Tops Rate
What is Tops Rate?
Tops Rate measures your success rate. It’s like a baseball batting average for climbing. Of the climbs you try, how many do you climb successfully? A Tops rate of 100% would mean that a climber sent every single climb they attempted during that time period. A score of 50% means that a climber successfully sent half of the routes they attempted. It is important to note that Tops Rate is calculated using the number of distinct climbs sent or attempted and NOT the number of total sends and attempts. For instance, if a climber attempts a single route 10 times in a session and then sends on her 11th attempt, her Top Rate for the session will be 100% because she successfully sent 100% of the routes she attempted.
How do you use ‘Tops Rate’?
Climbers who ‘top’ or send 100% of the routes they attempt are likely not pushing themselves hard enough to progress. Climbing harder is hard. Failure is expected and necessary. On the other extreme, climbers who focus exclusively on projecting at their limit with a very low Tops rate, are slowing their own progression. Because session to session, Tops Rate will largely depend on the goal of that session, so only look at Tops Rate over longer periods, like a month to a season. A good Tops Rate measured over a long period should be around 80-90%.
Why track Tops Rate?
The most defining attribute of the world's most successful climbers is the ability to consistently choose and successfully send routes that push them in new ways. The technical way to explain this is that progression is maximized when working in the zone of proximal development. In climbing, this effectively means most of your time should be spent practicing climbing at levels that are difficult but still doable, each route should be 1% harder than the last. That’s pretty hard to measure, so think about it this way: you should be able to send projects within 3 sessions or fewer. This will maximize your learning of new movement patterns, and increase fitness and strength, while keeping you in the habit of succeeding.