask what your day job or education is? You seem to have a high understanding of and interest for math and science; do you know differential equations?

[@ManitheMonkey]

I went to a technical school before I studied biology. Yes I know differential equations (:

[@cshanek]

Echoing Musicscala's reply ... I assume most climbers believe that an increase in grade represents an exponential increase in difficulty is because they feel, right or wrong, that the amount climbing and training time needed to reach the next grade is always more than it was to reach the previous grade. This is especially true during climbing plateaus that require additions or modifications to training and diet.

[@behard8921]

Hi Mani, I love your videos, always objective and calm. Also, even if the sound is clear my feeling is that’s it’s always a bit low comparing to other videos. Am i the only one ? La bise from France 🤙

[@WyomingMtnMan]

I agree that the grades increase linearly. I believe the "exponential" part is more related to the individual training effort required to climb the next grade. Beginner climbers progress quickly because they are learning basic movement skills and their bodies naturally strengthen through just climbing. Once movement skills are mastered (along with adequate level of strength), progressing beyond this grade requires dedicated training to gain the strength and endurance required to climb the harder grades. Eric Horst also believes that people have genetic set points (actually genetic limits) and has a bell curve distribution demonstrating this concept.

[@nikcezar2445]

Evry time i go climbing i challange myself to fininh the project that i start and i ussualy takes 3 days o climbibg for on project ( right now i started 7a+and did half i think it wont take more then 3 more days cuz i will buy some god shoes cuz rn i am climbing with 15 $ shoes and is geting kinfa hard )

[@abclimbing]

How do you define genetic setpoint then? The grade you can reach by just climbing within 10 years?

[@fmazerolol]

Honestly, I feel there is a flaw in his interpretation of difficulty. Difficulty is exponential, because it becomes increasingly harder to improve, it has nothing to do with physical (including not just how strong but also how you handle your weight, and so on) demands to climb it. just because you didn't feel a plato doesn't mean it's linear until you hit your "genetic setpoint". The physics aspect of grades is probably not linear either, because routes are graded by the difficulty feel each has, so for example a very low grade might be a lot more physically demanding than the previous grade, but since they are both very physically undemanding as is, difficulty wise they both feel almost equal, meaning they're almost same difficulty, but one is much more "physically" demanding than the other(despite it being hard to discern said difference thus being placed at similar grades). Dunno if my explanation makes any sense in words.

[@varutchk]

great quality vdo

[@christophh9477]

You always progress faster when starting something new then when you are approaching your limit so getting from 6a to 6c will be faster then 7a to 7c and 8a to 8c will take so much longer with alot more effort. The effort needed to progress is definatly exponential. But concerning grades I would actually say if anything its reverse exponential. When 6c+ was my max, 6a was a piece of cake, easy flash every time and 6b I could flash at least 9 out of 10 times. Now my max is 7c+ and I can usually flash a 7a 50% of the time and 7b is still hard and only seldom can I get a flash and sometimes it takes a couple of sessions to send. Ondra climbs 9c and while he has flashed 9a its certainly not a piece of cake for him and he certainly cant flash all 9a's and you can see he has to put a lot of effort in. If anything the difference is smaller at higher grades but that small bit of difference takes so much more effort to reach then at lower grades.

[@paul-emilefrancois3731]

I think the difficulty increase linearly but the effort you need to passe from your current grade to the nexts grades increase exponentially

[@giovannalani9108]

Interesting take on the subject. Sometime ago someone posted on Reddit (either under r/climbing or r/climbharder) a chart climbing grade/time to achieve the grade (x-axis/y-axis) which they constructed out of the 8anu score card of some pro climbers. Guess what? It was pretty much linear and it included high grades too (from mid 8 all the way to 9c). I will post it below in case I find it again.

[@zzpumpking8371]

Very epicsode

[@rohan1_]

TLDR; everyone has a soft plateau of ability determined by individual variation. The additional effort and energy needed to overcome this plateau makes grade difficulty feel like it increases exponentially.

[@nyu3492]

My setpoint seems to be at 6b 😢😢😢I started climbing way too late.

[@JohnLee-me3vg]

stop feeling sorry for yourself and train harder.

[@Jagknorr]

N Yu i started climbing at 30. I feel about as strong as ive ever felt, even when i was way younger, which is fantastic! But yeah, i too wish i knew about bouldering when i was younger.

[@JosDehaes]

Started climbing at 34, now almost 47 and did 7c. Pretty sure you can get past 6b. There's probably something very obvious missing in your training. Everybody can climb 7a, I'd say even 8a with enough motivation and smart training. Get a coach.

[@joandomenech6708]

I think the genetics limitiation is shit I don't many climber got to his genetical limit. There is always something to improve and plateaus can be perfectly be surpased.

[@andreyvlasenko389]

agree

[@kimediamond]

Interesting, I seemed to remember that you were in favour of the exponential system in earlier videos but I might be mistaken. This will always be controversial when it comes to the highest grades. A perfect example is the debate between Ondra and Pirmin Bertle: lizardclimbing.com/2018/02/09/save-our-scale-some-good-reasons-to-refuse-adams-downgrading-proposal-of-my-fa-from-2015-meiose-9b-in-charmey/

[@clayton6095]

hey mani, modern parallel computing does not increase linearly, there is overhead for creating and joining threads. So the benefit of adding new threads get smaller as you add more "parallelism" to your program.

[@AMM1998]

I think the exponential difficulty increase is just a good theory to believe when you get shut down by your project lol which is why it is so popular

[@andrew8445]

Sooooo you claim it’s linear yet actually claim that it’s exponential, just different exponential graph for every different person, invalidating yourself. People are talking about their personal difficulty grade, which you show and depict as exponential. Regardless of the theoretical difficulty of a route, if everyone has a point where it’s gets increasingly difficulty, climbing is exponential, lmao. You even had exponential graphs the entire time.

[@unknownboulder1205]

May it be a kinesiological matter of which one s max grade can be reached? I often see this in children that tend to read sequences faster and more efficiently. They do have that body awareness that comes from their background such as how often they spend time in the park or in front of their computers. There was this thing among my generation that we tend to know that people from rural areas would progress faster in sports than the kids from the small cities. Having spent lots of time outdoors, some of them doing various physical chores they had a head start compared to city kids. I think genetic predisposition is indeed true but it is rather not detrimental if we speak about climbers that do not exceed the higher ends of climbing grades. IMO the main reason why people feel increasing difficulty differently is because of their ”body intelligence” which can easily be ”built” in our first stages of life. Some do have a higher body intelligence cause of their background, others, that start later in life tend to fall off very far from their genetic potential due to the lack of continuous adaptation to moves and sport specific demands. I personally think that our kinesiology is more important than genetics, and those first 16 years of life can make the difference in one/s full potential sport specific abilities. Great to see your new video on the topic :D

[@ManitheMonkey]

Thanks for the interesting input, having worked more with kids in recent times I can definitely confirm your observations.