Thats really original study, thanks a lot man, really appreciate your curiosity and sharing!

'Some guy' named Emil Abrahamson? Comte in Mani, Emil is practically famous in the climbing KZfaq universe. ;p

good job mani ! it make sens for me :) great demonstration .... ! all the best for 2020 !

That’s really an amazing discovery!! And thanks for sharing! :)

I dig it, Mani. Good upload. I'll be keeping an eye on a follow up to this.

I think you resolved the controversity in original video, good job, man! :-)

Truly fascinating!

This was fun to watch 🙌🏼

itd be dope to see this repeated with a host of climbers - do grip strength and weight measurements and see how they perform . great post dude.

Wow, Mani wirklich super cool erklärt und aufgebaut! 😀

Dude, really nice studio and video, keep going

Amazing conclusion after your very well done experiment with a nice scientific approach. Thanks a lot for it, mate. A really very, very interesting work, with a definitely revealing conclusion!!!.... I wouldn't have never imagined that. Thanks again!!!

Mani! Epic stuff.

In physics, the friction generated on a surface increases as the force applied to it increases. Technique is the variable that can help overcome the disadvantage caused by the lighter force applied to that surface, but does not always hold true. Great demo!

I love me some Mani the scientist videos!

Fascinating!

Thanks for the video! So well timed as I was attempting the 45 yesterday, utterly perplexed why I couldnt stay on them for even a second, while I can hold the 35 for 20 secs, while using more a crimp style grip. I'm a smaller climber at 5'2" 125 lbs. This all makes so much sense!

Nice work Mani. A good examination of the variables, and the findings. And a graphical analysis. Like! Ha ha.

Very very interesting finding, I would imagine one might find the same (or similar) result on the sloping macros/volumes often found on slappy problems at the gym.. (both feet and hands) it actually explains a lot of things. Intriguing finding 😊

Them slippers Mani hahaha great vid, very analytical as always :-)

Amazing information

I noticed a similar effect on a sport route. The hold was a right hand side pull sloper. It could be held easily standing on the right foot only; with the left foot dangling. With my centre of gravity to the left of the foothold, my body was wanting to rotate anti-clockwise and this was generating force, hence friction on the right hand side pull sloper. Placing a my left foot on the wall had the effect of reducing the force at the right hand sloper making it unholdable!

Very interesting results.

Very interesting! Never thought being too light could be a detrimental factor in holding sloupers. Maybe that explains why I'm so bad at them haha (55kg here)

Very interesting!!! Thanks

Hmm I watched your first one and then I tried it at the gym and found hanging on them not really that hard. I thought I had strong fingers but nope it's just because I'm much heavier. That's really interesting but I think you're on to something here. Awesome work Mani

Really interesting!

Could you one day test it again, but this time with weight vest and extra weight attributed as evenly as possible all over the body? Since right now the one possible alternative explanation for your discovery is that maybe all of your extra weight now is pulling you hard from one specific spot and hence changes your body position and that is the thing that actually improves hand/finger leverages/angle and grip. Hope it makes sense what I'm saying here, english not my first language :P

What a banger episode

crazy stuff!! es hat sich wiedermal gelohnt aus dem Bett aurzustehen 😉

When we gonna see the Mani & Emil collab? Great video.

Your test and advice is bang on! I weigh 150lbs and can hold the sloper grip when in half crimp. Terrible in the other positions. I think you're 100% right with being able to maximize friction by going in to half crimp for my weight and hand size. .

Hi Mani, great video. This is a very anecdotal observation, but I also noticed a similar pattern in smearing and stemming. As a big climber (104kg), I noticed that my extra weight seems to add more confidence when applying these techniques because I can really drive my weight into the wall for that added friction. I noticed that many of my lighter climbing partners seem to have trouble with similar moves, but then again, this is just an observation.

All climbing literature has to be re-written :P Happy 2020 everyone!

Very informative

Thanks for the amazing insight on sloper holding technique! Being a rather fat guy for a climber after applying the 'crimpy' way of treating slopers I was able to crash a couple of problems I was struggling with for like a month in a single session!

I would say please block out the annoying complainers, but in this case it lead to an extremely interesting discovery haha. It's cool you're able to channel this type of energy into positive exploration. Also what a clever hypothesis, I would have never ever considered that adding weight would actually increase your ability to hold a sloper!

