Performance
Cardiorespiratory demands of competitive rock climbing (Callender et al, 2021)
Key Take Aways
✅ The cardio respiratory demands in elite comp bouldering are substantial
✅ Peak VO2 was 71% of VO2max for males and 82% of VO2max for females
✅ Peak HR was 91% of HRmax for males and 83% of HRmax for females
✅ 23% of climbing time was above GET (Gas Exchange Threshold: a calculated value, aka ventilatory anaerobic tolerance), and the majority of climbing was just below this threshold
✅ All cardio respiratory measures including oxygen uptake, minute ventilation, heart rate were at baseline within 5 minutes except blood lactose and RPE
✅ This means that in terms of cardio respiratory measures, athletes were able to fully recovery BETWEEN boulders in a competition but full recovery was not achieved DURING a particular boulder
Population
Elite male and female boulderers
Summary
How important is cardiovascular fitness in elite bouldering competitions? This is an important question as comp bouldering utilizes the onsight format, which is under considerable time constraint, potentially limiting meaningful recovery
Little is known about the cardio respiratory demands of elite bouldering, however 2 studies observed a high % of age predicted max heart rates (92% and 93%)
Callender et al sought to characterize the cardio respiratory demands of elite level boulderers (7 males, 4 females) in a competition setting
Future research should focus on whether high cardio respiratory fitness is a predictor of boulder performance and male/ female meaningful differences in cardio respiratory demands in bouldering
CItation
Callender NA, Hayes TN, Tiller NB. Cardiorespiratory demands of competitive rock climbing. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2021 Feb;46(2):161-168
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