Drag in speed climbing : I am an aerospace engineering student so I thought I would do some back of the napkin math for drag in speed climbing. Average speed 3 m/s (15 meters route in 5 seconds) CD drag coefficient: probably between 0.4/0.5, but since I have no data, let's take it way higher, 0.7 Frontal surface: 0.3 meters×0.5 meters, the area which goes against the air D=0.5*rho*S*Cd*v²=0.64 N Which is about 66 grams 0.15 pounds That's a value one can think of as additional weight to carry So no, air resistance will probably never be a problem for speed climbing!
Thank you so much for the math. It's been a while since I've taken a physics course and the math is a bit beyond me now. But yeah every speed climber I've talked to agrees as well just by feel that they're not being slowed by drag, but now we have the math to back it up!
@@AlbertOkay To put this in terms of energy. The energy expended is known as work done and it's represented by this formula W = Fd, where W is the energy (work done), F is the force and d is the distance that force is applied over. The force due to gravity is F = mg where m is the mass and g is gravitation acceleration (about 9.81 m/s/s). Using this we can calculate the minimum energy required to lift yourself up 15 metres. Say your mass, m = 70 kg so the Force, F = 70 * 9.81 = 690 Newtons so the energy, W = 690 * 15 = 10300 Joules. If we work out the energy spent on drag based on the 0.64 N the other guy calculated we get W = 0.64 * 15 = 10 Joules so by far the biggest factor is the actual climb itself. Awesome video though! Your content is fascinating even for someone like myself who doesn't even climb!
Wow, keep it up, Sorry for this joke but, this guy climbing be like, ok x14m per seconds, yx2|=xfrotal 360 heelhook, toegrabb460, jump 60° diagonal kick rotates me 12° and then I can grab the first hold
"If you've seen my beta break videos" as if that wasn't the whole reason people like me, who have hardly been on a climbing wall, are watching all your videos! The quality is high and seeing how climbers solve problems differently is awesome! Keep crushing it, Albert!
13k subs is a cruel number for a channel with such well-made, consistent and frequent content. Keep up the good work and soon I reckon you'll be one of the most popular climbing channels out there!
Amazing video, Albert! I normally don't click nor have the patience to sit through a 15+ min video, but this video is an exception. Speed climbing looks very cool and I hope I can try it out someday!
Albert your videos are spectacular and provide such awesome analysis. Definitely deserving of many more subscribers and would hope to see you as a guest analyst (or permanent!) as the sport grows within the mainstream.
Fun fact: some czech speed climber (whose name I can't remember right now) actually invented a special speed climbing suit which supposedly is more aerodynamic. And since climbers have to wear their countrie's uniform when competing, Adam Ondra has to speed climb in this suit.
I was surprised when you hypothesized about big brands entering the market for climbing gear and didn't mention 5.10 being owned by adidas. Anyways, really enjoyed the insight into this beta break!
It's funny because I actually was just talking to Adidas's brand rep and outdoor manager a few months ago at the pan american championship and I totally forgot LOL
Albert, excellent video! I wonder, if you were to find the best climbers at specific segments of the speed climb, and combine them, would that already be under 5 seconds? Similar to a "sum of best" in speedruns vs the actual time, most WRs may not be 100% clean, perhaps if a clean run happened, and it was as good in each section as possible, what would that time be I wonder.
Interesting! Don't know much about speed climbing, so i learned a lot. Liked the interview a lot! And the idea about UL, aerodynamic gear/clothing was cool! Most of my climbing friends will just take off their shirt, so that may be the more economical option to reduce drag and drop a few ounces lol
Having only had 3 attempts on a speedwall (as I got injured when I went to one), it is fun to do. Watching one guy do it in under 8s was good to watch, but I'm sure as more people give it a go, 5s will be broken in a few years. Keep up the good work with the videos.
Speed climbing would probably be the most interesting & entertaining event if they used a different route every time like they do for every other event. The only reason it's the same every time is so that they can have a world record time.
Jun Yong to many, calling it climbing is kind of an insult to the rest of the sport. The range of speed route difficulties is zero, unlike the insane variance in styles and difficulties for trad, ice, bouldering and lead. It’s not creative, it doesn’t have dynos or flexibility or much static strength or endurance, etc. It doesn’t have very many traits from other climbing disciplines.
Dude I totally did not match your face to your voice at all. Took me a minute to get the words to match what you look like😂 love the videos, keep em coming!
Body type & technique. 🧐🤩 Awesome statement by John. Great video. 🙏So informative and like the idea of hypothetical as sport is still new and nobody truly knows. La Sportiva 4.99 shoes are sick.
