Absolutely incredible! I'm so amazed at everything you do! A walking legend among us! Keep safe and we'll all keep watching the incredible accomplishments on your journey! ✌️ and ❤️ to all!
Yeah really shows how flexibility is just one among so many factors in climbing. However, it takes so little time to maintain a base level of flexibility; compared to other areas of climbing it's definitely a good area to invest in for the average climber. Also on possible caveat: Stefano being a much shorter climber than Adam Ondra for instance, might impact the need for universal flexibility a bit as well.
So flexibility just seems to be a little addon if you want to climb really well. Strength ist nearly everything. Imagine a climber with the strength of Stefano and the flexibility of Adam. That would be the ultimate climbing machine!
@@LatticeTraining unfortunately some of us suffer with hypermobility (so have not problem with hands flat on floor or even holding hands behind the back) Even with lost of mobility due to a broken elbow my arm still goes past 180 :(
@@LatticeTraining but surely this test has perfectly illustrated the difference between causal vs correlated (or necessary/sufficient), clearly high level flexibility is superfluous...😉😂
@@dannym8015 I'd have to disagree flexibility is superfluous. However there are many workarounds. Like having incredible strength and fitness and specialising hardest ascents to steep board-style climbing terrain. Climbing is a fantastic sport because even at the very top, we still see hugely different assets and climbing styles helping climbers reach their full potential. It's partly about choosing to focus on what comes naturally but also what you enjoy training and climbing on.
If he ever manages to send both a V17 boulder and 9C route within a relatively small timeframe I feel like that would have to put him in the running for best all-around climber in history.
Thanks for including the science bits. As an endurance athlete and coach, I'm familiar with Critical Power and W', but I had not seen the model applied to strength based performance/exercise. It's incredible that Stefano doesn't just produce more force than basically anyone, but that after 4 minutes of repeats, that's still the case.
Wow, so insightful. The distinction between critical force and max strength really explains Stefano's unique climbing ability on hard endurance problems.
Love what Lattice is doing for the climbing community I really think we're going to see the sport taken to the next level over the next 20 years. Population size of the sport is exploding, so it'll be more and more likely to see genetic freaks pushing their limits Add the shift we're starting to see towards applying exercise science to optimize training and recovery and who knows where the sport will be in just a few more years
Pumped you got him on the show! What a cool guy! Is it just me or does anyone else wish for a massive training montage from these pros not just the climbing?! 🎉
Cool video! I recently did the remote assessment myself with my boyfriend. Cool to see how Stefano did on these tests. Would loovee to see a female professional climber do this test on your channel, to see the difference! 🤩
How high a climber can lift their foot and get their weight over it might also be a relevant/predictive test. I'm struggling to think of a climbing situation where pike flexibility is relevant.
I’m sure there’d be some athletic, scientific reasons behind this but I suspect a big part would actually be psychological. Some people (not to say he’s weak by any means but Pete Whittaker immediately comes to mind) have an insane ability to push themselves beyond what *should* be possible base on specific physical measurements.
I climb at 6b+/6c grade (not high at all) but my finger strenght on the hangboard is wack as hell. I manage to hang 15/20 sec on the biggest holds and thats it lmao
Interesting that Stephano’s critical force is virtually off the charts but in contrast his “aerobic” strength limit is relatively low for his grade. I wonder if this could turn out to be an issue on Silence or DNA as these are really pretty long sports climbs at 45m and 50m respectively. Another thing to work on!
As someone who climbs and thinks that my downfall is flexibility, after seeing Stefano stretching I think I can continue to build with my strength still. Just all that dynamic competition style climbs kill me.
It would be great to hear more about where the approximations for the distribution of various strength measures for 9c climbers are coming from, since you obviously didn't have a representative sample. Are these some sort of extrapolations from the lower grades?
I would love to see these tests at my local gyms in the US. I certainly don't have the strength, but my flexibility and abnormally long reach give me the ability work through a lot of challenging routes.
You should avoid having tons of empty space around the charts like at 12:51, it makes the charts very very hard to read! I really enjoyed this one otherwise!
I absolutely love this kind of content! As I am studing to become a climbing coach, this kind of videos makes me feel so psyche and motivated to acomplish my goal and also to train harder! 😂 Thanks very much guys, love your work! ❤
Are you sure the finger strength tests properly isolate forearm muscles? Looks like shoulder and bicep could be limiting factors with a bent elbow, which would make this test height dependent.
