All right, welcome back to the largest
study on climbing falls. In the first
episode we looked how does extra slack
affect the fall, or more precisely does
falling more reduce the pendulum into
the wall and how hard the climber is
going to hit the wall, and then I showed
you the importance of soft catch and
what a massive difference that makes and
also that hard catches are not only the
problem for heavier belayers
lighter belayers often lack practice to
give soft catches since most of the time
they don't need they fly up anyway but
in exceptional cases with enough
friction... -My foot -What happened to your
foot -Well it was a hard fall - Heavey belayer?
-Llight belayer. Yeah yeah and I also
asked you guys I'm curious did you ever
got unexpectedly hard catch from a light
belayer? And turns out this happens more
often than I
thought. so yeah light or heavy you're
going to love this episode because we're
going to investigate which method of
giving soft catch is the best. We're
going to compare stepping forward versus
jumping up and as a bonus the tube slide
method where the belayer lets the rope
slide through the device which is more
common in trad
climbing so let's begin. Now in the
previous episode I showed you this
beautiful horizontal velocity graphs and
I explained that the peak of horizontal
velocity is at the bottom of the
pendulum and that is a good indicator
how hard the climber would meet the wall
if the wall would not be overhanging and
in this test I wanted to go a step
further and see what happens when the
climber meets the wall. - 1... 2... 3...
and my idea this time was to
measure deceleration during the impact
and in many of our test cases
this idea was working really well. If we
compare the soft catches to the hard one
you can see a huge spike in
deceleration. However after doing lots
and lots of more falls and analyzing the
data I realized that the peak
deceleration is not always a good metric
to look. for example take a look at this
hard catch you can visually see that it
was much harder for the climber but the
peak deceleration was nearly identical
to the soft catches before, so it turns
out our soft bodies are incredible at
absorbing
impacts but the problem is that it's
very difficult to measure what's
happening in our muscles during this
impact. So while peak deceleration was
interesting to look in some cases,
horizontal velocity at the moment of
impact was much better indicator. After
all, all of this velocity that we are
about to hit the wall will need to be
absorbed by our soft bodies. Okay so
let's see which method to give a soft
catch is the best. To not kill me on the
very first test we started with smaller
falls and jumping up technique. And these
falls were extremely nice and soft.
[Climber] - A soft ride! So let's see how stepping
forward will compare. [Climber] - 1... 2... 3...
- This is harder. And the fall this time
felt a little bit harder and we can also
see that in the graphs. However overall
it was still a very soft catch.
And the second fall was very similar.
Also a quick note: I was not sure
how much stiffer the rope gets over
multiple falls, and even though in this
video I'm presenting you all the data
grouped by method, meaning at first I
show you all the soft catches with
jumping up method, then I show you all
the soft catches with stepping forward,
in reality we did alternate between the
methods between every fall. So we did a
jumping up and then stepping forward, etc.
Pointless information for most of
you, but I know that a lot of geeks are
watching my videos and we like to write
nitpicky comments, so this is for you
nitpicky geek. All right now let's see
how the tube slide method compares and
while I was expecting a lot from this
method, the first fall wasn't any better.
The second fall had a very low momentum
into the wall but a lot of vertical
momentum, which made me almost run across
the wall, which was slightly
uncomfortable. So we tried again and this
time the fall was much nicer and I know
that people like to try all the crazy
things they see on the internet so
that's why I have to stress that this
tube slide method is really advanced, so
if you don't know what you're doing, make
sure that you have an expert guiding you.
Now if we would compare all the best
attempts of all the methods, we can see
that the jumping up was slightly better
but overall all the method were very
similar. [Climber] - So all of these falls felt quite
soft except the one where he does
nothing, then I fell to the wall.
Yeah we actually forgot to film hard catches
where the belayer does nothing on this
test, but no worries this was just a
small warm-up. And let's see some bigger falls.
So this time we started with a
tube slide method,
which at least in theory, lets the belayer achieve
any full arc.
And here is one more attempt
this time with even bigger arc or longer
braking distance, and the fall was just
tiny bit softer for the climber. For now
I'm just going to keep the softest
attempt in the charts and let's see how
does that compare to the jumping up
technique. And we can see that the first
fall was slightly smaller, however it had
nearly identical horizontal acceleration
and velocity. However it also had lower
absolute velocity, which is actually
better for the climber. Now the second
fall was slightly smaller but had a tiny bit
more horizontal velocity towards the wall
and again let's keep the best
attempts of each method and see how does
that compare to the stepping forward technique.
