Not sure if this is necessary true, but there tends to be more inconsistencies in the women's setting (whether it's reachy moves or inconsistent difficulty between comps). I think that has to do with the fact that there are practically no women on route setting teams. I'd love to watch these pros compete on boulders made by women for women and see if that makes a difference!
Interesting discussion, thanks for bringing it up. I fully acknowledge-as has been pointed out multiple times in this comment section-that a lot of boulders tend to favour smaller climbers. But it's usually more subtle and allows for progression and for ways to adapt to the move, whereas in this case you're barely giving the competitor the chance to try, which is where the problem truly lies. It seems like people have taken to dunking on Brooke as a way to justify the setting, but Camilla Moroni has consistently proven to be one of the best dynamic boulderers in the circuit and she failed the same as Brooke did. So that's worth taking into account. Personally I don't think it's too hard to make a dyno like this accessible (but still hard) to different height levels. As a taller-ish climber a lot of the time if there's a right foot and a higher left foot, I would have to only use the right foot/pogo the left foot as the higher foot would be too close to my hands and make me too cramped on the move. Same if you provide two right hand holds with one closer to the left hold but smaller, this would put me in a position that pushes my hips away from the wall and make it hard, I think you can set dynos like that to accomodate different heights. Notably here, the right hand hold was a flat volume that allowed for as much adjustment as you want, so Staja was able to grab it really high to not be cramped, simply having a normal hold that forces the hand lower would've made it much harder for her. Similarly having the volume for the feet be slanted could achieve the same I think. I do agree with Caleb Perez that overall I would like to see more women setters, the other end of the spectrum has also often been true that a hold the setters thought would be hard ends up super easy for the women.
I judged a comp and was in charge of a slab boulder. Brooke flashed it, turned out to be a v12. I couldnt even start it. Shes a goddess. All of the competitors were, especially puccio.
This "don't skip leg day" argument is lazy and dismissive. I think my problem with this type of setting is the fact that it serves no purpose. There are 100s of ways to set jumps that are equitable and speaking as a route setter it took no skill to set this move. The single launch foot was particularly frustrating. Progressive RFD is a great way to even the playing field a little. I agree that there is never going to be a jump that feels like the exact same difficulty for a diversely heighted range of athletes, however that is not an excuse to slam the door this hard in the face of smaller competitors.
100%. To bring this down to the punter level - I've been doing and coaching parkour for 14 years, and bouldering on and off for about 8, though never more often than once a week until recently where I've started to invest more in bouldering. I climb v5, have a lot of leg strength from jumping and flipping, but regularly find dynos in my local gyms where I can't reach because I'm short. It's so tedious
Can we also acknowledge that Brooke is also a negative ape index. She does train power because she is short with no positive ape index, so she needs to make up for that in other areas. To say she needs to train more leg power, what a bad assumption to make that she isn’t.
I generally agree that moves that are a bit binary (either you crush it or fail at it given the time limit) are not very interesting. That said, it's always the same thing with tall climbers: cruising a jump is impressive and memorable but no one ever talk about the additional force they need to generate to be able to fit and get out of small box/shouldery/compression moves, basically bent arms and legs on hard moves. If brook has a small box limit move, stasha just won't be able to do it at all. Unless, like you said, there are alternative ways to do the move, which doesn't seem that common (I wish it was! it would mimick outside bouldering more but then you multiply the unintended consequences / crazy beta breaks as well) I'd say the rest of the boulders were more set with the 158/162cm tall girls in mind, in that regard.
I’d say it’s far less common to have a ‘small box’ move without any other options. It’s definitely much harder to set this than it is to create a big dyno like this one at the start of a boulders. Even if they did create something where the only method favoured the short, surely this is also not ideal? The only way it would be a fair test of the competitors would be to have one boulder like this, one boulder that’s easier for the short and some other boulders that aren’t based so much on morphology. Surely it’s better to at least ensure all boulders can be climbed by people of all sizes and try to test the skill, strength, flexibility etc rather than choosing boulders that reward certain morphology? Definitely seems both less fair and less interesting to have boulders where who does well is pre decided by the climbers morphology
My only niggle would be that a tall person in a small box it's usually only a change of degree of difficulty while performing the same move vs a short person in a tall box the move itself is a completely different move. Sometimes that means it just isn't possible for the shorter climber, you can't pull harder if you can't touch the hold. Agreed that it's very difficult, maybe impossible, to accommodate all height ranges equally though and that's no slight to the route setters.
