Dale Wilson | Climbing Performance Metrics

How to use data and measurements to inform training decisions had been a topic of debate amongst Kris and the other Power Company coaches for years. That is until today’s guest, Data Analyst, Dale Wilson, stepped in to settle the score once and for all.

Dale getting reachy on a boulder in Colorado.

Dale and Kris chat about how and why Power Company Climbing collects certain measurements from their clients. They discuss the usefulness of these measurements in predicting climbing performance and how this data can be helpful to coaches when designing programming. They also talk about how important it is not to get too wrapped up in the numbers, and how easily many climbers fall into the trap of training to improve numbers rather than to reach their goals.

Dale presents during 2019’s Empowered Bouldering Intensive.

DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:

• How Power Company Climbing uses data and measurements in their program design.

• How Kris and Dale personally use data in their own climbing and training.

• Which measurements seem to “matter” - and which don’t.

• The downside of putting too much stock in numbers.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Kris Hampton  00:00

The Power Company Podcast is supported by our patrons. They keep this thing sponsor-free, and in return, they get two bonus episodes every month. For as little as $3, you can, too. Go to patreon.com/powercompanypodcast or click the link right there in your pocket supercomputer. Thanks.

Dale Wilson  00:29

I guess I'd like ask people who are climbing like which one would you prefer to be: Guy who like absolutely crushes all these like measurements but can't climb stuff? Or would you rather be the like game-day player who is like standing on top of boulders?

Kris Hampton  00:57

What's up, everybody? I'm your host, Kris Hampton. Welcome to the Power Company Podcast brought to you by powercompanyclimbing.com. If you aren't following us on Instagram or at the Power Company Climbing Academy, I wanted to let you know that we just recently launched a course for climbing coaches called "Coaching for Mastery: Building an Effective Climbing Practice". In this course, you can learn all about communication and feedback with your athletes, how labels and praise affect mindset, how to build effective drills, and program design from a skill-coaching perspective. I'm also going to accept a small mentorship group who I'll work with for the next few months as they go through this course. That may be full by the time you get this. But if it is, get on the list to be the first to know when the next one opens up. You'll find all of the necessary links right there in your show notes, or go to powercompanyclimbing.com. Click on the "Academy" tab. Okay. Today's guest is a good friend of mine and Power Company Climbing coach and data analyst, Dale Wilson. When we first got into the collection of performance data, I was the biggest skeptic on the team for sure. I wanted to make sure we did it right and that we had the right person, a data nerd who wasn't convinced that the data told the whole story. Real talk though, is it data or data? I don't know. You tell me. Regardless, we hit the nail on the head. Dale has been a really valuable addition to our team. I appreciate his perspective on how to look at and use the data without getting blinded by it. And I think that you will, too. Let's get into it.

Kris Hampton  02:39

I don't even know if I actually know this story, I know Blake kind of brought you in... 

Dale Wilson  02:50

Yeah.

Kris Hampton  02:51

...initially, like we had been, we as coaches - at the time, it was just Paul, Blake, Nate, and I - we had been arguing for like a year about what measurements we should get and why and what they meant and how to go about the whole thing. We knew that numbers were going to be important in some way. But we didn't quite understand how yet. What is your memory of how Blake kind of pitched it all to you?

Dale Wilson  03:26

Um, I think it started somewhere in the Facebook community at that time, like you guys had talked about it a little bit, I think.

Kris Hampton  03:32

That might be right. 

Dale Wilson  03:34

Either that or I had reached out to you directly about it. I think you guys had gotten tired of arguing about how it was gonna go.

Kris Hampton  03:39

I'm never tired of arguing. Just so you know.

Dale Wilson  03:42

Maybe Blake was tired of arguing, he was ready for it. 

Kris Hampton  03:44

That's entirely possible. 

Dale Wilson  03:46

But we had, we talked about a little bit and I kind of described how I would go about, like determining what mattered in that case from like, a mathematical standpoint. Doing like general correlation analysis for - once you guys get measurements. And then kind of outlining how that would look like from, "Okay, we're going to determine what matters," or what we're, what our like, variables of interest are. And then how we could then use that to be like informative for someone for training decisions. And when we had talked about that, you guys seemed psyched on that direction, but you also had like a million things about like, more concerns, caveats, all that - and I think we just decided to like work through it as we went.

Kris Hampton  04:28

Yeah. And I think that's, that turned out to be a really smart thing, you know. We, going into getting the measurements, we, I think, were putting a little too much, giving it a little too much power. Like let's, let's find what your finger strength is, let's find what pull strength is, let's find what aerobic endurance is, you know. And ultimately, we decided that, that those distinctions don't matter as much as can we get a measurement that correlates to climbing? Because when we were asking, "Let's measure finger strength,"  - okay - how do we do that? Do we use a 20 mm edge? Do we use an 18 mm edge? We use a 25 mm edge? Do we use a 10 mm edge, you know? Does it matter if they're hanging the weight in front of them or in back of them or wearing a weight vest or pulling on a load cell? Or, you know, there are all these ways that someone might engage with getting that measurement. And we were like, "How do we make this the easiest for people to do?" So we get more people to do it and they don't have to have special equipment or go to a special place. And how do we make sure that we're measuring the thing we say we're measuring? And then ultimately we just decided maybe it doesn't matter if we're actually measuring what your max finger strength is, or whatever.

Dale Wilson  05:53

Right. I remember that also when we were looking at doing like the foot on campus measurements and aspects of that. It's like, "Well, do we call this like an aerobic measurement? Do we call this like an anaerobic measurement?" And it's kind of like pointlessly esoteric to throw them into those particular, particular buckets. Because it's never really, doesn't seem like it's ever really like one all the time. And, like, the distinction is just not meaningful in terms of like what you're going to define. So like, say that you got some test that says that your aerobic capacity or something is low in a sport-specific context; like, what does that mean? Like, what decision does that lead you to do? Does that mean that you're going to do, like, do you immediately think of climbing where you're like, "Okay, I'm going to do an aerobic session,"? Like, what does that actually look like? What does that mean? 

Kris Hampton  06:42

Right.

Dale Wilson  06:43

And how that relates to the test can also like, vary. What, what setting is the test done in? Do people have access to things that would be meaningful for that or that would allow them to do that test? Especially in the like, energy systems kind of concept. It's like, are you... you can't just have people climb on, like any climbing for a certain amount, like X amount of time, or anything like that.

