Influence of On-Sight and Flash Climbing Styles on Advanced Climbers' Route Completion for Bouldering.

Jesús Morenas,Lucía Flores,Sergio López-García,Vicente Luis Del Campo

doi:10.3390/ijerph182312594

Abstract

Route previewing has been established as a critical parameter in indoor climbing performance, as it could determine the success or failure in ascending the route. We addressed the effect of different types of previews on output climbing performance. Twenty-one advanced climbers (7b and 7c+ climbing grade) were required to complete 18 routes, rated at 6c, according to the French Rating Scale of Difficulty. Each climber previewed the route under three conditions: “No-previewing”, “video-model previewing”, and “real-model previewing”. Output climbing performance was assessed in terms of route completion. The results showed differences on output climbing performance between types of preview. Specifically, the climbers achieved more successful attempts at climbing to the “Top” of the wall when inspecting the route with the “real-model previewing” condition, compared to the other conditions of preview. On the contrary, the climbers displayed more failed attempts in climbing the route with the “on-sight” condition, compared to the “flash” styles (“video-model” and “real-model”). The preview of the route, including performance of a real/video-projected model manipulating climbing holds, seems to increase the opportunities to climb the boulder successfully, attuning climbers to information specifying ascending actions. Climbing coaches should reinforce the design of representative training, using flash styles, to promote movement solutions for route completion.

Highlights

Sport climbing has gained popularity in society and wider practice among the population during recent decades, achieving recent inclusion in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic program [1]
We considered that the lack of augmented visual information for the on-sight condition would conceal from climbers those affordances needed for route completion, available from the observation of real and/or video-projected specific climbing movements performed by an expert climbing model
The nonparametric tests revealed that the data of the dependent variable did not display a normal distribution for the route previewing

Summary

Introduction

Sport climbing has gained popularity in society and wider practice among the population during recent decades, achieving recent inclusion in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic program [1]. In lead, climbing ability is determined by the handhold use on the climbing wall, and the total time spent to complete the route. In boulder, climbing ability is determined by the number of routes (commonly known as problems or boulders) completed and the total number of attempts. Expert climbers showed higher levels of planning performance and memorizing of climbing movements, compared to novice climbers. These cognitive skills could underlie the solution to “problems” while ascending the route [7]. Some studies have shown that psychological variables could be crucial in achieving high-performance levels in sport climbing, such as problem-solving ability and movement sequence recall [9]. The type of route previewing strategy would determine the climbers’ gaze behaviour (e.g., number of visual patterns and fixation durations) [10]

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Discussion

Conclusion