Heart Rate Behavior in Speed Climbing

Speed climbing is an Olympic discipline within the combined sport climbing event in 2020 for the first time. Speed climbing is a high-speed and anaerobic exercise against gravity over a few seconds with extreme psychological pressure. Although there is some literature on heart rate (HR) when lead climbing, there is no literature on the behavior of the HR when speed climbing. The HR of seven near-elite participants was measured with a Polar HR monitor while climbing a 10- and 15-m wall, respectively, three times each, with pauses of 5 min between the first and last three climbs and a 20-min pause between the third and fourth climb. The average climbing times on the 10- and 15-m walls were 9.16 ± 3.06 s and 14.95 ± 3.14 s, respectively (data pooled between climbing heights). The peak HR on the 10- and 15-m walls were 164.57 ± 7.45 bpm and 176.43 ± 8.09 bpm. The rates of change in HR were as follows: average HR acceleration before peak HR, 2.53 ± 0.80 bpm/s; peak HR acceleration before peak HR, 4.16 ± 1.08 bpm/s; and average HR deceleration after peak HR, -0.98 ± 0.30 bpm/s. The average HR during the pauses ranged from 105.80 to 117.89 bpm. From the results, in comparison to the literature, we conclude that athletes, trained for sustaining high physical exertion and psychological pressure, have a far smaller HR acceleration than untrained people during light and unstressful exercises. Furthermore, the current rule that athletes shall have a minimum resting time of 5 min between climbing attempts during a speed climbing competition seems justified as sufficient time for HR recovery.