Kris Hampton  07:05

It's different in every gym, you know. Even every, like, set commercial board, like a person might have a Tension Board in two different gyms and it's gonna feel a little different due to humidity, or someone's angle is slightly off, or the holds have been turned slightly wrong, or whatever.

Dale Wilson  07:23

When was the last time they were cleaned? Like if your on urethane like how far down was it sanded after it was poured? And like, all this stuff. And it's like, how humid was it that day? There's just all this stuff that is not, it just adds like variability to it. But at the end of the day, it was just about what can we make that gives you some sort of direction to run, as opposed to like, "We're specifically measuring like aerobic-this," and like proving that point. I think for 98% of people, that's, that distinction isn't going to matter. It's about giving them like a direction to run with their training.

Kris Hampton  07:59

Right. And initially, in all of these like arguments before we pulled you into this, I was probably the one who was most... giving the most pushback for the numbers and for the data and for the whole collection of it. Not because I didn't see it as something that could be important, but more because I, I thought that maybe at some point people would start latching on to it too much. You want to introduce our, our third podcast guest?

Dale Wilson  08:37

Oh, yeah, that's my son, Eli. Haha. He's talking more than usual.

Kris Hampton  08:41

Eli's on a podcast; of course, he's talking more than usual! How old is Eli?

Dale Wilson  08:45

Eli is nine months old. 

Kris Hampton  08:46

Nice. 

Dale Wilson  08:47

So yeah, he's capable of interjecting. But his, his points might not be entirely coherent. 

Kris Hampton  08:52

He knows more about statistics than I do, so... Totally fine to jump in, Eli. Feel free.

Dale Wilson  08:59

Just speak up, you can use my mic.

Kris Hampton  09:01

And I didn't... I was just worried that people were going to try to draw these like direct lines of like, "Oh, I can hang this much from a 20 mm edge, I should be able to do this thing."

Dale Wilson  09:14

A hundred percent. 

Kris Hampton  09:15

And I, and we see that.

Dale Wilson  09:17

We see it all the time. I think that's like 90% of the discussion about like, measurements in general. Like, "I've achieved this," like, "I can hang this so thus I should be able to do this." "I can climb this on the Moon Board. Why can't I like take this outside?" It's like, it turns into like an entitlement discussion. Like just because you can do this thing, you're not entitled to other stuff. The only way to like get those things is by doing those things.

Kris Hampton  09:38

Right. And I mean, even, even if you can climb V6 in Rocktown, that doesn't entitle you to climbing a V6 at Stone Fort, or you know, Colorado granite, or anywhere else, you know.

Dale Wilson  09:52

Or the V6 next to the one that you did.

Kris Hampton  09:54

Exactly. On the same boulder. Yeah, it's there are wildly different needs for different boulders, different routes. So it's really tough to draw those direct lines. And I was really worried about that. Blake kept pushing for, "Well, it gives us a good general place to start with people." And eventually that sank into my head and I was like, "Okay, if we, if we can get a large enough body of this data, and we can, with some confidence, say, okay, the vast majority of the climbers at this level, can do this in our measurements," and find these strong correlations; then I can, then I can start having a better place to start with the training.

Dale Wilson  10:45

Exactly. I think it comes back to like, what is the purpose of like collecting data and doing measurements in the first place? Well, it's to look at your progress. And inform your decisions so that you can make better use of your time. Everybody only has so much training time, everybody wants to reach their goals. But if you understand what your weaknesses are, whether those are physical or technical, and then measure - and our assessment is really geared towards only the like, physical aspect of these things; the entire climbing skill aspect of it is kind of removed in that case. So there, we're looking at these physical aspects and they can give you a general direction that you should run at and help you make better decisions for it. It doesn't necessarily, like it's not going to solve all your problems and tell you exactly what you need to do. But it does in the case of like coaches using it to make decisions, if they see that someone's... Let's give a good example here: let's say that someone's like, finger strength measurements are coming back like really high, but their like pulling strength measurements are, relative to climbers at whatever grade they're looking to climb, their pulling measurements are on the low side. It's like, okay, maybe they can make the decision that their training should kind of let finger strength simmer for a little bit; keep it around, but not like super focus on it. And then maybe they need to focus more on like, pulling strength, power, things of that nature.

Kris Hampton  12:09

Right, it's not only an indication of what you need to work on, but an indication of what you maybe don't need to keep working on or keep putting a lot of focus on, you know. Like, like you said, we all have this really limited time that we can put into this -- time, energy, skin -- that we can put into training. So what these assessments are doing, and what these measurements that we're getting do, is help us funnel that time into the right places. 

Dale Wilson  12:40

Exactly. Yeah, that's, that, that's ultimately the goal - is just helping people make decisions as to how they should spend their time or helping coaches make that decision so that they can design a better plan for somebody. To get better results that help them.

Kris Hampton  12:54

Something that that took me a while to wrap my brain around was, and actually, I think it takes... based on my conversations on social media, whenever we post anything that's measurement-related, data-related, it takes people a while, including myself, to wrap their brains around just looking for a correlation rather than saying, "This is your aerobic capacity. This is your whatever." Why do you think it is that it's hard for people to wrap their brain around just "This is correlated,"? And why do you - or do you at all - think it's better that we do it that way versus trying to pin down exactly what it is we're measuring?

Dale Wilson  13:44

I think it's nice to feel like you're right on online forums. I think that's a big part of it. 

Kris Hampton  13:49

Factual. 

Dale Wilson  13:49

It's like, yeah, it's really nice to just step in and be like, "You need to work on aerobic power," or something like this, and it gives you like, a feeling of control so that you can throw it into this bucket. And you can feel like, "Okay, I'm making this decision about this. This is what I need to focus on and I'm doing that." So if you can say, like if you can just throw it into that bucket, then people feel empowered by that. Then you can also stunt on people on r/climbharder and be like, "This is this. This measures that."

Kris Hampton  14:16

"I know so much. Listen to me."

Dale Wilson  14:19

Exactly. It's like a, it's a feeling of superiority or like expertise to say like, "Definitively, it's this." But I think anybody that has been climbing for a while can say that like, nothing's ever like that. Like say that you're like working on like a long boulder problem. It's like, okay, do you need some aerobic component of that? Like for sure. But like is that the reason that you're like falling, if you're falling in the latter half of it? Like is your beta garbage? Are your shoulders like sagging halfway through? Does it ever...