@@johnmortslleh2929 That‘s correct, yet notice how I said limiting factors. If your fingers aren‘t the weakest link, other muscles will fail first, leading to a smaller result. This is why the forearm flexors must be properly isolated.
@@johnmortslleh2929 It is more likely that a stronger climber would have stronger fingers, thus making the limiting factor being other things more likely...? I'm not an expert so I can't say what the likelihood of shoulders failing before fingers is at this angle/edge etc. but it seems at least plausible.
@@johnmortslleh2929 All I‘m trying to say is maybe with a straight arm (and hence your skeleton taking the force) you might be able to put more load on the fingers than your biceps is able to generate at an angle (as seen in Tests 1-3)
@@johnmortslleh2929 When you say „regardless of biceps and shoulder“ I‘m not sure that‘s accurate. For instance, one might be able to hang on one hand but unable to do a one-arm pull up. In that case they would get a lower result standing up to keep weights off the floor, forcing their elbow to bend, than if they could straighten it.
for the splits test should you go off the inner leg measurements of the participants as they will all have different leg length to height ratios, rather than their height.
For the touching toes flexibility test, isn't that kind of more a measure of ape index? I can touch palms to floor easily, but it's partially because of my short legs.
This is really interesting. On what data did you base your 9b+/9c evaluation on? It would be fascinating to see Alex Megos do exactly this test. I think he pulls sth. like 135 % of his body weight on a similar edge and is very flexible too... In the end, despite being almost 20% stronger than Stefano he "only" climbed 9b+ as well. Do you think Alex would have weaknesses in the other areas of the test, or is it probably due to completely other factors like mental aspects etc. that he has not climbed 9c/9c+ with that kind of strength values ?
Adam Ondra is obviously still the worlds number 1, but Stephano is really establishing himself as the clear number 2 now. After excalibur he has done like 4/8 9b+s? (please correct me if I'm wrong here), and as far as I know he is by far the closest to repeating Silence as well!
What's the point of measuring distance between his legs during the split test? People of the same height have different leg to torso ratio, isn't it better to measure the vertical distance left to the ground?
I'm curious about your thoughts about why you use overcoming isometrics (i.e. active recruitment pulls) in the max test rather than using yielding isometrics (i.e. maximum hangs), which would be what most people are doing for hangboard training (that is yielding)?
Passive tension as with a yielding isometric is far less susceptible to fatigue and less demonstrative of actual strength since this isn’t muscular contraction. Ideally, would always rather test clients with an overcoming but this has a higher amount of learning to perform well thus often gives low results except with well trained athletes.
@@zacharylaschober Wouldn't you still get accurate results (meaning results that represent everyone being tested, rather the individual) if everyone performed yielding isometrics which is more familiar to the people being tested as a whole? What you're saying about overcoming has a higher learning curve, won't well trained athletes skew the results?
@@davidbecker54 the yielding isometrics are good approximations and simple on equipment for assessment purposes, which means there is definitely value since the majority of athletes know how to hang in place and have access to a hangboard and weights, but would rather the concentric like exercise of overcoming isometrics because this is far more trainable. Plus, the test is less accurate because of this reliance on passive tension, even though this is certainly valid as athlete learning is less of an issue. For both max hangs and especially critical force, overcoming is superior and should become the standard as more climbing gyms acquire more equipment (how many have fancy adjustable led system boards but not a force plate?).
How does MVC measured while actively pulling on a force plate compare to a 20mm no hang deadlift, or added weight dead hang? It seems that climbers score a little lower when doing your force plate test, no?
Good lord his critical force is nasty. And so W’ is the area under the curve but above the threshold. Is it hard to say if he’s deficient anaerobically or just normal anaerobic, and freakish aerobic?
What is the symbol next to the + and - on the graphs? And thank you for the videos I only found them fairly recently and it's fascinating to see the strengths but also weaknesses of some of the greatest climbers I was also wondering if the way you designed the test allowed for scaling into uncharted grades seeing as Stefano seems to have exceeded the expectations for the current highest graded routes
When testing the fingers, are you sure its not the pull up power thats limiting? Looks like he's doing the test with bent arm and not hanging straight.