I also think that when you add more weight you move your center of gravity. Your center of gravity go right under the sloper which helps you to hold the sloper.

beautiful indeed

This is an interesting study. I have a theory that seems logical and also explains why adding weight helps. Adding weight does two things: 1 - it lowers your center of gravity, 2 - it shifts your body slightly forward under the hangboard. With the center of gravity lower and shifted forward there is more pressure and friction applied to the hold. Added weight helped you achieve this but if you could shift your weight under the hangboard (without adding weight) you would achieve the same results. But adding weight is much easier than having someone push you from behind every time you train lol. As far as removing weight with a pulley system: it makes your center of balance higher and ensures that you can not shift your weight under the hold therefore making it harder to hold. I hope this was helpful information, and thanks for sharing your video!

Great video, I also find it hard to hang on the slopers (Beastmaker 1000 though). Also, I experienced the same thing Kwok Ho Wan mentioned, using your core and kinda pulling yourself down and backwards.

very interesting!

Woah, interesting! I don't think I ever would have guessed that

This makes sense. The friction force between two surfaces is not related to contact area, so larger hands might not add any value, heavier weight will on the other hand. But this also means that open-hand and half crimp should be equally useful from a physical perspective. Maybe half crimp changes the direction that the force is applied to create more friction.

very interesting questions. Though from the physics point of view, both friction (the "upward" force) and the gravity (the "downward" force) scale linearly with the weight of the climber. So if you add weight to have more friction, you also have to lift more weight, therefore it should not be easier to hang with added weight. I would guess that it has something to do with the mass distribution of the body and the "direction" of the gripping force. only the "gripping" force perpendicular to the surface of the sloper will actually create friction, but since this is at 45° towards the force that is pulling you down, it is very hard to do. Mani with weight, or compared to a taller climber have different weight distributions, which could affect the ability to produce the force in this 45° angle. It would therefore be very interesting to play around with body positioning, or adding weight at different parts of the body (e.g. feet vs. weightvest). Would be very cool if you further investigate this Mani ;)

Collab with SmarterEveryDay when?

Super interesting video! :O

Mani! So nice to revisit the old videos! I have a theory, when you add weight, the weight is slightly forward so it shifts your centre of gravity forward towards the hold making it easier.

This makes sense because the formula for friction is miu×r where miu is the coefficient of friction of the surface and r is the reaction force ( in this case the vector would have to be resolved due to the 45° angle) with greater weight r increases and so the overall friction force is greater

2:18 Mani on the DAILY! Someone’s an LUI fan.

I think the big thing with finger tecnique is ensuring as little as possible force is being applied on the corner of the hold, as this force pushes the fingers off. So half crimp takes away force from lower down the fingers (second pad) and puts it into the front pad and the middle of the hold. This also explains why bigger fingers help, as the longer your finger is the smaller the percentage of finger that is actually on the corner of the hold, allowing them to have a higher percentage of finger on productive parts of the hold. It would be interesting to test these big handed climbers on harder slopers (at their limit) and see if crimping the sloper allows them to perform better.

Love the lui marco reference

Very interesting video. I was wondering about this issue some time ago and then I found your video. Maybe I will try to reproduce it and see whether I can provider further evidence for your study :D ;)

I do think that because the direction of the wood grain is facing the opposite direction there is less surface friction. For example in ours, the wood is cupped facing the climber and is not so difficult to hold.

Frictional contact mechanics FTW. Interesting!

I felt too the slopers are easier when you are heavier. For me worked for improving in slopers, reducing the angle progressively with overload.

When you're climbing you need to create tension (which is like adding weight), especially on overhangs. So I would think that being light is still better, even on slopers

At the end of the video I realized this is something I had figured out intuitively. On really bad slopers you'll often fall off if you put too much weight on your feet, such as when you move to another hold especially if you're jumping.

The pulley pulls you forward a small amount because it is not directly above your center of mass. With each experiment you changed your center of gravity and that will change the lever and force on the sloper.

Great Video Mani, whats that round red ball in your local gym called, i need to get one too to reach my hangboard. Thanks for your response =)

Whoa!

Very interesting clip. I wonder if you reach for a sloper if taking a foot off (counter-intuitive, but adds weight to the hand on the sloper) would help?

When I try to hold those slopers, I feel like I'm holding them untill my lower body swings back behind my hands (I hope this is clear enough...). Then I immediatly pop out. Adding weight the way you do it lower your center of gravity. I think it may add stability and decrease the swing. Do you feel this swing when you pop out Mani ?