Kris Hampton  14:50

Are you just giving up because you don't understand how to climb fatigued?

Dale Wilson  14:54

Do you have the like mental toughness to like, hang on and execute when you are tired? Like, yeah, all the 4x4's in the world aren't going to teach you that ability or how to react to that.

Kris Hampton  15:04

Even just the like, if we're looking at just the physical components, like I test out with really high finger strength; relative to what I want to climb, my finger strength looks good. But as soon as I go to grab tiny incut crimps? Not the same. Way lower than the average climber. Like, I, we don't have data for this, I'm totally guessing, but I'm, I've seen, you know, V5/V6 climbers who can pull on incut crimps that I'm like, "I don't know how you pull on that," you know? And, and unless we're measuring every single grip position, every single hold type, shoulder angles - all the things... 

Dale Wilson  15:56

Are you going to make sure that your like, hips are completely sucked underneath it? Like are you gonna pull through a roof on it?

Kris Hampton  16:02

Yeah. Just because you present with high finger strength in our measurement doesn't mean you can actually leverage it in all situations.

Dale Wilson  16:10

Yeah, it's like the measurement that we're looking at is 10 second 20 mm max added weight. In that setting. It's like, unless your project is specifically hanging from a 20 mm edge with a certain amount of weight on it for 10 seconds, you're probably gonna have to figure out a little bit more than how to add 10 pounds to that.

Kris Hampton  16:28

Yeah. We may have already covered it a little bit but I'm curious; as, you know, you're the person who's seen every assessment that we do. We do assessments for all of our custom clients, we also have many assessments that people can buy kind of ala carte to supplement their Proven Plans, or whatever they're doing on their own, just to get an idea of where they're at. What do you think, is the biggest benefit for people coming in and doing those?

Dale Wilson  17:03

I think it gives people a direction to run. So I think like the, I think the ultimate way, or like probably the best way, of like getting out of your own way if you're trying to like build your own training plan, is to talk to an experienced coach and have them make one for you. There's like immediately like buy-in for that. And you don't get to, you don't have to deal with the like, oh, you're six weeks into the plan and then you like see something else online, or you're not getting the results that you want and you suddenly like, your mission creeps over into something else, you change direction. Like when you talk to a coach, it's like, "We're going to lay out this thing and you're going to... We're planning the hunt, we're going to do the hunt, and then we're going to like, check it afterwards and see how it went." And there's no way for you to really, other than like not doing it, there's no way for you to get in your own way mentally on that. The next best thing that you could do is get like some sort of information that would help you define how you should spend that time and what that plan should look like. So if you go through your, go through an assessment, you get a report on it and it says that relative to people climbing at that certain grade, like your data is on the low side, you know that like this should be a focus for four to six weeks, if I want to see improvements inside of this thing. But I mean, you still have to then go through the critical thinking process on your own to say... say that you're climbing, that you want to climb a particular V10 or something. Like what does that look like? If you're, if the V10 you're looking at is something like "Octagon Control", if the V10 you're looking at it something like "Octagon Control" at the New River Gorge... 

Kris Hampton  18:33

Eli likes "Octagon Control" apparently.

Dale Wilson  18:36

I don't know, I don't think he's seen it yet. He's, he's been talking mad trash about it. Say that it's something like that - it's like three moves and a mantle. And it's like, okay. Does your like hangboard repeaters measurement maybe matter so much in that context? You still have to, like critically think through like, is this the way to spend - best way to spend - your time in relation to that goal? If you have a coach, they can help you with that, but if you're being your own coach, you have to do that work yourself. And having a little bit of information can like help with that a lot.

Kris Hampton  19:06

Yeah. And that was, that kind of leads me into what was gonna be my next question. Like, what are some of the dangers of getting these assessments done, and then looking at this, at this data and these charts that we give you? And one of those is that, you know, say you're someone who is a boulderer and your project is three moves to a mantle, and your repeater measurement is really low. Some people are going to just knee-jerk react to, "Oh, I need to get my repeater measurement up, I need to be doing all this endurance work." And maybe that doesn't match your goals at all. So putting a lot of weight in these measurements, in that context, is kind of dangerous for your goal.

Dale Wilson  19:57

Yeah, absolutely. I think, yeah, the burden of critical thinking is like never removed, no matter what you're doing, so...

Kris Hampton  20:05

And I think that's a good thing about it actually, you know. Like, if we're taking that away from people, then we're not helping them stand on their own feet at all.

Dale Wilson  20:16

Yeah. And we try to do that in the comments on the reports, to say that, like to be like more general for it. But again, like, the more that we know about someone's goals, the better that that feedback can be. So sometimes, if something's like a little bit on the low side, we'll have something in there to say that like, "This isn't really like cause for concern, you shouldn't really be worrying about this." Or it's like, maybe it's a little bit on the low side but something else is like, a bigger issue for the goals that they're looking at. It's like, let this... like, "If this is on the low side, it's not that big of a deal. You need to focus like most of your resources in on this one thing, and it'll pay dividends to you and your process." I think that's the the biggest danger there; aside from just like, seeing something's low, and you're like, "Okay, I need to like, just do this one thing," I think the next biggest risk in there is seeing that something's low and just training it in that environment. So say that, like, say that your 10 second 20 mm max hang is low. It's like low relative to people at the grade that you're looking at, and you're like, "Oh, man, my max hang is low, I need to do more max hangs." 

Kris Hampton  21:20

"I need to train my max hang." 

Dale Wilson  21:22

That's like, that's probably true. If you have like 10 minutes, like at the end of your warmup, like there's a really good time for you to do some finger recruitment, and work on that. There's different ways for that to look like, but what's probably going to be like most beneficial is also like grabbing holds that are similar to like, whatever you want to get on that are challenging for you. And trying to, like work in that very specific setting that is closer towards your goals. You can still do that, like basic off-the-wall kind of work like hangboarding, and that's obviously a great way to pursue it, but again, the hangboard measurement doesn't entitle you to the grade or the problem that you want. So you still have to, again, do that hard work of going in, figuring out what it's like to grab those small holds, hang on 'em, pull through on 'em, all that work.