Albert Ok Yep absolutely. What’s funny is when Sender One had grand opening, they had a mock Olympic comp of all 3 categories. I was Team Captain and took my daughter, and 3 other girls on the climbing team to compete (12-15 years old; Team Anchor Clankers). Crazy that of 26 teams, we placed 2nd only to Meagan Martin’s team. The girls were so stoked to have won almost $150 each in gift cards, bags, shirts, etc. They got pics with Meagan, too. Other world class climbers were there, too (Chris Sharma, Brooke Raboutou, John Long, etc). That was an awesome experience. I think i got 32 seconds on speed.
Interesting video! I don't get the Nike shoes/kipchoge comparison though. You're comparing a sprint event to an endurance event and a horizontal plane of movement to a vertical one. John's analysis of drag was spot on. Resistance scales with velocity squared so drag is a much bigger thing in sports where you go fast. 15m in 5 sec is 3m/s or 6.7mph.
Hey Patrick, I was just referring to the technology used in his shoes and how revolutionary it was, if big companies applied the same effort and research to climbing we might get new shoes and equipment that can help shatter new records! :)
@@AlbertOkay fair enough. I guess it's just harder for me to imagine what technology would do to improve times. In running its much more of an elastic collision between foot and ground. As I understand maximizing energy return from footstrike is why the vapor flys are so good for endurance running. In comparison, for climbing it seems like the foot has very little velocity towards a hold as it has to move up to get to the hold and then down to apply force. The analysis of the speed climbing shoes at the beginning was interesting, but it think record improvements are going to come from athletic improvements and not from technology. Thanks for the video! I've never speed climbed or really watched it, but maybe one day. It looks kind of fun.
Also the interview really highlighted that climbing is not a well optimized sport, because compared to say running, it's relatively small and new. With greater competition comes greater optimization. Another example might be comparing the shoes to track flats that have spikes.
@@patrickfitzgerald6073 I'd also point out that you might be underestimating how much the legs contribute to the upward force of the speed climbers. While the climbers going pretty much straight vertical are not reaching as high of a velocity, they are accelerating nearly as much as a comparable sprinter, but they are just constantly fighting the force of gravity directly. The majority of the acceleration is generated by the legs, which means that the foot contact with the wall is going to have a massive impact on efficiency. The spikes for a sprinter are used to mitigate the limit of friction. The same friction limits apply to climbing, with the addition of the holds to push off of. A fully optimized speed route would be a lot like a 100m sprinter who has a track that consists of numerous starting blocks. If you watch a sprinter come off the blocks, their goal is to extend how long they are low to the ground to maximize their early acceleration. In climbing you have the same idea, because more directly vertical you are, the more efficiently you'll go up the wall. Which means every time you contact the wall, you're trying to maximize the upward force and minimize any drag. The same principle applies as in the marathon shoes. If you reduce 10 grams off the weight of your shoes, that 10 grams adds up to a compounding energy saving over the span of a marathon, because every step is slightly lighter. Similarly in climbing, when you reduce the drag on the toe, you optimize the upward force. That tiny improvement for each step compounds in a similar way, and results in that .05 or .1 second difference. Five or six such improvements are the difference between 4.9 and 5.4.
The reason the highest level of swim skins was banded was not that it was too good. It was that not all countries could afford to equip their participants with it. The same was true for lower levels of competition. It is not necessarily that the equipment is too good, it is that people who can afford it have an unfair advantage. If that equipment had been made available to all Olympic athletes for a period long enough to train with it they would have allowed it.
Bit of a factual nitpick, the lzr suit wasn’t banned, however it was restricted for men and women. For men it can’t rise above our belly buttons and can’t go below our knee. I don’t know about women, but I know the can’t have their suits below their knee and can’t have sleeves(think tank top straps).
It's could be done in 4.45. holds and the line is the biggest mistake everybody's makes stop looking at the Left side. If you could pull 100 dynamic moves on the right holds 4 secs may be the limit
My english isn't the best, so it might be I understood something wrong, but: Didn't the video Albert "criticised" say that a 4.50 might be possible, and Albert said a 5 flat would be possible. So what's the point of the video? Both said a 5sec run might be possible.
