Climb Newcastle palmaris longus Research Study

Does the presence of the palmaris longus tendon group affect climbing performance? Climb Newcastle customers and guest writers Josh Wood and Mukhtar Ahmed explore...

Image left: Mukhtar tests for the presence of palmaris longus in British Bouldering Champion Ned Feehally.

As some of you may remember, during the January round of the Climb Newcastle Winter Bouldering Series, we conducted a small research study looking into the presence of a muscle and tendon group known as 'palmaris longus'. It is located in the wrist and is absent in roughly 16% of the UK population [1]. It is also found in mammals, particularly those whose forearm is often utilised in climbing [2], such as the orang-utan [3]. This suggests that palmaris longus may potentially be of benefit in climbing, and is now not found in all humans through the forces of evolution and natural selection [4].

This also raises the question, "what makes a good climber?" - this is likely to be a combination of many factors including strength, experience, technique, stamina and build. What is not clear is extent of the role that strength plays in this. Clearly there are specific problems which require a certain level of strength to complete but obviously just 'being strong' will only get you so far. It is unclear if palmaris longus plays any role in increased strength. We hope to examine this through this research.

There have been previous research studies looking into the role palmaris longus plays in increased grip and pinch strength [4]. In 418 participants, no differences in grip and pinch strength were found between those who do have palmaris longus and those who do not. However, a problem with this study is that the population they looked at were randomly chosen and are therefore not reflective of a population who engage in high impact and strenuous sports (such as climbing). In such sports, a high level of stress is placed through the wrist, where the presence of palmaris longus may facilitate grip and pinch strength.

Image right: palmaris longus can be seen as the prominent ridge at the wrist in the lower picture. The hand in the top picture demonstrates the absence of palmaris longus.

The palmaris longus tendon is also of clinical importance as it is regularly used in graft surgery, where evidence to date suggests that the procedure does not result in any loss of strength in the hand [3-5]. We aimed to examine the effect (if any) that palmaris longus has on climbing ability and to add further information about the prevalence of palmaris longus within a general population. We were able to collect data from the Bouldering Series at Climb Newcastle as it is one of the best attended bouldering competitions in the country. Without this level of participation we would not have been able to collect a sample size big enough to conduct the research.

Testing for the presence of palmaris longus is painless and can be done by placing your hand in the position shown in the photos to the right. We also collected data about the climber's age, gender, number of years climbing experience and number of times climbed per month. We then analysed the data collected against the climber's competition score to see if presence of palmaris longus had a significant effect on score.

Results:

113 people took part in the study, of which 28.4% were found not to have palmaris longus in both wrists. 28.6% of men (90/113) and 27.8% of women (23/113) did not have Palmaris longus. This is slightly higher than some previous studies, but this is likely due to our reasonably small sample size.

For the remainder of the analysis, we have only looked at climbers age 16-45. We excluded people outside of this age boundary as particularly for people aged over 45, the number of years climbing experience was far greater than the majority of the group which skewed the data.

The average competition scores for the whole group (95 participants) was 220.07 for those with palmaris longus, and 215.7 when absent. For men (75 participants) the average score with palmaris longus was 224.6, and 215 when absent. For women (20 participants), the average score with palmaris longus present was 202.07, and 218 absent.

Presence of palmaris longus vs. competition score:
When we analysed the data we found that presence of palmaris longus was NOT significantly related to score in the competition which means that having this tendon does not make you a better climber (good news for those of you who don't!). This can be seen in the figures above, which shows that any differences between the groups are very small and are due to other factors. What we did find however was that number of years climbing experience and number of times climbing per month were both significantly related to score in the competition - meaning that practice really does make perfect! This can then perhaps go some way towards answering the question, "what makes a good climber?" From this research, it seems that experience (and therefore technique) and the amount of time you get to climb (which should increase technique, stamina and strength) are the key factors.

Obviously there are clear limitations to this study as there are many variables that we were not able to control for within the population studied here. We also have a wide spread of ability within the scores collected, with an equally wide spread of climbing experience. A future study in this area could perhaps look at climbers taking part in national level competition where the spread of ability is far less and years climbing experience and age are likely to be more equal. It is also likely that if any benefit was to be offered by the presence of palmaris longus, it would be shown more easily in this group. We were able to collect data from the British Bouldering Team during a recent training session at Climb Newcastle, finding that palmaris longus was absent in both wrists in 50.0% of a group of 8 team members (absent in 33% of female and 60% of male team members). From this small group of international level climbers, this suggests that palmaris longus plays an insignificant role in climbing ability.

Finally, a big thank you to everyone who took part in the research, Climb Newcastle and the British Bouldering Team (do us proud boys!). We hope you found the results interesting and if you have any questions about the research, feel free to speak to either of us.

References:

Josh Wood started climbing shortly after Climb Newcastle opened and has become addicted to climbing since. What he lacks in ability he makes up for in enthusiasm (and strange facial expressions)!

Mukhtar Ahmed joined Climb Newcastle September last year and has loved every minute on the wall (well almost). He currently holds the British record for longest pre-climb warm up. "Muk is an inspiration to me" (quote Josh Wood).