Kris Hampton  22:13

Yeah, I think that's a big issue, actually, with a lot of the people who get really wrapped up in these measurements - and, and their goal becomes to raise the measurement as opposed to send the boulder, or the goal, or whatever it was - is they, in pursuit of raising that measure, they train that exact thing. And this idea of just training for the test, practicing for the test, you know, it's a... We've got something like the NFL Combine, which is - the NFL has a lot more money behind it, they've been doing this for a long time, trying to determine what are the the numbers, the stats we need to see for these athletes that is, that are going to predict success in this league. Well, there are companies you can pay to prepare you for the combine and, and they'll spend six months or a year or whatever, getting you ready for the specific tests that are going to happen at the combine, and then you get this artificially high showing at the combine. And then people regularly just fail in the league after posting these huge numbers. And they're very often you know, Tom Brady's an overused example but...

Dale Wilson  23:33

Overused for a reason.

Kris Hampton  23:35

He you know, tested really poorly at the combine. But then goes on to be Tom Brady.

Dale Wilson  23:40

And one of the like, comments from his like scouting card was like "Game Day player". Yeah, that's one of my like, favorite things from that whole like Tom Brady combine NFL starting like, story. It's like Game Day player. If you could take like... I guess I'd like ask people who are climbing, like which one would you prefer to be? Guy who like absolutely crushes all these like measurements but can't climb stuff? Or would you rather be the like, Game Day player who's like standing on top of boulders? 

Kris Hampton  24:07

Yeah, absolutely. 

Dale Wilson  24:10

There's nothing wrong with crushing your measurements or being psyched on training. But...

Kris Hampton  24:13

Yeah, I mean, if that's the goal, then great. Like, if you want to be really good at one-arm hanging a 20 mm edge, practice that, you know. But if you want to be really good at climbing, the ability to hang a one-arm on a 20 mm edge might end up being a part of that in some way, but it's not the ultimate goal.

Dale Wilson  24:33

Right. Like we want it to be kind of a symptom that happens kind of, as opposed to like the sole thing that you're seeking out.

Kris Hampton  24:40

Yeah, so I purposely, you know, after we get those measurements? If I see somebody with say, a finger strength measure on the 20 mm edge with added weight, if that measure is low in comparison to the other climbers climbing at their grade, I almost never have them just hanging with weight on a 20 mm edge for 10 seconds, you know. I switch up the protocols. I'll have them working on slightly smaller edges or maybe bigger edges depending on their goals, depending on them. For different time periods, you know, sometimes five seconds, sometimes seven seconds, sometimes we do longer hangs. And then we come back and test that 10 second hang on that edge. And if we've moved the needle in the right direction, great. If we haven't, we switch it up a little bit, you know. It's a, it's a measure I come back to relatively regularly but, but not a thing that I'm like, let's just practice this one thing and get better at it. And recently, reading a lot of research on finger strength, hangboard-based research, something I've appreciated about it is that like in Eva's studies and in several others that I've seen, their training protocols they're using almost never use the same size edge that they're testing on. 

Dale Wilson  26:09

Gotcha. 

Kris Hampton  26:10

...which I think is a smart play. So they're not getting that effect of just learning the test. 

Dale Wilson  26:15

Right. 

Kris Hampton  26:19

And, you know, finger strength is a, or max hangs, or whatever it is you want to call it, are a really -- I don't know what the right word is -- but they're an example where there's not a ton to learn about the test. And in a lot of these other measurements, there, there's a lot you can learn about it, you know. Like the campus endurance type measurements and the pull slap, power slap measurements on the campus board, you know, you can learn techniques that are better to, to improve that number. But it's just an artificial improvement at that point. You know, it gets really tricky, and I think it's getting trickier, and trickier. Let's talk a little bit about how you look at the data that has been collected and how we output it to, you know, look at the comparisons between people and the charts that we've put out. We're collecting it all via Google Forms, if you want to be a part of the dataset, you know, if you're somebody who's interested in your numbers, and you just want to input your numbers, I'll have a link in the show notes that you can do that. In fact, we'd love to have more women inputting their numbers, so that we can separate our data out for male versus female. And then we also sell the Mini-Assessments where you'll give them back a report that shows how they stack up against other climbers who have similar goals, or who are climbing at the same grades as you, once people put the data into the Google Form. You know, as far as I can tell, it just spits it out into charts that you hand to me. But what actually happens in the background there once you get that data in the Google Form?

Dale Wilson  28:19

So we ask people what their current max outdoor grade is, what their current, like goal outdoor grade is, and from there, we then compare their current measurements against the distribution of values that we have for those grades. So in this case, we'll say somebody's a V7 climber, that's their current max outdoor grade in the past year. So we'll take, we'll sort that data out so that it's just our people who have reported V7 as their max outdoor grade for the past year. We'll then look at that distribution. So if you're picturing like a bell curve, or like a normal Gaussian distribution, that's like what we're looking at, or similar to what we're looking at. If we look at the probability density function, which will look like that kind of bell curve-esque distribution, if we look at a probability density function for it, we can look at where their measurement is on the X axis. So say that we're looking at strength to weight ratio for max hang, if that range of that distribution is from like, we'll say 1.2 to 1.6, or something like that. We'll see where they fall on that. So in that case, the X axis is our actual measurement and the frequency would be the Y axis going up to that point. So, if we were to integrate and find the area under the curve for that probability density function, ending at kind of where their measurement is on that X axis, the area under the curve for that will be the probability of them being in that population -- quote, unquote, population -- in that case -- or sample, really -- we're talking about, like the V7 climbers who have submitted their data inside of this. Um, so we can then, that goes into something called a cumulative distribution function, which then takes same X axis, but the Y axis in that case are those probabilities. So the probability for each at each of those, like continuous variables --so in our case from like 1.2 to 1.6 -- what is the probability of somebody with each of those values being inside of that group? So, for example, this is just a, like an example of like an ideal normal distribution: if someone was +1 standard deviation above the mean, inside of the distribution for a given grade, then the probability of them being inside that population would be like 84%. Something like that. 

Kris Hampton  30:46

Got it. 