I'm always so confused by the test where they sit against a wall and raise their arms to test for shoulder mobility. Surely I'm doing something wrong, but I don't get how this is hard? I can easily raise my arms against the wall without feeling any strain.
Seems like climbers are slightly "hunched over" because of the specific muscles used for climbing (it was talked about in one of the video Magnus did with Juji)
I didn't quite understand the explanation of W', what is it measuring which is over 3000% of bodyweight? Maybe someone who understood it better than I did could help me out by explaining it a different way 🙂
W is the area under the curves but above the CF. It's finite energy and is measured in force in kg x time in seconds. His endurance is ridiculous so it makes sense it's 1100%+ his BW. He can pull more than body weight on one attempt and he's making repeated attampts here.
@@josephdanner773 Ah I think I see what W' is, just the integral of (force output - critical force) over the test, right? I'm still surprised to see that Stefano looks to be multiple standard deviations below even a V14 climber, since as you mentioned he has ridiculous endurance (which W' measures one aspect of, though doesn't measure completely) Maybe someone having such a high critical force as Stefano buggers with this test result to give something which is unintuitive/misleading (hence the title)
What makes you say it's not important? We collect a number of different flexibility measures and as an aggregate score it correlates with climbing performance. I agree, some styles its matters much more than others. Stefano's flexibility would highlight a huge area of focus for me as a coach if he wanted to shift climbing focus to competition bouldering or even climbing areas such as Fontainebleau e.g. The Big Island.
@@LatticeTraining he climbs 9b+ and his side splits are narrow af. So I assume for overall climbing performance it cannot be that important. otherwise he would not be able to climb on this level with such a glaring weakness. It would be interesting if there is another flexibility assessment which provide more telling results (hip rotators maybe?) Of course it can be usefull in certain areas or really specific climbing styles or movements, but for overall climbing performance it seems like side splits are not a good assessment tool
@@carinthian_boulder I agree side split is not a great tool on its own. Climbing research has found better measures but these are not as practical when offering a test people can do at home. In combination with other tests it can still be very insightful. Although Stefano is one of the worlds best sport climbers, I don't think his poor flexibility confirms your hypothesis. One of the best things about climbing is that there are many ways to reach high performance. Poor flexibility can be mitigated by world class finger strength, world class fitness etc. all of which Stefano has. That, and the fact Stefano performs best of very steep sport climbs that don't require as much flexibility. So I think it is very plausible that a climber of this level can perform without flexibility, whereas another climbers performing at 9b level may have different attributes. If we had Alex Megos or Adam Ondra, we might be saying "you need to be flexible to climb that hard" instead. But climbing it too nuanced to extrapolate from any one climber, even if they are the best in the word.
@@LatticeTraining I did not say that flexibility is not important. I just thinkt the side split assessment does not make any sense. Stefano did Change and makes huge progress on Silence. Both are very complex routes that need a good portion of flexibility. Also I find your hypothesis that you can compensate poor flexibility with finger strength and other things. This might be true for the average or above average climber. But not for one of the worlds top 10 performers. I honestly believe that you are not able to compensate such weaknesses at this level. The top performers cannot be far apart fitness or finger strength wise. So for me my assumption that the side split test does not provide any conclusion regarding climbing performance seems way more plausible.
@@carinthian_boulder Sorry if I took your point to mean flexibility is not important. It can be frustrating when the message is not received as intended, so apologies if that is the case. If this is only a criticism on the side split flexibility and not other areas of flexibility that is fair observation. I see it all the time where climbers that have poor hip external rotation i.e. open hips, make up for it with internal rotation e.g. drop knees and twisting dominant climbing style. We personally think it is still a useful test for hip function. We test calf, hamstrings and hip adductor flexibility very quickly in this assessment (we have more in depth tests that we did not do with Stefano). Hip adductor flexibility is just one compartmentalised test, like testing a 2RM pull-up. It transfers to no single climbing move but gives a basic indication of capacity. As coaches we find it helpful to have this as part of the larger picture. Poor side split with an athlete that wants to improve open hip and 'frog' positions on the wall is interesting for us. Yes, it still has it's limitations, I'm not here to say it's the gold standard. But we think it's useful as an assessment tool. So we might just have to agree to disagree on this one :)
Besides percentage you better show how many climbers are in tht group because 61%, really? How many 9b+ climbers is there? 51% of 9c climbers? You might have two.