4.5 not possible, but this video was too explore the options to make 5 seconds flat possible. I'm agreeing with the video in everything but 4.5 seconds being possible
I'm slow! I've tried it a few times, the fastest I've gotten was 6 seconds on the 10m wall and 9-10 on the 15m wall. Would love to train it more but there's no way I have easy access to where I am
@@TheValinov Haha, I felt slow when everyone around me was going 8 seconds or faster!! I want to go back and train it again and try and get 8 seconds or faster one day
I dont think aerodynamics play a big role in speed climbing^^ the top speed climbers reach is about 10-11 km/h, at these speeds drag is something you don't need to worry about;)
Drag in speed climbing : I am an aerospace engineering student so I thought I would do some back of the napkin math for drag in speed climbing.
Average speed 3 m/s (15 meters route in 5 seconds)
CD drag coefficient: probably between 0.4/0.5, but since I have no data, let's take it way higher, 0.7
Frontal surface: 0.3 meters×0.5 meters, the area which goes against the air
D=0.5*rho*S*Cd*v²=0.64 N
Which is about 66 grams
0.15 pounds
That's a value one can think of as additional weight to carry
So no, air resistance will probably never be a problem for speed climbing!
Thank you so much for the math. It's been a while since I've taken a physics course and the math is a bit beyond me now. But yeah every speed climber I've talked to agrees as well just by feel that they're not being slowed by drag, but now we have the math to back it up!
@@AlbertOkay To put this in terms of energy. The energy expended is known as work done and it's represented by this formula W = Fd, where W is the energy (work done), F is the force and d is the distance that force is applied over.
The force due to gravity is F = mg where m is the mass and g is gravitation acceleration (about 9.81 m/s/s). Using this we can calculate the minimum energy required to lift yourself up 15 metres. Say your mass, m = 70 kg so the Force, F = 70 * 9.81 = 690 Newtons so the energy, W = 690 * 15 = 10300 Joules.
If we work out the energy spent on drag based on the 0.64 N the other guy calculated we get W = 0.64 * 15 = 10 Joules so by far the biggest factor is the actual climb itself.
Awesome video though! Your content is fascinating even for someone like myself who doesn't even climb!
Wow, keep it up,
Sorry for this joke but, this guy climbing be like, ok x14m per seconds, yx2|=xfrotal 360 heelhook, toegrabb460, jump 60° diagonal kick rotates me 12° and then I can grab the first hold
@@hethethjurjk9208 I wish! My climb sounds more like "ugh" "argh" "STUMB"(the sound of falling)
@@pengud485 haha, my biggest issue is fear. U have any advice?
"If you've seen my beta break videos" as if that wasn't the whole reason people like me, who have hardly been on a climbing wall, are watching all your videos! The quality is high and seeing how climbers solve problems differently is awesome! Keep crushing it, Albert!
13k subs is a cruel number for a channel with such well-made, consistent and frequent content. Keep up the good work and soon I reckon you'll be one of the most popular climbing channels out there!
Trying my best!
@@wuzz makes it all the more impressive, no?
Amazing video, Albert! I normally don't click nor have the patience to sit through a 15+ min video, but this video is an exception. Speed climbing looks very cool and I hope I can try it out someday!
Speed climbing is such a good cardio exercise! Definitely worth a try and thanks for watching it all :)
@Albert Ok oh wow!! You guys know each other! I should have figured you two awesome ppl would be friends!
Today, two years after this video, Veddriq Leonardo from Indonesia just did it in 4.984 s at the IFSC World Cup in Seoul. 🤯
I'M SO HAPPY
Another thing worth mentioning is that with popularity comes participants, which allows for more potential athletic freaks to enter the sport, too.
That wired video introduced me to climbing!
Nice!
Always glad to have another person in the climbing community
Not speed climbing I hope
Cool
Me too.
I absolutely love all your videos. Please keep all of these and the beta break videos coming
Albert your videos are spectacular and provide such awesome analysis. Definitely deserving of many more subscribers and would hope to see you as a guest analyst (or permanent!) as the sport grows within the mainstream.
Fun fact: some czech speed climber (whose name I can't remember right now) actually invented a special speed climbing suit which supposedly is more aerodynamic. And since climbers have to wear their countrie's uniform when competing, Adam Ondra has to speed climb in this suit.
The new record came in and they climbed the speed wall in UNDER 5 seconds!!
I was surprised when you hypothesized about big brands entering the market for climbing gear and didn't mention 5.10 being owned by adidas.
Anyways, really enjoyed the insight into this beta break!
I was thinking the same. They even started re-branding lately, sticking the Adidas name/logo on their shoes as well as the 5.10 logo.
It's funny because I actually was just talking to Adidas's brand rep and outdoor manager a few months ago at the pan american championship and I totally forgot LOL
Albert, excellent video! I wonder, if you were to find the best climbers at specific segments of the speed climb, and combine them, would that already be under 5 seconds? Similar to a "sum of best" in speedruns vs the actual time, most WRs may not be 100% clean, perhaps if a clean run happened, and it was as good in each section as possible, what would that time be I wonder.