Dale Wilson  30:47

So that's what we're seeing when we, when you get that. The output for it, we're taking that value, in this case, it would be like .84 out of like 100 -- 100 would be like 100%, probability of you being inside of that population -- again, goes back to the problem of what is that population, that's a bunch of self-reported V7's? How many of those people have climbed the same ones? Or would they be able to do these other ones? There's no way to say these things. It's just a self-reported value.

Kris Hampton  31:15

Yeah, some of them may be V7 slab climbers, some of them may be V7 roof climbers.

Dale Wilson  31:19

There's no such thing as a V7 slab, but...

Kris Hampton  31:22

And everything in between there, you know. So V7 doesn't equal V7 all the time. So it's always going to be thrown off a little.

Dale Wilson  31:34

Exactly. I mean, it's the nature of grades. But it's a, that's a little bit of the math behind how it works. We put it into then those bullet graphs, which looks kind of like a bar graph laid on its side. I really think that was your idea, or initially the way that you put it was like, you wanted to see something that's like the attribute of like a character in a video game. Or something like that. 

Dale Wilson  31:55

I think that's incredibly intuitive. Like, if I'm talking about this stuff, and it's, you're like, "I don't know what that means." Some of you guys've probably taken like introductory calculus-based statistics and you're like, "I know exactly what this is and what he's talking about." But if you're like, "I don't care about that," then a bullet graph is still like, super easy to understand, if you think about it from the video game example.

Kris Hampton  31:55

Right.

Kris Hampton  32:16

Right. And we're looking at, so we're taking their max grade, and we're looking at where their whatever attribute it is they measured, whatever measurement they got, where that fits in with their current max grade, but also where their goal lies.

Dale Wilson  32:34

Then we show where that central tendency for that goal grade falls inside of that distribution as well. So all the attributes that we include inside of our assessments have shown really good correlation for that, really good correlation to climbing performance. So for each of those, your goal, the central tendency for your goal grade is usually -- if your goal grade is higher than your current grade -- it's usually going to be higher in that distribution as well. So it's not there to be, again, not to like entitle you to say that, like if you get to this number, like you'll climb whatever your goal grade is, but it is to show, it is a good way to show that like, how far you have to go to get there, maybe. Or like some motivational aspect to it, as to like: There it is. You can see where you are, where you're going, what everything else looks like. Kind of the lay of the land. And make some judgments on it.

Kris Hampton  33:23

Yeah. And I, you know, to use the video game character metaphor a little bit, maybe take it too far, you know, you can have the best video game character there is when you pull up that screen and you're looking at all your attributes. But if you're not good with the controller, you're still going to lose, you know?

Dale Wilson  33:45

100 percent. 

Kris Hampton  33:47

So it's a really similar situation to climbing, that none of this entitles you to win. It's just a, these might help you get there. And you know, upping your power, upping your finger strength, or upping whatever it is you think you're raising by doing these exercises, aren't going to entitle you, but they might help you.

Dale Wilson  34:11

Right. So like, I'm going to keep going with the video game metaphor because I like it. 

Kris Hampton  34:16

Let's do it. I'm down to run it into the ground.

Dale Wilson  34:19

Okay, the only video game that I'm super good at is Tony Hawk's Pro-Skater 2. Like, specifically Tony Hawk 2. So like, let's say that, like, you're trying to, like your strategy is going to be like linking tricks with manuals, something like that. Like you want a character with like exceptional balance in order to do this, you do not want to have somebody who's like, not good from a balance standpoint because your manuals are going to be hard to control. So the way that I describe it is that like, the higher one of your attributes is, the more you're likely to rely on that attribute in your style. So like if you're, if you're into powerful bouldering, like it's, you probably have, you probably rely on like really strong pulling strength, something like that. If you're Rodney Mullen, then your, your balance's perfect. 

Kris Hampton  35:02

Right. 

Dale Wilson  35:02

Exactly. Yeah, just to stick with that metaphor. And conversely, like if you're a slab climber, then like maybe maximum pulling power is not like immediately what's important to you.

Kris Hampton  35:13

Right. Yeah, that's a really good way to look at it. Something I did, last year sometime, that I thought was actually really interesting was Tyler Nelson had posted a sort of question on Instagram about continuous hang versus repeater hangs. And he was guessing that maybe the continuous hang would equal the repeater, because there's not enough time in a 7/3 repeater to actually be recovering. And so I went to our data, and we separated it for sport climbers and boulderers, and I looked at -- or people with sport climbing goals versus bouldering goals -- and I looked at their continuous hang versus their repeater. And everybody's repeaters, you know, total time hanging for the repeaters, was quite a bit higher than their continuous hang. But sport climbers, the people who spend more time sport climbing, their repeater time was drastically higher than the boulderers in comparison to their continuous hang time. So we can look at things like that and see that these sport climbers are better at utilizing this three second rest in between hangs. Do we know why? No, we don't know exactly what's going on. But frankly, I don't think I need to know exactly what's going on. If I can, if I can come up with training stimulus that causes the needle to move in that direction, then great, I don't need to know all of the underlying mechanisms that are happening.

Dale Wilson  36:53

Right. And in that specific case, it's like, that immediately, like, intuitively makes sense. Because we think of sport climbers as having like more developed energy systems, right? Like, we frequently hear that they spend more time working, across the, across the spectrum in terms of energy systems. But I would say like, again, it goes back to the, like what's specifically like working under the hood there? And to your point, like does it matter? I think Tyler's hypothesis is like an interesting one and it's interesting to go into the data and see like what we have in relation to that...

Kris Hampton  37:33

And Tyler does want to know why it works, you know? 

Dale Wilson  37:35

Yeah, he's 100 percent digging into that.

Kris Hampton  37:37

And I'm glad he wants to know why that stuff works. For me, it doesn't matter as much. Maybe once he understands why it works, and we, you know, we learn some new things, maybe there are new training methods that come out that make it even easier to train that aspect of it. But as of right now, all I know is I can experiment and try to move the needle in the right direction.

Dale Wilson  38:02

Right. I mean, like, hypothesis is such a important part of like, scientific method and improvement. Like you have to start somewhere with like a, with a guess based on what you've seen, essentially. And maybe that's where Tyler was starting with that. I mean, that's how everybody kind of decides things, and makes things, and designs experiments. But...