Very interesting! So the only option for us light people is to try one-handers on the beastmaker instead of two-hand deadhangs :)

for the people who are wondering why, its physics. the frictional force = normal force + coefficient of friction. if you add weight your normal force goes up and so does the frictional force. from this it can be concluded that the heavier you are, the more power you bring to the hold. and therefore lingers better on friction-sensitive holds

to explain the reason why this happens, physically friction is constructed by 2 factors one is the frictional coefficient multiplied by the force, the greater the mass the greater the force

You confirmed my suspicions, at 116 lbs it is frustrating. I have loaded some slopers, added body weight by pulling myself down with the toe. Maybe I need a weight vest for some routes :P

That's quite a 'massive' difference

It could have something to do with the center of mass being lower, getting you closer to 'the wall' and under the sloper.

Actually really mindblowing. First time in history of youtube that I clicked on a "mindblowing" video and got a real mindblow haha :D I had a weird thing happening in my climbing gym with the 45 sloppers. Just as you explained, its more moist in gyms and just for fun I had a weightwest on me and found it okaish to hang there for maybe 3-4 secs? After several months i tried it again and was very confused that i couldnt even hang there for a sec. Now the weightwest and maybe a good conditionday is the explanation.

A luimarco connaisseur, I see. I approve ;)

Very interesting experiment! Well done! Little note: When you remove weight using the pulley are you sure the rope connected to the weight isn’t (slightly) pushing your lower body backwards. Thus, making it even harder to hold on

I think that bigger hands could help find a better position on a sloper. Being tall could help shifting the weight on the hold, and being heavier is and advantage in registrazione case :)

Let's take a look at physics of the inclined plane. The force which causes a body on the inclined plane to slip down is given by FH = m*g*sin(alpha), where alpha is the angle of the plane. The normal force is given by FN = m*g*cos(alpha). FN multiplied by the coefficient of friction gives us the force that resists FH (FR = m*g*cos(alpha)*coefficient_friction). So, now we can look for what happens when both of the forces are the same, basically the equilibrium at which you are juuust resting and not slipping down the plane: m*g*sin(alpha) = m*g*cos(alpha)*coefficient_friction We see that m*g can be removed from the equations, which gives us: sin(alpha) = cos*(alpha)*coefficient_friction This can be rearranged to: sin(alpha) / cos(alpha) = coefficient_friction tan(alpha) = coeffictient friction If we plug in 45 degrees for alpha, we get a value of 1, i.e. if the coefficient of friction between the material pairing is 1 (or greater, of course), there would be no slipping at an angle of 45 degrees. _"But.. but we see that it gets easier for Mani to hang when he weighs more!"_ True, that's why I believe that the system of the inclined plane cannot be directly applied here without modifications, which, to be honest, I have not thought about yet. Personally, I believe that the mass _should not_ matter. We also have to consider that hanging 20 kg of extra weight on you is _not_ the same as having 20 kg of actual additional body weight. That's why I think it would be interesting to see the test with a weight west, for example. I think there's probably also some wild biomechanical lever shenanigans which we have to take into account here. _"But.. but the coefficient of friction is depending on the pressure on the surface!"_ Well.. no, no it's not. See Amontons' laws of friction. It is absolute true that it gets more difficult to, in simple terms, push something along a surface if the body you're trying to push is digging into the surface - but, that's really not what you'd want to achieve, usually. If that happens, you have surpassed the maximum allowable pressure of the surface and thus destroyed, or at least damaged it. He's also most likely not digging into the surface, not even microscopically. The Beastmaker is made out of some kind of rosewood (as far as I know), which is fairly hard. However, even if we assume a much softer wood, spruce for example, the compressrive strength is around 45 N/mm². That's around 4.5 kg PER SQUARE MILIMETER. I'll let that speak for itself. Furthermore, I do not think that the arguments claiming that there is a higher surface pressure with more weight are true, because more weight will cause your fingers to flatten out more, thus increasing the area that your skin is contact with. To be fair, if the correlation is not linear, e.g. double the weight, double the surface area, there would be more surface pressure. But again, surface does not matter. Anyway, I have dragged this out long enough, I think. @Mani the Monkey: I am not trying to shit on your video or your results / conclusions, just in case this comment seems like I do. I found it really interesting and I believe that _something_ definitely is up with this. I merely think that we have not found the complete truth, yet. Cheers and have a great weekend.

I have gained 3 kilos recently(from 47 to 50kg /170cm) and was feeling so happy before I watched this video =)) Not enough weight to hold on a sloper haha...BUT stop! What if my little hands could make more pressure because of less friction area? You can actually write a book about this.

Try it with different center of gravities now!

Try putting the same weight in a bagpack. My guess is it would be harder then on front of your harness. If so then the the angle of the applied weight (and force) would be the critical factor :D

I think it have more to do with center of gravity than the actual weight. The weights get your center of mass more under the board forcing the force of your fingers more into the board. Maybe try it again with the weight on the back of the harness.