Yeah, let's get back to oldschool hard bouldering, steep overhangs, tiny crimps and pockets and stuff like that, not those huge baloons on the wall. You can make interesting problems without a dyno and with small holds.
Stasha is not only taller then Brooke. She also has superior one move power on big holds and dyno skills imo. As a tall climber it is extremely annoying when people imply that I got up something purely do to height ignoring all other attributes. Holding swings is also harder for the tall do to weight/leverage. It seems to me setters only consider short climbers when worrying about equitable setting and don't think twice about super scrunchy stuff or ulta high feet. I have watched Stasha get hosed on a number of WC boulders and no one makes videos about it because its not as visually obvious as failing on a dyno. I think plastic climbing will always favor small athletes for this reason even putting strength to weight ratio aside. Every boulder gets checked to make sure that the shortest competitors have a chance on it, including this one I think. It was more difficult for Brooke of course but climbing is a morpho sport. Evey single climbing move is height/reach dependent.
Re: first Boulder, Stacia is one of the worst in dynamic moves. She has no jump at all and she was still able to make that first move. When I was watching this competition I was hoping someone would actually bring this up. This and other comps the route setting is so unfair to the smaller girls. Especially on dynos like this.
Seems like a storm in a teacup to me. I reckon the setters set this one for the athletes apart from Stasa, accepting that she will cruise it. If they set it much easier, the rest would probably all cruise it too which would be even worse. Also, let's not forget that, despite this arguably unfair gift, Stasa didn't even podium and Brooke did. That's not to say there aren't lessons to be learned, but maybe the lesson is to make sure there are a range of boulders to balance out these edge cases. Also, Natalia and Oriane, who did top this one, aren't really that much taller than Brooke. That said, I've no clue what their ape indexes are which might be more important.
It's funny to me that several commenters here are simultaneously saying that Stasa is both superior and inferior in terms of dynamic power. At least we can all agree that she's taller, I guess.
Interesting: I had a different take away from this boulder. It seemed to me that Brooke's mistake was that she was doing what you're usually supposed to do and pulling into the wall. That meant she had to jump farther, because the hold was away from the wall. Natalia jumped straight at the hold rather than pulling into the wall first and got it no problem. Natalia is four inches taller, so maybe that made the difference, I'm not sure. When I was watching, though, I was yelling at Brooke to change the beta, not at the route setters to change the route.
FINALLY someone talks about this! I was getting more and more frustrated seeing that noone is talking about insane and straight out *sshole routesetting... I understand that this video is about the setting being unfair between athletes of different characteristics, while I am talking about routes that are impossible to climb, but I am honestly frustrated that noone dares to stand up to the route setters in a more official way. I was looking forward to the Olympics climbing event so much, and then that absolute frustration in the women's boulder event, when they mostly barely managed a couple of zones... I felt outraged... They always claim "separation", and getting a "result", but impossible boulders don't create separation, they just create frustration among the viewers, fans, and the competitors themselves... So I would actually introduce a rule that any route setter, whose boulder gets a 0% top rate (or 100% flash rate), would be not allowed to set routes in any official events for a certain period of time...
I'd set with dozen of setters, majority of them only consider whether short people can do the moves, never thik about tall climbers. It's very common in commercial setting that setters only take good care of short climbers in the whole height spectrum. As a long arm span climber, I had tons of pain while climbing routes set by short guys. Plus, it's obvious that Brooke isn't good at pure power moves.
