Please take the survey.

In February we launched the first-of-its-kind survey to collect data on the effectiveness of the Rock Prodigy Training Method and the Rock Prodigy Training Center.

So far, 118 folks have responded to the survey (from 13 countries), which is well above what I expected…THANK YOU!

I’m furiously writing my research paper for the 7th Asia-Pacific Congress on Sports Technology which will be held in September. The draft is due on Friday, the 17th, so if you would like your results included, you’ll need to complete the survey by tomorrow! We’ll be closing down the survey after that (but expect more in the future).

See this post for some more instructions on how to take the survey.

In early March, I posted an update sharing some preliminary results:

Preliminary Results of Question 17.

Question 17 asked how well we are adhering to the program, which I found very interesting. I was surprised and pleased to see that most of you are following it pretty strictly. When we wrote the book, we feared that most folks would “cherry pick” exercises out of the book rather than executing the program as a whole. We were worried that such an approach would not be very effective, and these climbers would draw the wrong conclusions about the effectiveness of the program. We’re glad to see that people are giving the program a fair shot by taking a “whole-system” approach.

This is what we are most psyched about:

Survey respondents’ impressions of the effectiveness of the RPTM. Psyched!

Question 21 asked how you think the RPTM has changed your climbing, and over 94% of respondents believe they have improved, with over half improving “significantly”. This is tremendous! It is something we as a training community should be very proud of because this program is an ongoing collaboration, and we developed it with lots of input and feedback from the community. As we go about our training, it is extremely motivating to know that what we are doing is effective, and it will bring us results in the long run!

I’m crunching the data now, and we’ve had some great results. For example, Questions 18 and 19 asked how your Redpoint and Onsight levels have changed after using the Rock Prodigy Training Method. About 70 people answered this question, answering it in YDS, French grades, UIAA, Font, V-grades, etc. The results are impressive:

Average Increase in Redpoint Ability:

– After your first season of training w/RPTM: 1.4 letter grades (average over ~70 climbers)
– After all seasons of training w/RPTM: 2.5 letter grades (average over ~70 climbers)

Average Increase in Onsight Ability:

– After your first season of training w/RPTM: 1.5 letter grades (average over ~70 climbers)
– After all seasons of training w/RPTM: 2.0 letter grades (average over ~70 climbers)

The hangboard grip data is pretty impressive too, with folks averaging about a 30 lbs increase in grip strength per grip after their first season, and people pushing into 50+ lbs improvements over the 18 months since the RPTC was introduced!

Thanks again for your efforts!

If you haven’t already, please contribute to the science, let your data be heard, take the survey.