Interesting! Don't know much about speed climbing, so i learned a lot. Liked the interview a lot! And the idea about UL, aerodynamic gear/clothing was cool! Most of my climbing friends will just take off their shirt, so that may be the more economical option to reduce drag and drop a few ounces lol
Great video, as usual !
I think aerodynamics are not important at all on such a short route.
Much like it's more important for the marathon than for sprints
Having only had 3 attempts on a speedwall (as I got injured when I went to one), it is fun to do. Watching one guy do it in under 8s was good to watch, but I'm sure as more people give it a go, 5s will be broken in a few years. Keep up the good work with the videos.
Great video, keep it up man!
Keep the videos coming good sir, love the effort and production value you bring to climbing. Love the beta break series
Speed climbing would probably be the most interesting & entertaining event if they used a different route every time like they do for every other event. The only reason it's the same every time is so that they can have a world record time.
the "Are you focused on the wind? Or are you focused on the climbing?" line was so good
I hate speed climbing. But you’re OK so I liked the video
Why? It's an entirely different discipline that focuses on agility and power. Plus I love the flowz 😍
Jun Yong to many, calling it climbing is kind of an insult to the rest of the sport. The range of speed route difficulties is zero, unlike the insane variance in styles and difficulties for trad, ice, bouldering and lead. It’s not creative, it doesn’t have dynos or flexibility or much static strength or endurance, etc. It doesn’t have very many traits from other climbing disciplines.
@@letsprogress4124 I mean it does have dynos, it just doesn't look like a dyno when speed climbers go up so fast
@@letsprogress4124 I'd say it's actually mostly dynos
@@markkealy4417 ok
Dude I totally did not match your face to your voice at all. Took me a minute to get the words to match what you look like😂 love the videos, keep em coming!
6:19 so would you say they never found a foothold in the market
Nice lol!!
Body type & technique. 🧐🤩 Awesome statement by John. Great video. 🙏So informative and like the idea of hypothetical as sport is still new and nobody truly knows. La Sportiva 4.99 shoes are sick.
Jon!!! For sure we have to try speed climbing when I come back to Cali. You'll have a blast and it'll get you really tired haha
Albert Ok Yep absolutely. What’s funny is when Sender One had grand opening, they had a mock Olympic comp of all 3 categories. I was Team Captain and took my daughter, and 3 other girls on the climbing team to compete (12-15 years old; Team Anchor Clankers). Crazy that of 26 teams, we placed 2nd only to Meagan Martin’s team. The girls were so stoked to have won almost $150 each in gift cards, bags, shirts, etc. They got pics with Meagan, too. Other world class climbers were there, too (Chris Sharma, Brooke Raboutou, John Long, etc). That was an awesome experience. I think i got 32 seconds on speed.
@@jonkrause6714 So glad you posted the epic pics from the event, wish I could have been there!
Interesting video! I don't get the Nike shoes/kipchoge comparison though. You're comparing a sprint event to an endurance event and a horizontal plane of movement to a vertical one. John's analysis of drag was spot on. Resistance scales with velocity squared so drag is a much bigger thing in sports where you go fast. 15m in 5 sec is 3m/s or 6.7mph.
Hey Patrick, I was just referring to the technology used in his shoes and how revolutionary it was, if big companies applied the same effort and research to climbing we might get new shoes and equipment that can help shatter new records! :)
@@AlbertOkay fair enough. I guess it's just harder for me to imagine what technology would do to improve times. In running its much more of an elastic collision between foot and ground. As I understand maximizing energy return from footstrike is why the vapor flys are so good for endurance running. In comparison, for climbing it seems like the foot has very little velocity towards a hold as it has to move up to get to the hold and then down to apply force. The analysis of the speed climbing shoes at the beginning was interesting, but it think record improvements are going to come from athletic improvements and not from technology.
Thanks for the video! I've never speed climbed or really watched it, but maybe one day. It looks kind of fun.
Also the interview really highlighted that climbing is not a well optimized sport, because compared to say running, it's relatively small and new. With greater competition comes greater optimization. Another example might be comparing the shoes to track flats that have spikes.
@@kalm4th oh yeah modern track spikes/tracks/ starting blocks are so much better than the leather shoes/cinder tracks/ holes people used to use.
