Performance Insights in Speed Climbing: Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Key Movement Metrics

This study presents a comprehensive analysis of Speed Climbing athletes by examining motion parameters critical to elite performance. Thereby, several key values are extracted from about 900 competition recordings to generate a dataset for the identification of patterns in athletes’ technique and efficiency. A CNN-based framework is used to automate detection of human keypoints and feature, enabling large-scale evaluation of climbing dynamics. The results revealed significant variations of performance in single sections of the wall, particularly in start reaction times (up-to 0.27 s differences) and increased split times the closer the athletes get to the end of the Speed Climbing wall (from 0.39 s to 0.45 s). In addition, a more detailed examination of the movement sequences was carried out by analyzing the velocity trajectories of hands and feet. The results showed that coordinated and harmonic movements, especially of the lower limbs, correlate strongly with the performance outcome. To ensure an individualized view of the data points, a comparison was made between multiple athletes, revealing insights into the influence of individual biomechanics on the efficiency of movements. The findings provide trainers as well as athletes with interesting insights for tailoring training methods by including split time benchmarks and limb coordination.