@@impactroutesetting Everything is relative, but what would lead me to say she has more issues getting to holds that are far away than other elite climbers is that there were a number of problems during last year's World Cups where she had issues and Natalia didn't. At the time they were listed as within 1 cm (perhaps ape index considerations?). There were other examples as well, but Natalia stood out the most to me. I want to say that Natalia's numbers changed to +3 cm suddenly. So I really question the stats. For example Ondra is listed as roughly my height, but when I stood next to him I could easily see the top of his head. So I take them with a grain of salt.
Camilla Moroni is one of the most dynamic climbers in the field and she failed the same as Brooke, so I'm not sure this specific argument applies in this case.
Average height of competetive climbers is significantly lower than average height of population for the same sex. It makes it obvious that competition routesetting is in fact unfair AND BENEFITS SHORT CLIMBERS. UPD: even funnier, tall climbers have to train more to have similar relative finger strength, pulling strength etc. Why at the same time it is unfair to make shoter climbers train power of legs more? Coordination seems to be harder for higher people too. Anyway all that is pure talk and DATA says that routesetting benefits short climbers, reasons why should be determined by routesetters whemself instead of just saying that short climbers are better and we should set everything for them of just fixing reach problem (which clearly doesnt exist in competition in terms of effecting it in any way)
The thing is that route setting is the thing that DECIDES who does well. If there were a boulder comp full of boulders like the one above then taller athletes would do better. It’s the route setters job to create a well balanced set of boulders that challenge the competitors. For me, this job is done best when success isn’t determined by morphology.
@@MrSnockems Sure. It's in the graphic at the start of every boulder. It's under the section called "Height". When is the last time you saw a 2+m tall World Cup boulder finalist? It's pretty obvious it's better to be shorter (within reason), just like it's obvious that it is better to be taller to play basketball even though there isn't an official "link to the data". Trying to argue otherwise (e.g. when people point out Ondra, who isn't even really that tall), would be like arguing for that Spud Webb proves that it's good to be short to play basketball. There will always be exceptions to the rule.
I just want to point out, given the same relative distances, a mens problem with a jump like this, not a single person would take the time to even think about it being unfair, train your explosive leg power people!
What gets me is that a dyno is creating this much controversy, when tbh I don't think it was impossible for Brooke to make this move, it seemed to me it would be around a whole 1-2 grades harder for her. But don't you get the exact same in small box/compression moves where for tall people it would add 1-2 grades and they also find it "impossible", to me it happens all the time and I think its part of the sport. I think the point you mention about the thin finger crack problems, this one seems extremely limiting I agree, but in this case, I don't agree Im afraid. Looking at this my educated guess would be v8/7b if you're 170+ and lets say v9/10 (7c/7c+) if you're smaller than 160cm, and also if you're not practicing dynos. I do think the route setters should have added tiny higher feet option though as it would give shorter climbers the ability to jump from a slightly higher position.
And taller climbers need to have more strength... the entire sport hangs on morphology! The sport shouldn't have unspoken rules about morphology, we should allow all types boulders free of guilt. Just look at basketball...
The difference in climbing is that route setting dictates who does well or not so well. It would be incredibly easy to set a competition that favoured either the tallest or shortest climbers, but surely this is not something we want? I definitely don’t want climbing to be anything like basketball where one certain type of morphology has an enormous advantage.
@@impactroutesetting I agree, route setting is a grey area in the sport. To "solve" this I propose the following: Think of a world series with just a single more difficult, longer distance and longer timeframe boulder. We could then say that this climber of different morphology prevailed. Almost like route setters vs climbers, not climbers vs climbers. Of course there can only be one winner.
Not sure if this is necessary true, but there tends to be more inconsistencies in the women's setting (whether it's reachy moves or inconsistent difficulty between comps). I think that has to do with the fact that there are practically no women on route setting teams. I'd love to watch these pros compete on boulders made by women for women and see if that makes a difference!
Interesting discussion, thanks for bringing it up.
I fully acknowledge-as has been pointed out multiple times in this comment section-that a lot of boulders tend to favour smaller climbers. But it's usually more subtle and allows for progression and for ways to adapt to the move, whereas in this case you're barely giving the competitor the chance to try, which is where the problem truly lies.