Where can I get a pair of those slippers!!!! So rad!! I'd love to see you do a review video assessing how good they are for deep water solo.

This has major implications for climbing beta. For example, there's a route I've been working on for a long time, with some terrible slopers toward the top, and I wasn't able to get past those slopers until I tried cutting my feet loose from the wall and just campusing to the next move. 🤯

I always thought of slopers as force = friction, which is why a lot of people avoid them with sore elbows? Because you need to generate a large amount in order to stick them. How many woman climbers kill it on slopers? And what's their weight and hand size? tomoa narasaki springs to mind as a Male who is really light and looks better than a lot of the "heavier" pros.

Mani, have you tried other shoulder positions instead of focusing on the fingers?

I understand how the half crimp is better in some ways to a full open grip, as you can get more friction with smaller surface area because you're putting more weight/pressure/force into that area than you would be if it was distributed across a larger area. Look at high-end performance clutches for race cars, some of them have a much smaller surface area by having pucks spread around in a pattern rather than taking advantage of the entire surface area available, and they have just as much holding ability or more than a regular clutch. I'm not a physicist so I can't explain the mechanism behind it, but slopers definitely aren't as simple as just getting the most surface area on the hold.

I have also noticed something else: fat guys with good footwork can really climb blank slabs better! More kg/cm^2! You could try this outside adding weight to do low-angled slab problems.

Loving them slippers

would this principle apply to slab climbing as well? more weight pushing down creating better friction for the feet?

I can easily hang the beastmaker slopers at my gym but have no chance on my friend's Homeboard

Light small guy here, at 52 kg. I can not hang my beastmaker 2000 slopers at all at home, but the same holds on the one in the gym I can easily hang. Both with 3 finger open hand grip...

C'est une vraie révélation pour moi, je fais 70kg, j'arrivais à peine à tenir 2 secondes, j'ai mis un gilet (environ 10kg) et j'ai réussi à tenir près de 20s en faisant même de petites tractions, vraiment génial !

the problem with the pully system could also be, that it adds force at an angle that just makes it impossible to grip. So it‘s definitely not conclusive.

Here it would make a tremendous difference to where the added weight is placed. Would be far more interesting with a weight vest for a more evenly distributed weight, so the momentum on the grip is not as heavely effected.*(weightvest with weights on the backside as well as the front)

I would be interested to know if you just softened up your skin a bit it would help? If you’ve been climbing outside a bunch you probably have pretty hard skin. You could do a little test: normal, then after soaking your fingers for a few minutes in warm water, then fully drying them and chalking as usual. I suspect this would help a ton. It may be that the skin hardness is the reason why there’s so much variability between people. It’s also the same thing really as the added weight, weight or softness should increase your fingertips propensity to deform to- and grip the fine surface grain of the wood

One thing I'm wondering now is how do things change when trying a one-armer on them? If crimping, ie. concentrating your weight onto a smaller surface area to increase friction, helps lighter people hang them with two hands, then wouldn't doubling the weight going through one hand massively increase the friction to the extent that lighter people would be able to open hand them much the same as a heavier person? Or does it not work out this way? Obviously there's a much higher demand on finger strength, but just wondering if the double concentration of force largely removes the element of friction from the equation. Plus the side-on position for a one armer looks like it puts your centre of mass a bit further behind the holds, which also helps a lot, as several people have already noted in the comments here. Thoughts?

This is my first time watching a video of yours. Did you just make a Luimarco reference at 2:17?

very interesting! I am 85kg and can't hold these slopers but can send slopey 7B boulder problems outside. As an anecdote, I've seen much weaker climber (6C+ boulder) hold them with easy(40kg). I've tried different gyms, one day maybe :), don't consider myself weak on slopers, and my experience has led me to believe these 45 degree ohlds on beastmaker are too random to train on

Any hacks to make up for this (light people on super not frictionish slopers), or is it pretty set in stone? (multiple puns intended there)

So is there a possible training benefit to extra weight for these slopers. If you train at 80kg will you create enough of a stimulus to push a tiny bit more finger strength for general slopers?

Did you also try with 2 fingers grip? - like you tried with 3 and 4, right? Just to see if there is an optimal weight per finger area relation. This is a super interesting study!

How do you know that it is not the position of the added weight changing your center of gravity to be more optimal on the hold rather than just the weight itself being added. If you put the weight on the back of your harness, would you get the same results?

I weight 57kg, tried last week and it was totally imposible for me.