@@patrickfitzgerald6073 I'd also point out that you might be underestimating how much the legs contribute to the upward force of the speed climbers. While the climbers going pretty much straight vertical are not reaching as high of a velocity, they are accelerating nearly as much as a comparable sprinter, but they are just constantly fighting the force of gravity directly. The majority of the acceleration is generated by the legs, which means that the foot contact with the wall is going to have a massive impact on efficiency.
The spikes for a sprinter are used to mitigate the limit of friction. The same friction limits apply to climbing, with the addition of the holds to push off of. A fully optimized speed route would be a lot like a 100m sprinter who has a track that consists of numerous starting blocks. If you watch a sprinter come off the blocks, their goal is to extend how long they are low to the ground to maximize their early acceleration. In climbing you have the same idea, because more directly vertical you are, the more efficiently you'll go up the wall. Which means every time you contact the wall, you're trying to maximize the upward force and minimize any drag.
The same principle applies as in the marathon shoes. If you reduce 10 grams off the weight of your shoes, that 10 grams adds up to a compounding energy saving over the span of a marathon, because every step is slightly lighter. Similarly in climbing, when you reduce the drag on the toe, you optimize the upward force. That tiny improvement for each step compounds in a similar way, and results in that .05 or .1 second difference. Five or six such improvements are the difference between 4.9 and 5.4.
14:20 Are there any sources for the suggestion that the wall will be changed every four years?
the Indonesians are closing in to the 5.00 what an exciting time!
to be honest they did say "Almost Impossible" lol
Please make another video as the world record now is 5.009s on 8 July 2022 at the Chamonix, ifsc worldcup
The reason the highest level of swim skins was banded was not that it was too good. It was that not all countries could afford to equip their participants with it. The same was true for lower levels of competition. It is not necessarily that the equipment is too good, it is that people who can afford it have an unfair advantage. If that equipment had been made available to all Olympic athletes for a period long enough to train with it they would have allowed it.
Bit of a factual nitpick, the lzr suit wasn’t banned, however it was restricted for men and women. For men it can’t rise above our belly buttons and can’t go below our knee. I don’t know about women, but I know the can’t have their suits below their knee and can’t have sleeves(think tank top straps).
You're correct! The full lzr suit is banned, but not the lzr pants. So I thought it was okay to say the suit is banned!
That's effectively a ban though,
Who’s here after the new 5.2 record
World Record is 5.20. It's getting closer to 5 second flat.
Climb outside and climb at a time of an upeund?
It is POSSIBLE, Indonesian climbers had done it!
It's could be done in 4.45. holds and the line is the biggest mistake everybody's makes stop looking at the Left side. If you could pull 100 dynamic moves on the right holds 4 secs may be the limit
My english isn't the best, so it might be I understood something wrong, but: Didn't the video Albert "criticised" say that a 4.50 might be possible, and Albert said a 5 flat would be possible. So what's the point of the video? Both said a 5sec run might be possible.
4.5 not possible, but this video was too explore the options to make 5 seconds flat possible. I'm agreeing with the video in everything but 4.5 seconds being possible
@@AlbertOkay Oh thanks a lot for the quick response! I do got now what you mean :)
@@Jupblup :)
the record right now is 4.85 sec
Adidas bought Five Ten.
the real question is: how fast are you, albert? :D
I'm slow! I've tried it a few times, the fastest I've gotten was 6 seconds on the 10m wall and 9-10 on the 15m wall. Would love to train it more but there's no way I have easy access to where I am
@@AlbertOkay slow? 9-10s is still faster then 90% of the climbers. maybe even better =) my best so far was 42s!
XD
@@TheValinov Haha, I felt slow when everyone around me was going 8 seconds or faster!! I want to go back and train it again and try and get 8 seconds or faster one day
Anti gravity shoes
I dont think aerodynamics play a big role in speed climbing^^ the top speed climbers reach is about 10-11 km/h, at these speeds drag is something you don't need to worry about;)
I thought Reza Alipour invented the skip of the 4th grip not tomoa :/
And then they dubbed it the tomoa skip just to piss him off? :D
He did, but the step up Dyno to skip the hold was invented by tomoa
Tomoa skips the far left foothold below the 4th hold. Took me a couple rewatches to notice what the difference was.
Yep, it's super quick but he goes straight up using a step up Dyno!
also reza puts his right foot on the 3 hold while tomoa places his left
I think we could break the beta and find the 4.5s solution by using AI and making it run millions of simulations to find the optimal solution
That would be so sick! Maybe I'll look into an AI system!
You know, just like, but like, like like
Cool video. Unsubbed
rip Olympics :(
It'll still happen though next year!
Hey you’re cute 😚