It seems like people have taken to dunking on Brooke as a way to justify the setting, but Camilla Moroni has consistently proven to be one of the best dynamic boulderers in the circuit and she failed the same as Brooke did. So that's worth taking into account.
Personally I don't think it's too hard to make a dyno like this accessible (but still hard) to different height levels. As a taller-ish climber a lot of the time if there's a right foot and a higher left foot, I would have to only use the right foot/pogo the left foot as the higher foot would be too close to my hands and make me too cramped on the move. Same if you provide two right hand holds with one closer to the left hold but smaller, this would put me in a position that pushes my hips away from the wall and make it hard, I think you can set dynos like that to accomodate different heights.
Notably here, the right hand hold was a flat volume that allowed for as much adjustment as you want, so Staja was able to grab it really high to not be cramped, simply having a normal hold that forces the hand lower would've made it much harder for her. Similarly having the volume for the feet be slanted could achieve the same I think.
I do agree with Caleb Perez that overall I would like to see more women setters, the other end of the spectrum has also often been true that a hold the setters thought would be hard ends up super easy for the women.
Agree with all your points here 👍
I judged a comp and was in charge of a slab boulder. Brooke flashed it, turned out to be a v12. I couldnt even start it. Shes a goddess. All of the competitors were, especially puccio.
This "don't skip leg day" argument is lazy and dismissive. I think my problem with this type of setting is the fact that it serves no purpose. There are 100s of ways to set jumps that are equitable and speaking as a route setter it took no skill to set this move. The single launch foot was particularly frustrating. Progressive RFD is a great way to even the playing field a little. I agree that there is never going to be a jump that feels like the exact same difficulty for a diversely heighted range of athletes, however that is not an excuse to slam the door this hard in the face of smaller competitors.
100%. To bring this down to the punter level - I've been doing and coaching parkour for 14 years, and bouldering on and off for about 8, though never more often than once a week until recently where I've started to invest more in bouldering. I climb v5, have a lot of leg strength from jumping and flipping, but regularly find dynos in my local gyms where I can't reach because I'm short. It's so tedious
Can we also acknowledge that Brooke is also a negative ape index. She does train power because she is short with no positive ape index, so she needs to make up for that in other areas. To say she needs to train more leg power, what a bad assumption to make that she isn’t.
ikr that "don't skip led day" comment was so condescending.
She is one of the more athletic climber
This would probably be helped if they hired some female routesetters...!
Just curious which app you used to annotate the video while playing it
It’s called CoachNow
@@impactroutesetting thanks
I generally agree that moves that are a bit binary (either you crush it or fail at it given the time limit) are not very interesting.
That said, it's always the same thing with tall climbers: cruising a jump is impressive and memorable but no one ever talk about the additional force they need to generate to be able to fit and get out of small box/shouldery/compression moves, basically bent arms and legs on hard moves. If brook has a small box limit move, stasha just won't be able to do it at all. Unless, like you said, there are alternative ways to do the move, which doesn't seem that common (I wish it was! it would mimick outside bouldering more but then you multiply the unintended consequences / crazy beta breaks as well)
I'd say the rest of the boulders were more set with the 158/162cm tall girls in mind, in that regard.
I’d say it’s far less common to have a ‘small box’ move without any other options. It’s definitely much harder to set this than it is to create a big dyno like this one at the start of a boulders. Even if they did create something where the only method favoured the short, surely this is also not ideal? The only way it would be a fair test of the competitors would be to have one boulder like this, one boulder that’s easier for the short and some other boulders that aren’t based so much on morphology. Surely it’s better to at least ensure all boulders can be climbed by people of all sizes and try to test the skill, strength, flexibility etc rather than choosing boulders that reward certain morphology? Definitely seems both less fair and less interesting to have boulders where who does well is pre decided by the climbers morphology
My only niggle would be that a tall person in a small box it's usually only a change of degree of difficulty while performing the same move vs a short person in a tall box the move itself is a completely different move. Sometimes that means it just isn't possible for the shorter climber, you can't pull harder if you can't touch the hold. Agreed that it's very difficult, maybe impossible, to accommodate all height ranges equally though and that's no slight to the route setters.
