Comparing Soft Catch Methods - Largest Climbing Study Part 2

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.
- Heavy belayer?

- Eh... Light 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.
[Climber] - One, two, three

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, 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 a 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] - One, two, three

- 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 they 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 methods
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 fall arc.

And here is one more attempt

this time with even bigger arc or longer

braking distance, and the fall was just

a tiny bit softer for the climber.

For now I'm just gonna 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... 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.

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 brake, 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, Krushu
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...
...okay-ish.

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.

And in the case of a passive belay,

it 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 a biomechanical

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

belayer, 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 belaying, 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 an assisted belay 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 belaying.

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 belay 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 trad climbers.

[Climber] - Keep a good eye.

[Climber] - Sh****t!

So I guess this deserves an

episode for trad climbers as well and

all of these people and supporters

deserve a huge thank you. None of this

project would've 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

brilliant.org which is an awesome online

platform for learning math, data science,

and computer science interactively

- Good morning Ben how are you?

- Ah feeling like quaternion and

four dimensional space
with emotions twisting

like Möbius transformation and my mood

transforming like eigenvector.

So no only you get deeper connections with

your smart friends, you also deepen your

scientific understanding of the world.

Just imagine how your regular life

problems will look when you will be

contemplating that we are all just

riding a giant rock through constantly

expanding space, with supernovas and

solar winds. Or maybe before human

thinking becomes obsolete...

- Write a short math poem
in a style of...

me.

You want to know how Chad GPT works? So

whenever you're are a complete beginner

or ready to dive into machine learning

and beyond, brilliant.org makes it easy

to level up fast with fun bite-sized

lessons. And you can try all of this

completely for free for 30 days by

visiting brilliant.org/HardIsEasy and

first 200 of you can also get 20% off

their annual premium subscription.

So thank you Brilliant for making sure

that we still use our brain and thank

you for watching. Enjoy your brain and

climbing and see you in the next one.

- Now it's gonna be fun...
Feeling like quateri...

That word!