Kris Hampton  38:21

I mean, frankly, that's how all of our, our entire assessment began, you know. We've, we've tried things and thrown them out. Because they were finding no correlation, so why continue to get these numbers? So we're just guessing at, "Maybe this will be an effective test. We think this is indicative of climbing ability so let's test it over time, let's see if we're seeing a correlation or not." And then we talk to you, and if you're seeing a correlation in the data, then it's a measurement that might be worth keeping.

Dale Wilson  38:57

Right. Um, I think like, so much of like strength and conditioning has historically been based or developed out of like phenomenology. And it's always like, people in the field, understanding, like seeing these things, building on them, and trying to understand them over time. I think it's very rare that something's understood in the lab and then brought out to like, into the strength and conditioning field. It's very traditionally like, high performers, studying them, improving people's performance, trying to figure out why that happens, and then trying to understand the like mechanism behind that. I think that's 100% how it works. I think it's in vogue, I guess, right now a little bit. I guess people always do that for strength and conditioning a little bit, in terms of like trying to extrapolate from studies and other fields and all that. You have to do that, but I mean, yeah, so much of it's based not just in peer-reviewed research. And it's in vogue right now to like, bring that up all the time. But again, it's a, at the end of the day, it comes down to performance and like what works for people. And it's like, if you have the most like scientifically-derived performance method or training method ever and you're not getting to the top of stuff, then like, does it, does it matter? And why should you keep doing that?

Kris Hampton  40:17

Yeah. And I think that's a little bit of the danger of getting too complicated with the measurements. There's part of me that's like, "Oh, I think this would be interesting to keep increasing this dataset and all the things that we're measuring and collecting. What can we learn from that?" But then there's also the side of me, it's like, this, this whole side of, of climbing needs to be kept really simple so that we don't get too wrapped up in the complicated nature of it.

Dale Wilson  40:49

Right. I mean, yeah, I think it's super important to like, keep asking the questions, designing experiments, and, like developing a better understanding of it over time. But I think the, I think coaches have to fill in that role a lot and they can't rely, obviously, just on like peer-reviewed research for it. There's that angle to it, but a lot of it, again, is explaining phenomenology seen elsewhere.

Kris Hampton  41:14

Yeah. Having, having taken up the role of a coach -- you've been working with people on Proven Plans and a few Custom Plans, and we've talked about increasing that role -- where do the measurements stand in your like, list of places to look, when you first start working with the person?

Dale Wilson  41:39

Um, I like, I'd like to see like a report first to see where they're like generally at, to see if there's like any glaring weaknesses that need to be changed, kind of making sure that we're like checking those like low- lying, like low-hanging fruit and making sure that we're getting that, I think. But after that initial portion for that, I think one of the things that we should talk about is like the timing for like, when you take assessments, as opposed to like... sometimes you'll see it where it's like, somebody does like a month of hangboarding or something and then they're like, "I'm going to retest this." And so I'd really steer clear of that kind of like, frequent retesting mindset, where it's like, again, you're focusing so much on this test, or like it almost seems like you don't have buy-in necessarily inside of the, like, process. So I would say that, like, I like seeing it at the beginning of that setup, for like that initial assessment, then like...

Dale Wilson  42:31

**baby babbling sounds**

Dale Wilson  42:33

I agree, bud.

Kris Hampton  42:34

Too much about numbers, buddy.

Dale Wilson  42:35

I think like 12, then like maybe 12 weeks down the line, it's time to revisit that. Something like that, like three or four months later, maybe it's time to retest at that point. But after, like just working with somebody, I would want to see it up front. And then it gets shelved for a while, it gets moved back to that. And then from that point, we can do some design. But most important thing that I would say is seeing -- starting out -- is like watching videos of somebody climbing. Because it's still like, if their goal is to improve a climb, you have to see where they're at like climbing-wise right now. How do you move? What is the stuff that you gravitate towards? Even knowing like, the specific videos that like somebody shares with me; it's like, those are their like, usually their accomplishments or the things that they're most comfortable sharing.

Kris Hampton  43:20

Yeah, totally. One of the things I've found really powerful actually, for some of my clients is when they start to get too wrapped up in the numbers, where they're like, "I need to raise this number, and I need to raise this number," I'll wait until they've performed for a while and they've been, you know, they've done something. And then I'm like, "Let's retest that number, right now." And oftentimes, that number is lower than they expected. They just thought, "Oh, I'm performing better. So that number is gonna be higher," you know, and it's either the same place it was when they tested, or sometimes lower, sometimes slightly higher. But then I can definitively say, "Look, you can perform at these grades without spending all of your time and energy on this one number." And so I think that's a really interesting time to retest as well. 

Dale Wilson  44:20

Yeah. Yeah, I think... 

Kris Hampton  44:22

And it doesn't have to be the whole battery of tests. It can just be the, "Let's look at this one measurement you were really concerned about and see where it's at when you're performing well. And then we know."

Dale Wilson  44:32

Right. And to that point, like say that you have something where it's like we're just gonna leave this on the backburner, train it every like 10 days, two weeks, and like yeah, just retouch on it. It's like the probability of you losing that ability completely or having like, precipitous drop off on it is very small. So again, it's like people are nervous about losing what they're like proud of, but it's about that buy-in to the program where if you are trusting this process, and you're believing in it, like you need to either have like confidence in your coach's decision, or confidence in your own decision from your program design, to say that, like, "I believe that this thing will stay this way because they said so or I said, so." to, like, keep that attribute around. So you should be comfortable with like, "I am decent at that." And you like own that and that portion. Like, put it out of your mind, focus on the work that needs to be done. And that way, yeah, when the program's, when the program is done, or when, somewhere in the next performance phase, or you want to just check up on what your previous like low points were, you're not so worried about it. Maybe then by the time that you're gearing up for your next like training cycle, you can re-measure it again, and usually it's right around where it was. And again, you didn't have to worry about constantly rechecking all your stuff to like, validate that you're V7 climber because your repeaters measurement is at whatever it is. Like, just seems like a lot of wasted energy to always be rechecking everything all the time. Like it's important, obviously to seek out your targets and improve those things. But you also don't want to be like micromanaging yourself, and being so nervous about that.

Kris Hampton  46:06

After like spending time looking at the measurements and, you know, listening to us all argue about them and, and trying to figure out the best way to go about this, and the language to use, and all of it... has your opinion of using measurements and climbing changed at all, since we first started doing this?

