Adam Ondra & Alex Honnold Climbing Competition Deep Dive || Climbing Gold Podcast 

I'm not saying always, but often the insights into how professional's train across sports shows nothing more than the current gimmick they may or may not be trying at that point in time and not the things that got them to that point (plenty of examples but I don't know of any empirical studies).

I can promise you that that is just a gimmick and that whole vid is not a representation of her training routine at all. Plenty of national teams have visited the Slovenians, and have also seen how Janja trains. It has changed routines but mostly in the sense that a lot of the women try to get stronger now and climb mostly on spray walls too. Janja is a complete climber, but it's certainly not some elusive soft skills that make her better. The one thing where is she massively outperforms everybody else isn't dynamic moves, coordination, tactics, not even consistency - she's among the best in all of those - but she's also just straight up stronger than all the other women. It's so obvious in every competition how she easily does campus moves that the others struggle on, how easily she holds slopers, and how she can crimp harder in worse positions.

She mentions in that video that's only a very small part of her training, but it's more interesting for the video so they devote a lot of time to it in the video.

It is like that too in climbing

People say that it comes down to the fact that she lacks power to jump up to the start holds. However, I would like to see them find someone her height who they think has power and see if they can jump up to those starting positions. Maybe the setters do test them with different height female climbers before the competition. She showed in Austria that she can make jump moves in the lead, but generally boulder problems require more power to complete some moves.

@@daniellelucero9839 she didn't use the starthold for her foot. Another competitor was only 2 cm taller and they made it fine

@@colemantrebor6574Mao didn’t use the start foothold to jump she reached it easily, and the 3cm of extra height plus her having a positive ape index compared to Ai’s 0 apr index actually makes a huge difference.

yeah and the announcer trying to play it off, like its completely fair for the entire competition, no height advantage on this one!

Any female boulderer who works on their weaknesses could have made that jump easily. Sorry, but Ai definitely knows that weighing below 40 kgs is a huge advantage for her. She could train to become more muscular and explosive like the other women, but why would she? She's doing fine the way she is. Doesn't make the boulder unfair though.

Adam ltrly addressed this question if you watch the whole video.

You're missing the point..

Janja is couple levels above the rest while mens level is very close it the top.

Janja is a league of her own as he says in the vid. She easily as good at any style as the other women and in addition she's just straight up stronger and significantly more powerful.

like I said to anothe guy above Janja (like Adam) has no competion in her country so she gets to participate in all competitions while a french or japanese or us female climber can always be put of international competitions by similar level competitor from their countries because they had a bad day/they had bad luck at national qualifiers or competition. How many females from Japan/france were constantly present in the last 5 years ? This gives Janja an advantage because she has a 5 year +experience while others gets replaced after 1-2 years. If Ai Mori was born in Greece and was able to compete for 10 year in a row she will always be on top, next to Janja( also if she was jut a big taller would have helped a lot)

Absolutely agree - lost so much respect after hearing this.

Well, when someone is so much better than the others, this person will easily win more often than not, this is what happens with Janja. However there is sometimes this element of randomness not only in styles but in critical boulders; There are some comps where 3 of 4 boulders are way too easy and most can flash them (or the other way around, that most boulders are way too hard and nobody are able to top them) and suddenly everything revolves around the performance on a single boulder, and sort of randomizes more the result.

Absolutely agree

I think there's definitely some validity in what Adam is saying. A lot of these top WC boulderers on the mens side at least are relatively within the margins in terms of overall skill, and a lot of it will come down to the types of boulders that are set. If they set 2 power blocks, a delicate slab, and a crack climb at the olympics Adam would probably be on the podium. If they set 4 coordination boulders he almost certainly won't make an appearance. You give yourself the best shot by being well rounded, but that strategy isn't full proof if the boulders play to the strengths of a less well rounded competitor. Adam would be the first to admit he's not as well rounded as a lot of other competitors (glaring weakness in some styles of coordination), so to him a victory feels random.

It just seems a fact. Happens sometimes, and seems to happen especially in the women's fields. If you're into downhill mountainbiking Rachel Atherton comes to mind. Serena Williams, Steffi Graf and Billie Jean King in tennis. Lindsey Vonn in skiing.

Obviously he's generalizing. Tomoa is considered one of the best and he didn't even make finals in Innsbruck, Toby didn't even make podium. For the last 5 years, Janja not making top 2 in any boulder or lead comp has been practically unimaginable, that's why Adam said she's in a league in her own, an outlier. Except for her, bouldering has much more "random" results compared to lead. Clearly some are better in some ways than others but modern bouldering makes results much less predictable.

He's not belittling, he literally said that he thinks the new generation brings so many cool new strong climbers and it's unlikely he can keep up with them in the long run (toby, sorata). What he is saying is that the bouldering results are more random because of the style aspect. He also explained why. That if person A tops Boulder 1 easily and person B tops it after 16 tries, they still both topped it, so on paper they are the same. Even though A is clearly better than B. If then person A and B get a deciding boulder in favor of the style of A, then A wins. If they get a deciding boulder that suits B more then B wins. It's pretty random in that sense. In lead it's less so, because it's not so much about style. Basically everyone in the finals can do every move, but it's about route reading, efficiency and endurance to decide who is making it to the top. (Well I guess except the Women's Lead Innsbruck from last weekend with the dyno lol). But generally it's decided about who is the fittest and not who happens to be best at style X of a boulder. Has nothing to do with belittling

That's not really what he said. He said that many of the people that can make to the semi finals are so close in bouldering levels that it has more randomness into who will make to the finals and win it. (For men) Which i found it to be true after watching all the world cup comps.

@@taghazog While in general that is true. I think Sorato is clearly on another level. Not quite Janja levels of dominance but getting there, give him a couple of years.

@@connorsteele1917 yeah but just bc they don’t make podium doesn’t mean they are not consistently making finals. For the most part I would say there are 4-5 guys that u generally see in finals if they participate. Yes that’s true sometimes they might not always make it but I wouldn’t say it’s random. It’s not like the same guys make lead finals every single time as well. Ondra is considered one of the best lead but doesn’t win every lead or even podium for that matter. The most consistent lead is prob Schubert. It’s def belittling one’s efforts if the new gen r training so hard on bouldering to be well rounded ( power , slab , endurance, dynamic) it’s like a standardized test(sat, act etc) - we know the 4 categories that is tested but don’t know the exact questions - I don’t consider that random. If you train and study hard u will get good consistent results as evident by the sarato, Toby , etc.

@@sploo13being an asshole to people for having an opinion makes me think you must set the standard for all climbers. Right or wrong they can have an opinion. Maybe try to show a little humility or expressing yourself a little better.

Climbing has a built-in weight class, in that everyone will maximise their power to weight ratio. I could also very see this leading to climbing being a sport full of eating disorders and people trying to weight as little as possible. Height classes may be more interesting, if you're looking to include different body shapes.

I think ur right :D Eating disorders are already a problem. Having higher weight classes, where u can win with higher weight, might be beneficial

U = mgh :if 2 athletes reach the top the athlete that weighs more has more gravitational potential energy. Physics differentiates. Why have we concluded we need weight classes for say weightlifting… Why do setters have to consider athletes height and skills whilst setting for finals… we need a way to maximize each athlete’s skill set… weight classes might be the best way to do this

Bro chill out I guess it's just his opinion and his point of view, we don't need to take it for granted just because he said it. And I'm a big fan of him.