Yeah, let's get back to oldschool hard bouldering, steep overhangs, tiny crimps and pockets and stuff like that, not those huge baloons on the wall. You can make interesting problems without a dyno and with small holds.
Stasha is not only taller then Brooke. She also has superior one move power on big holds and dyno skills imo. As a tall climber it is extremely annoying when people imply that I got up something purely do to height ignoring all other attributes. Holding swings is also harder for the tall do to weight/leverage. It seems to me setters only consider short climbers when worrying about equitable setting and don't think twice about super scrunchy stuff or ulta high feet.
I have watched Stasha get hosed on a number of WC boulders and no one makes videos about it because its not as visually obvious as failing on a dyno. I think plastic climbing will always favor small athletes for this reason even putting strength to weight ratio aside. Every boulder gets checked to make sure that the shortest competitors have a chance on it, including this one I think. It was more difficult for Brooke of course but climbing is a morpho sport. Evey single climbing move is height/reach dependent.
Its like dunking basketball, if someone is 2 meters ta dunking is way less impressive than someone who is 1.5m
@@marcoderoos6557 random info: NBA player Muggsy Bogues was 160 cm and had a 111 cm vert jump in his prime.
@@thomashessellund852 thats wack
@@marcoderoos6557 why?
@@thomashessellund852 isn't 111cm alot?
It should be all boulders in a set analysis to see if they are evenly distributed.
Re: first Boulder, Stacia is one of the worst in dynamic moves. She has no jump at all and she was still able to make that first move. When I was watching this competition I was hoping someone would actually bring this up. This and other comps the route setting is so unfair to the smaller girls. Especially on dynos like this.
Seems like a storm in a teacup to me. I reckon the setters set this one for the athletes apart from Stasa, accepting that she will cruise it. If they set it much easier, the rest would probably all cruise it too which would be even worse.
Also, let's not forget that, despite this arguably unfair gift, Stasa didn't even podium and Brooke did. That's not to say there aren't lessons to be learned, but maybe the lesson is to make sure there are a range of boulders to balance out these edge cases.
Also, Natalia and Oriane, who did top this one, aren't really that much taller than Brooke. That said, I've no clue what their ape indexes are which might be more important.
It's funny to me that several commenters here are simultaneously saying that Stasa is both superior and inferior in terms of dynamic power. At least we can all agree that she's taller, I guess.
6:24
Climbing should have body type categories. Weight and height.
Interesting: I had a different take away from this boulder. It seemed to me that Brooke's mistake was that she was doing what you're usually supposed to do and pulling into the wall. That meant she had to jump farther, because the hold was away from the wall. Natalia jumped straight at the hold rather than pulling into the wall first and got it no problem. Natalia is four inches taller, so maybe that made the difference, I'm not sure. When I was watching, though, I was yelling at Brooke to change the beta, not at the route setters to change the route.
FINALLY someone talks about this! I was getting more and more frustrated seeing that noone is talking about insane and straight out *sshole routesetting... I understand that this video is about the setting being unfair between athletes of different characteristics, while I am talking about routes that are impossible to climb, but I am honestly frustrated that noone dares to stand up to the route setters in a more official way. I was looking forward to the Olympics climbing event so much, and then that absolute frustration in the women's boulder event, when they mostly barely managed a couple of zones... I felt outraged... They always claim "separation", and getting a "result", but impossible boulders don't create separation, they just create frustration among the viewers, fans, and the competitors themselves... So I would actually introduce a rule that any route setter, whose boulder gets a 0% top rate (or 100% flash rate), would be not allowed to set routes in any official events for a certain period of time...
I'd set with dozen of setters, majority of them only consider whether short people can do the moves, never thik about tall climbers. It's very common in commercial setting that setters only take good care of short climbers in the whole height spectrum. As a long arm span climber, I had tons of pain while climbing routes set by short guys.
Plus, it's obvious that Brooke isn't good at pure power moves.