Dale Wilson  46:31

Um, not necessarily. I had the horrible misfortune of probably getting way into hangboarding training, like too early in my climbing career. So I knew that I had like, strength that I wasn't making use of in actual movement. So I, from that experience, I had a pretty good idea that climbing is about a lot more than finger strength and whatnot. So, I'm trying to think of how I could say that it has changed; my understanding of it has changed over these years.

Kris Hampton  47:02

I think one thing, one thing that was brought up early on when we were talking to you that, that I don't think you had considered at the time is kind of like the psychological component of getting these measurements. 

Dale Wilson  47:20

100 percent, yeah.

Kris Hampton  47:21

I, I've had a lot of clients who... when we first started doing these things, just collecting numbers, we were calling them tests. And I had several clients do, do one of the measurements and then say, "I did horribly on that." And I'm like, "How do you know? You have nothing to compare it to. How do you know that was bad, you know? Because it was hard?" Of course, it was hard. 

Dale Wilson  47:45

They haven't gotten their report yet or anything, they just drop off, and they're like, "Man, that was awful." 

Kris Hampton  47:48

Yeah, and, and I would get people saying,"That was terrible." And then it's the biggest number we've ever seen in that measurement. 

Dale Wilson  47:56

Right. 

Kris Hampton  47:56

And like, once we started calling them measurements instead of tests, that has dropped off a little, but there are still people who I'm like, "Let's, let's get some re-measurements." And they're like, "Oh, I'm not feeling great right now."

Dale Wilson  48:13

"I'm gonna take a rest week first."

Kris Hampton  48:14

"I'm gonna rest for a couple of weeks." And you know, I'm like, that's, that's missing the point of this, right? The point is not to wait and do your absolute best on this measurement. It's to, let's get the measurement in your everyday general life, and then we have a better idea of kind of where your baseline is. Instead of, let's let's practice for the test for a few weeks before we take it. 

Dale Wilson  48:38

Right. Yeah, I didn't anticipate people being so like self-conscious about it, I guess. I guess in my mind, it's like...

Kris Hampton  48:48

Eli did. Eli knew. He already doesn't like tests.

Dale Wilson  48:56

Yeah, I didn't anticipate people getting like so in their own head about it, because I guess I don't think of it that way. Like I don't know, maybe that's like a personal confidence thing or just how people like view themselves? Or how much value they put in like their achievements? Or, yeah, it could be, it could be a bunch of things. It seems very personal. Again, that's like a hard, hard spot as a coach also to know how people are going to respond to that when you... whether they even like elect to have measurements as part of their like planning or not. As to like, if someone's really shying away from it, is it that they're like, really intuitive and they don't need it? Or is it that they're like, very, like hyper-critical of themselves and are very Type A and like, really don't want to take that test because they feel like it's just, it's too intimidating or is somehow going to like act like an audit of who they are as a climber, and it's like going to be a negative reflection of them. Which it's not -- never is. It's just a tool for, again, like you making decisions. It's not a, it's not reflective of your value as a person in any way.

Kris Hampton  50:05

Yeah, totally. I don't, I think that's worth reiterating over and over, because a lot of people do get caught in that. And I understand it. You know, there are... I regularly remeasure things, you know, after I've gone on hiatus just working on work projects for six weeks. I'm like, "Okay, let's check in with a couple of things and just see where I'm at. And then I'll have a slightly more objective place of starting." But I can, you know, if it looks like things are really low in one area, I don't take it personal, right? It's just, "Okay, let's brush up there a little bit." Or let's climb on some smaller holds, or, you know, let's do some big powerful moves and start to feel snappy again, or whatever it is.

Dale Wilson  50:51

Like this has dropped off. Well, I haven't been training that. That makes sense. 

Kris Hampton  50:54

Yeah. And when I'm doing these like re-measures for myself, I'm not comparing them against any of our data or our charts or anything. I'm just comparing them against last time I measured, you know. When I was performing well, I know I was relatively around this area. And I'm going to measure again and see what needs to come up or what I can stop paying attention to, you know. And for me, that feels like a healthy way to interact with it. For someone else, that might be totally different. And honestly, if you're someone who's like, "I don't care what the numbers are, I just want to get better at climbing and they make me anxious," you know, don't do it. 

Dale Wilson  51:36

There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. It's like, do you need these things to make, to make decisions? I think we were talking about this a little bit yesterday in terms of like, differences between like people who are like inherently intuitive, and like kind of know what they, know how to go about like improvement. And people who are more like myself, or like systems-oriented, where it's like, I really like seeing like numbers and steady progression, just knowing where I'm at. And neither of those is inherently better than the other. They're just different approaches. Yeah. I think that's huge, and as climbing becomes like more and more quantitative, there's more and more conversation about, like, quantifying every aspect of your performance seemingly. Except for, like, climbing rocks outside.

Kris Hampton  52:22

It's interesting, because we've already created this, this like quantification of climbing, you know. 

Dale Wilson  52:30

And it doesn't work well.

Kris Hampton  52:31

And it doesn't work well. We've tried and tried to come up with a better system, and no one can come up with a better system, because it's really hard to quantify. 

Dale Wilson  52:40

Right. 

Kris Hampton  52:41

But for some reason, we want to break that down as like fine as possible. Like, and you would just have to have a million different measurements if you're, if you're going to try to do that.

Dale Wilson  52:54

Yeah. I think yeah, I don't think it necessarily like serves the purpose, either. I mean, climbing is and always has been like such a skill sport, and always will be. And...

Kris Hampton  53:07

Yes, and not just physical skill, not just like technique, but also mental skill, you know. The skill of having your life in order enough that you can actually get out to the rocks when you need to. There are so many skills involved in performing well as a rock climber that you, you can't measure in, in a really objective way.

Dale Wilson  53:34

Right. Yeah, I 100 percent agree with that. Even like, I don't know, working on the data side point, or data side of it. I think about this stuff all the time, I like seeing it, I like putting my head around it. But like, instead of seeing like a low bar on like my assessment for myself, like, I know that the thing that I need to work on most is like outdoor skill, time outside, like working things that are hard for me. I've been a weekend warrior for like my entire time rock climbing, so it's like, if it doesn't go in like two days, it doesn't go. And I know that aspect about myself. So like a good season, I think, has been like six trips for me, something like that, inside of like a fall. And it's like, I know that I'm missing that aspect of getting outside. So it's like, what's the most important thing that I need to do for my performance? I need to climb more rocks. 