And we can see that the fall
was smallest however it had the greatest
impact to the wall. Now on the second
attempt the belayer did a much better job
and the fall was significantly softer.
And if we compare all the best attempts
of all the methods, we can see that the
horizontal speed at the moment of impact
was nearly identical. Which means that at
least in this test case scenario,
a skilled belayer can achieve almost the
same results with any method. But since
consistency in catches also matters,
if we compare the worst attempts, tube slide method
was the best, followed by jumping up,
and then the stepping forward was the worst.
However even the worst cases of
any of these methods were much much
better compared to the passive belay.
So the first arising takeaway was that no
matter which method you choose to give a
soft catch, it's going to be much better
than passively standing and doing
nothing.
And as always one test is no test, so I
wanted to repeat these tests in a
different location with another belayer.
Ricky who has also a lot of experience
using this tube slide method, and he told
me that it's actually his preferred method.
So, high expectations.
[Climber] - Two, three... - Okay
- Falling!
- Aw, that was super soft!
So we did three attempts, and all of them had very similar
horizontal velocity. Nice, for consistency.
Next we tested the stepping
forward method and we can see that the
fall was much shorter and had a much
greater swing into the wall. It seemed
that the belayer was pulled towards the
wall way too much, and did not have enough
control to make the fall smooth.
[Music]
All right next the jumping up method,
where Ricky actually did a very bad job
on the first attempt.
And the same happened on the
second attempt where his jump was very
minimal only initiated a little bit from
his right calf. So that's not how you
jump and that's why I decided to ignore
these two attempts for the poor technique,
and after he adjusted his technique on the third jump,
he jumped with both legs and it was much much better.
And finally we did one passive
catch where the belayer does nothing and
same as before, it causes significantly
higher swing into the wall. So at least
in this test case scenario, tube slide
was the best, followed by jumping up, and
stepping forward was again the worst.
[Belayer] - So stepping forward versus uh
jumping up [Climber] - Yes stepping forward was not
in a controlled way I was just pulled to
the wall. I tried to lean
backwards to break to catch the fall
but it was not in a controlled way, and
jumping up I can choose how much I want
to jump and at what timing.
So overall which method is the best will heavily
depend on your experience using this
methods, however stepping forward seemed
to be the worst and gave the least
control, and also worth mentioning is
that standing too far in many situations
can drag the belayer into the wall
completely uncontrollably.
And that would make the catch even harder.
All right but what if the belayer
is significantly heavier. In that case if
you try the jumping method there is not
much pull up by the rope and jumping is
much more difficult. So maybe stepping
forward is better in this case. To test
that Kishu suggested to introduce extra
friction which basically makes the
belayer heavier.
[Climber] - Can we try like this? [Belayer] - He wants to kill me!
So that's what we got: a little
zigzag in the beginning and then a
straight line all the way to the climber
so the rope actually is not going over
the edge it's just very sharp angled.
- He says you have to fall!
- One, two, three
The swing into the wall is... ...okayish.
So we started with jumping
method which felt slightly harder with
increased friction but still plenty soft enough.
Just take a look at this belayer
running up the wall and even avoiding
his arm being squished into the first
quick draw. So let's see if
with increased friction stepping forward
will be better. This time he was not
pulled into the wall uncontrollably
anymore. It also looks like he got the
perfect timing and even started running
forward just before the impact, however
the swing into the wall for the climber
was still harder compared to the jumping
method. Okay next we did a series of tube
slide catches. The first felt very nice
and soft. Now the second fall had even
softer impact with the wall however I
still had a lot of momentum downwards
which forced me almost to run down the wall
which is a little bit awkward.
And the last fall had a very
similar effect
And if we look into the best cases for
each method we can see that jumping up
and tube slide were very very similar,
and the stepping forward was slightly
worse. And this bar chart plots all the
falls so we can see that on average, tube
slide method performed the best, followed
by jumping up, and then stepping forward
was the worst. Now from pure feeling
standpoint for me as a climber, both
jumping up and tube slide methods felt
very nice and soft. Maybe if I would be
nitpicking this extra momentum downwards
sometimes on the tube slide method was
slightly uncomfortable although in
theory the belayer should be able to give
almost any kind of catch with this
method and the stepping forward method
was maybe slightly harder, had slightly
bigger impact to the wall however it was
still plenty soft enough. And what is not
soft enough is passive belays. So once
again, no matter which soft catch method
we tried it was significantly better
than passive belay. And with added friction
the belayer wasn't even lifted off the
ground this time. Previously when we had
no friction, passive belay looked like
this: the belayer was still pulled up but
now with extra friction, that is not the
case anymore and you can see how the
climber is being pulled up and into the
wall even harder.