How is it obvious that Brooke isn’t good at pure power? She’s climbed some of the hardest boulders in the world in a bunch of different styles
@@impactroutesetting Everything is relative, but what would lead me to say she has more issues getting to holds that are far away than other elite climbers is that there were a number of problems during last year's World Cups where she had issues and Natalia didn't. At the time they were listed as within 1 cm (perhaps ape index considerations?). There were other examples as well, but Natalia stood out the most to me. I want to say that Natalia's numbers changed to +3 cm suddenly. So I really question the stats. For example Ondra is listed as roughly my height, but when I stood next to him I could easily see the top of his head. So I take them with a grain of salt.
Camilla Moroni is one of the most dynamic climbers in the field and she failed the same as Brooke, so I'm not sure this specific argument applies in this case.
Average height of competetive climbers is significantly lower than average height of population for the same sex. It makes it obvious that competition routesetting is in fact unfair AND BENEFITS SHORT CLIMBERS.
UPD: even funnier, tall climbers have to train more to have similar relative finger strength, pulling strength etc. Why at the same time it is unfair to make shoter climbers train power of legs more? Coordination seems to be harder for higher people too. Anyway all that is pure talk and DATA says that routesetting benefits short climbers, reasons why should be determined by routesetters whemself instead of just saying that short climbers are better and we should set everything for them of just fixing reach problem (which clearly doesnt exist in competition in terms of effecting it in any way)
The thing is that route setting is the thing that DECIDES who does well. If there were a boulder comp full of boulders like the one above then taller athletes would do better. It’s the route setters job to create a well balanced set of boulders that challenge the competitors. For me, this job is done best when success isn’t determined by morphology.
Can you drop a link to this data of current routesetting benefits shorter climbers? I tried searching it up and couldn't find anything
@@MrSnockems Sure. It's in the graphic at the start of every boulder. It's under the section called "Height". When is the last time you saw a 2+m tall World Cup boulder finalist? It's pretty obvious it's better to be shorter (within reason), just like it's obvious that it is better to be taller to play basketball even though there isn't an official "link to the data". Trying to argue otherwise (e.g. when people point out Ondra, who isn't even really that tall), would be like arguing for that Spud Webb proves that it's good to be short to play basketball. There will always be exceptions to the rule.
I just want to point out, given the same relative distances, a mens problem with a jump like this, not a single person would take the time to even think about it being unfair, train your explosive leg power people!
Couldn’t disagree more. Although I think the height differences between men and women seem to be more pronounced.
Short climbers have better strength to weight ratio and taller climbers have more reach, pros and cons to both, your mind is the only limitation
What gets me is that a dyno is creating this much controversy, when tbh I don't think it was impossible for Brooke to make this move, it seemed to me it would be around a whole 1-2 grades harder for her.
But don't you get the exact same in small box/compression moves where for tall people it would add 1-2 grades and they also find it "impossible", to me it happens all the time and I think its part of the sport. I think the point you mention about the thin finger crack problems, this one seems extremely limiting I agree, but in this case, I don't agree Im afraid.
Looking at this my educated guess would be v8/7b if you're 170+ and lets say v9/10 (7c/7c+) if you're smaller than 160cm, and also if you're not practicing dynos. I do think the route setters should have added tiny higher feet option though as it would give shorter climbers the ability to jump from a slightly higher position.
And taller climbers need to have more strength... the entire sport hangs on morphology! The sport shouldn't have unspoken rules about morphology, we should allow all types boulders free of guilt. Just look at basketball...
The difference in climbing is that route setting dictates who does well or not so well. It would be incredibly easy to set a competition that favoured either the tallest or shortest climbers, but surely this is not something we want? I definitely don’t want climbing to be anything like basketball where one certain type of morphology has an enormous advantage.
@@impactroutesetting I agree, route setting is a grey area in the sport.
To "solve" this I propose the following:
Think of a world series with just a single more difficult, longer distance and longer timeframe boulder. We could then say that this climber of different morphology prevailed. Almost like route setters vs climbers, not climbers vs climbers. Of course there can only be one winner.
@@HarrisAsync What you're describing there is lead climbing ;)