Kris Hampton  54:25

Yeah. 

Dale Wilson  54:26

Again, it's that like accurate, trying to be like accurate in your self-evaluation and critically-thinking through like what your weaknesses are. If you're somebody on the complete flip side, and you always have access to, easy access to rocks, and you're getting out all the time, you got a pyramid that's two miles wide. Like maybe getting more focused on the numbers and quantitative side of it is going to be much more advantageous to that person than it is for me. 

Kris Hampton  54:50

Right. It would be interesting to look at our our data and say, you know, because I believe we do collect "How many days a year outside do you climb?" Yeah, take that number and compare it against people who have low finger strength relative to the grade they're climbing or something like that. Just to see where the number of days kind of plays in, if we can. We know that it does, you know. I've seen a lot of really strong climbers come out of the gym and their first day on slippery granite, you know, they're climbing 10 grades below what they do in the gym. So I'm 100 percent positive that time outside is a huge component of this. And number of days climbing doesn't measure it very well, but it's a start in looking at it, I think.

Dale Wilson  55:47

Yeah. Yeah, I think we'd have to look at it as like, "How many years have you been climbing?" times like, "How many days you get out?" Something like that. I know we had looked at it at one time in the beginning of doing like, just general data exploration for like, "How long have you been climbing?" And how good is that a predictor? It's not a good one.

Kris Hampton  56:03

It's not a good predictor.

Dale Wilson  56:04

Not a good predictor. It's like how long, but yeah, not so meaningful. Because again, it goes back to that like, how do you structure your time? Are you one of those people that like goes out and you just like kill and die for it every day that you're outside? Or like, I don't know, you're there with your buddies and you want to cruise 5.10 all day? Neither one of those is necessarily bad, but it's just a very different experience. And those people need different like reflection points and training for like what their goals are.

Kris Hampton  56:28

Yeah. I personally have been converted to some degree. I think I was totally against it in the beginning. I'm all for it now. I think it's a really useful tool to have, I think it's something I utilize now. And, and really enjoy utilizing with my clients, even more than I utilize it with myself. 

Dale Wilson  56:57

Takes a bit of the guesswork out.

Kris Hampton  56:58

Yeah, it takes some of the guesswork out. It, it helps them, it helps with buy-in from the client if they can look back at the last year of their training and they can see that, "Okay, I've, I've climbed harder outside, but I've also increased these numbers." And you know, it's this tangible thing they can hold on to and say, "This is increased, this is increased, this is increased." Climbing grades are all over the place. It's really tough to say you got better just because you climbed a harder grade. 

Dale Wilson  57:27

For sure.

Kris Hampton  57:28

You know? Because there are there are V7's that have been harder for me than some V10's. So I, was I, was I a better climber for climbing the 10? Or was a better climber for doing this V7 that felt way harder for me? Really tough to parse it all out like that.

Dale Wilson  57:47

Yeah, I mean, I think everybody's looking for, everybody's looking for progress and to climb stuff that's new and hard for them. But that, I think that looks different for different people also. Like some people want to like be the all-time all-arounder who can like climb V7 on any rock type or has like ticked all sorts of classics and all sorts of different types. Some people have like a very singular mindset, and they're like, "There's this one V10 that is like, it's the end-all be-all. I don't care if I climb like anything harder than V8 other than this thing." And it's like, yeah, that's a completely different game.

Kris Hampton  58:24

Yeah, totally. We were, I was just at Tension. And we were talking about the, you know, the idea of "playing the game" and what that means, and how many different games there are within this one larger sport right now. And it's, it's almost impossible to compare the different games -- they require such different things. They're, they're nearly different sports in a lot of aspects. 

Dale Wilson  58:50

For sure. 

Kris Hampton  58:55

Well, any, anybody listening who's interested in the data or interested in, you know, inputting their data into the system -- because I think it makes it more robust for everybody, we can all learn more from it. It's something we want to be open with and share and, you know, let other people look at the data and pull what they want from it. You know, maybe as this episode goes out, we figure out some easy way to share the data that we have with people. I don't even, I don't even know how that works. You know, as far as I know, it's in a giant spreadsheet. I have no idea.

Dale Wilson  59:39

I was gonna say I can either give them a database password for it, or we can send it out via like CSV or something like that. If anybody wants access to the data, like also, you can just email me. Ask me about it. Really. Like we'll, I'll hand it out. There's no secret sauce in having it. Minus all personal identifiers, of course.

Kris Hampton  59:59

Yeah, exactly. And if, you know, if somebody out there is, does want access to the data and is looking at it and find something they think is interesting, we've got a community forum that just started up. It's at community.powercompanyclimbing.com. And we would love to hear what you're finding in there or any interesting conclusions you've drawn from looking at the data, because the more we all learn from it, the better. I think that's been our goal from day one is to make this a thing that the whole community can use. So alright, well, most mostly, I'm thanking Eli here, because Eli's been the star of this conversation, but...

Dale Wilson  1:00:45

He's a little sleepy. He's kind of staring at the microphone, though.

Kris Hampton  1:00:47

Yeah. But I'm glad we got to do this. We've been wanting to sit down and kind of talk about these things for a while. So yeah, thanks for sharing. Thanks for taking the time.

Dale Wilson  1:00:56

Yeah, no problem. My pleasure.

Kris Hampton  1:01:00

Thanks to Dale not only for sitting down for this chat while also doing dad duty, but for bringing the perspective that he does and for being a valuable part of this team. We've recently updated and released the numbers that we generally look for at different levels of climber, and we now have enough women in our dataset to separate those numbers by gender. You can check those out, see where your numbers fit, on our website. And you can also have Dale run the numbers for you through our Mini-Assessment. It's a great place to start if you're considering training. Links are right there in the show notes in your pocket supercomputers. If you want more from us, consider becoming a Patron. For as little as $3, you'll get two bonus episodes every single month. You can learn, grow, and excel with us at powercompanyclimbing.com where you'll find links to the Power Company Climbing Academy and the Knowledge + Community Hub. We're on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube @powercompanyclimbing. But never Twitter. Because we don't tweet, we scream like eagles.