[Climber] - Okay that was...
... that was the way it was.
So yeah don't forget to subscribe, I might need
advertisement money to fix my broken
body at old age. [Climber] - So what's your favorite method?
[Belayer] - Yeah jumping up, yes
Okay so we were leaning towards
jumping as our favorite method, but
what if the belayer is really really
heavy, or there is so much friction in
the system that the rope almost doesn't
pull the belayer up? In that case, you can
jump I don't know what 30 40 cm maybe 50
if you're a crazy athlete... but is that
enough for the soft catch? And this
brings us to this experiment: here we did
a series of falls, alternating between
stepping forward and jumping up and we
measured the forces to the climber.
And same as before, jumping up was
consistently better than stepping forward,
and doing nothing was
significantly worse. And then we decided
to introduce this zigzag in the route, and
although it doesn't look like much,
it actually added a ton of friction,
basically imitating a very heavy belayer.
[Belayer] - Wow! I couldn't jump at all!
And, as I was expecting, jumping up was not working
at all in this case, so let's see if
stepping forward is going to be better.
[Climber] - Wow that was solid!
[Climber] - 2.5, oh sh*t! And it actually was even worse.
[Belayer] - Man I cannot give you a soft catch this way!
So yeah no matter how much I tried
to jump, I was not able to give a
truly soft catch, and stepping forward
was even worse.
[Belayer] - It's impossible to give a soft catch like this!
To time well the stepping forward
on such a short fall
is nearly impossible.
Now while ,it seemed that heavy belayers are doomed, on
this next experiment I actually
discovered something that helps.
This time I was belaying a light girl, and as
before, I was also struggling to give a
soft catch. The jumping simply did not work.
And neither did the stepping
forward method.
But then I discovered something.
[Climber] - Better, better. This one was soft!
It's soft!
So yeah, turns out that bending the knees will give you more
range of movement and in this test case
scenario it made a huge difference.
[Climber] - If the fall was Wyuuuuuuuuu
Just super soft, and the others was Bump!
- Like Bum? - Yeah yeah yeah!
- So it's Bum versus Yuuuuuuu. - And we prefer Yuuu.
- You prefer Woooo. - Yeah!
And although I already
mentioned this in the first episode, but
it's really important to stress that
simply throwing a lot of slack does not
mean a soft catch.
okay this [ __ ] and in a case of a
passive Bay can end up very badly and
the only reason she was fine in this
case was because she was falling
straight down under the Quick Draw so
all she felt was just a jerk to the
harness in a different situation with a
little bit of swing that kind of catch
with would probably break her ankles so
instead of feeding a ton of slack for
your climber maybe you should feed your
climber and as we saw If the fall is
small bending the knees before the fall
might help now in case of a big whipper
the fall naturally is much bigger so you
will have more time to go down and
explode up and from B mechanical
standpoint since our muscles act as
Springs going down and jumping up should
result into a higher jump now if that
doesn't help I would suggest more food
cycles and if that's not an option then
I've seen a method used by a very heavy
Blair which worked very well for him
where he took a little bit of slack with
his lead hand and during the impact he
used his lead hand to soften the
catch it is extremely important to not
have too much slack here or you will
burn your hand so be smart and use this
at your own risk this is sketchy but
I've seen it working really well or
alternatively go old school and learn
how to use tube style BL then it doesn't
matter what's the weight of the climber
you can always make a soft catch but of
course that comes with its own risks of
not having assisted blade device but for
majority of you jumping up is going to
be the best and if for whatever reason
you find yourself away from the wall
then just do stepping forward as we saw
whatever soft catch method is much
better than passive delay now I
understand that this video was full of
charts and graphs and chances are if
you're still watching you're a little
bit nerdy however I'm going to make a
separate video for my blay Master Class
where I will go more on practical
details including those sketchy low to
the ground situations and also during
these two years we have measured forces
on hundred of Falls so we have a lot of
data but as I explained in previous
episodes Peak Force to the climber might
not be the most important factor for
sport
climbers however that might be much more
important for TR climbers keep a good
eye [ __ ] so I guess this deserves an
episode for trout climbers as well and
all of these people and supporters
deserve a huge thank you none of this
project would been possible without all
of you and you deserve some
knowledge for the last 6 months I was
warming up my brain in the mornings with
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