Well he is on a shoulder injury, but this is just proof that max pull strength is really not that important. His endurance is also insane though, on his channel he’s done 40 pull-ups after flashing every Boulder in a gym or something 😅
If it's the same weight relative to your body weight then that's really good. Time to focus more on those weaknesses though since general (ish) strength is not holding you back.
@@Finnspin_unicycles I meant if they want to do a video of a normal climber. Reading back it's not clear 😅 I do understand their business, I just want it for free 🤣
The test showed his weaker side and I believe that with a good flexibility training plan he could fix it and become an even better version of himself. 🙂
What do these guys wear when they actually go outside? I spend a decent chunk of teaching time getting kids to take their jackets off so this type of sneaky propaganda for wearing a puffa inside really gets my goat. Strong dude mind...
🤣 conspiracy that we are sponsored by the puffa jacket industry. This training centre is just an unheated warehouse. So it's basically the same temps as outside. And testing means potentially hours of standing around not doing much activity.
@lattice the first test where you added weight to Stefano, aren’t you just measuring his weight + extra weight? I think the proper way to test it, is screw some old Teva sandals to the floor… tighten Stefano’s feet in it and then let him pull as hard as he can. That way he cannot lift himself up anymore and you measure pure pulling power, not weight.
It’s the same thing, essentially, for as long as you can’t lift yourself with the extra weight off the ground. Then you are measuring how much of that body weight + extra weight you can pull up, but not the full thing (since you can’t pull enough to “float”). That’s why the first test is if he can lift his bodyweight, and then just add any weight that is heavy enough to keep him grounded
@@emberstorm1 I disagree but that’s okay :) Did you ever climb on a rotating treadmill? It’s much easier than climbing the same holds on the same angle, but going up. Or walking “up” on an escalator while standing static to your surroundings is much easier than walking up the same escalator when it’s not moving. Work is defined as force times distance and is a measure of the energy expended in applying a force to move an object. So, the work when climbing on a treadmill is limited to moving your limbs. How that reflects to the Lattice test I am not sure yet, maybe just do a comparison test once with both options 🤷😉
I think the critical force test protocol makes sense and is applicable to climbing, but I also have questions and comments! I can see arguments that the test could over- or under-estimate the critical force if we're using that phrase in a way that is consistent with the use of the critical power concept in other sports (and the explanation seems to imply that). I suspect the protocol is sort of a hybrid of a Wingate test and a critical power protocol, with the interesting addition of a recovery element. Because the initial part of the test involves maximal efforts with only minimal recovery, we should expect acidosis at well above the level of the lactate threshold to occur fairly early in the test. This acidosis will then inhibit oxidative phosphorylation. Therefore, the observed plateau power could be below the true critical power of the athlete. (I suspect this one will be true... the measured critical power here represents what the athlete can fall back on after a series of limit moves, rather than what they can maintain on a sustained endurance route if they avoid acidosis pretty much altogether.) Alternatively, we might note that in well-trained athletes performing a four minute effort, ~15% of the energy expenditure comes from anaerobic sources. Therefore we could suspect the critical force is overestimated as it could include a substantial anaerobic contribution. (I suspect this will be less relevant given the extent of the acidosis that will be achieved initially.) Either way, as I'm sure you know, in cyclists and runners we typically measure critical power using several evenly paced efforts of different lengths, and include efforts of at least 10 minutes, sometimes more. This isn't to say this protocol isn't interesting! And it may also be more relevant for most climbers than a true critical power measurement, it's just I'm not sure if the physiology of it has been totally hashed out. The role of the 3s rests is especially vexing to take into account. Have you looked at a continuous protocol without the rests? Do you think there would be a relatively straightforward transfer function between the protocol with and without rests? This might actually be an interesting point of variability between individuals... the relative slope of the drop in power with and without short rests would provide a way to measure rapid recovery. Would love to hear your thoughts.
I have the flexibility of a 9C prodigy! jokes aside, the strength and especially the endurance is literally beyond my comprehension. no idea how that dude is this fatigue resistant at this output. Absolute Legend
