7 6 wingspan in inches

Meters to Feet and Inches Conversion Chart

What Is the Ape Index?

The ape index is a measurement of how your wingspan (aka arm span) compares to your height. It&#;s believed that most people&#;s wingspan is equivalent to their height, meaning most people have a neutral ape index or, put another way, an ape index ratio of 1.

The ape index is measured because in sports like rock climbing, swimming, boxing, and basketball it&#;s considered an advantage to have long arms for your height.

How to Calculate Your Ape Index

There are two ways to calculate your ape index: divide your wingspan by your height or subtract your height from your wingspan.

Method #1: Wingspan to Height Ratio

How to calculate: Wingspan / Height

Example: Daniel Woods, arguably the greatest boulderer of all time, is 5&#; 8&#; (68 in) with a inch wingspan. To calculate his ape index as a ratio you divide his wingspan by his height:

72 in / 68 in =

When expressed as a ratio, Woods has an ape index of

Bottom line: The typical ape index ratio is 1. A number greater than one means your wingspan is greater than your height, and a number less than one means your height is greater than your wingspan. The advantage of expressing your ape index as a ratio is that it will stay the same regardless of whether you calculate it using inches or centimeters.

Method #2: Difference Between Wingspan & Height

How to calculate: Wingspan &#; Height

Example: Daniel Woods is 5&#; 8&#; (68 in or cm) with a inch ( cm) wingspan. To calculate the difference you simply subtract his height from his wingspan:

In inches: 72 in &#; 68 in = 4 in

In centimeters: cm &#; cm = cm

When expressed as the difference between wingspan and height, Woods has a +4 ape index in inches, or a + ape index in centimeters.

Bottom line: This is the most common way climbers express their ape index. Using this method, the typical ape index is 0. The downside to this method is that, unless it&#;s 0, your ape index changes depending on whether you&#;re using inches or centimeters.

Ape Indices of Famous Climbers

Note: If you know the ape index of a famous climber not listed here, put it in the comments below along with the source and we&#;ll add it to the list!

Compare your ape index with some of the world&#;s greatest climbers:

Notes

• In this video, Kai Lightner says his ape index is + Because the video is of him training at Café Kraft in Germany, I&#;ve interpreted it as 18 centimeters, or about 7 inches. A +7-inch ape index is already incredible. +18 inches would be downright ludicrous.
• This photo is where I found the reported ape indices of Chris Sharma, Dave Graham, and Lynn Hill. Sharma&#;s is located near the top right and appears to read &#;2½.&#; Graham&#;s is located near the top left in blue and appears to read &#;4.&#; Hill&#;s is located at the very bottom and appears to read &#;0.&#;
• This video is where I found the ape indices of many climbers in this list, including Adam Ondra&#;s ape index. Special thanks to reader Maxim for sharing the link in the comments.

Analysis

The handful of professional climbers in the table above have, on average, a positive ape index. Put simply, they tend to have long arms for their height.

(Take these numbers with a grain of salt. The data is mostly self-reported.)

Keep in mind that our sample is quite small. If these averages held true across a larger sample of pro climbers, they would suggest that a positive ape index is an advantage in climbing at a high level.

However, there are a few notable exceptions:

• Lynn Hill, the first person to free The Nose on El Cap and one of the most famous climbers of all time, has an ape index of 0 (or, an ape index ratio of 1)
• Babsi Zangerl, one of the best trad climbers in the world, has a ape index (or, an ape index ratio of )
• Alex Megos, one of the best sport climbers in the world, has an ape index of 0 (or, an ape index ratio of 1)

And Adam Ondra, arguably the greatest living climber, has a + inch (+1 cm) ape index. That&#;s exceedingly unremarkable.

Is a Positive Ape Index Good for Climbing?

It&#;s commonly believed that a positive ape index (or an ape index ratio greater than 1) is good for rock climbing.

Indeed, Matt Samet, editor of Climbing Magazine, writes in his book The Climbing Dictionary: &#;A positive ape index, in which your wingspan exceeds your height, is a bonus. … A negative ape index is rarely an asset.&#;

It&#;s easy to see why climbers by and large believe this. It seems to make intuitive sense: the longer your arms, the greater your reach advantage relative to other climbers your height.

However, while researching for this article I got curious about whether there was any data backing up this belief. So I decided to do a bit of digging.

Let&#;s look at the science.

Do Elite Climbers Have High Ape Indices?

Some studies have measured the ape indices of elite climbers.

A lot of them are plagued by the issue of small sample sizes, but in mostofthem, on average the climbers have ape index ratios greater than 1. Recall that an ape index ratio of 1 is considered typical.

It seems that on average elite climbers have higher ape indices than the general population.

Does a High Ape Index Make You a Better Climber?

Though on average elite climbers appear to have high ape indices, when researchers have compared ape index to climbing performance theyhaveoftenstruggled to find a positive correlation.

One study summed it up well:

&#;[E]lite climbers usually possess an index higher than but it was not proven that the ape index correlates with climbing performance.&#;

Trainable Factors Are More Predictive of Climbing Ability

Whether or not a high ape index is good for climbing, you can&#;t change yours. You&#;re stuck with what you&#;ve got.

(Well, at least that&#;s how it would seem. I found a couple suggestions on internet forums and one on the ape index Wikipedia entry that certain exercises can improve your ape index over time. I haven&#;t found any data to back up this claim.)

Fortunately, things that are under your control have been shown to correlate positively with climbing ability.

As one study put it, &#;the variables found to explain most variance in sport climbing ability are trainable.&#;

What are these variables?

They&#;re things like low body fat percentage and grip strength to body mass ratio &#; variables you can directly affect through training.

Remember that the next time you find yourself using your -2 ape index as an excuse for why you&#;re not climbing as hard as you&#;d like. 😉

Alex is the owner and editor of 99Boulders, and he's been testing and reviewing outdoor gear since When he's not outdoors camping or backpacking, he can be found at the climbing gym.

Often times NBA players are described as “undersized” or “out of position.” Analysts see these players as smaller than the average player at their position, and therefore at a disadvantage. However, this classification of players has a serious shortcoming. When it comes to playing basketball, the actual height of a player is not as important as one might think. Far more important are their standing reach and wingspan!

In this article, I want to explain how to measure standing reach correctly. I have also created a standing reach calculator designed to tell you your estimated standing reach depending on your height.

What is standing reach?

Standing reach measures how high someone can reach with their hands while standing flat-footed. It is an important measurement for basketball players because it determines how easily they can get off shots against a defender. A good standing reach is also very helpful on defense, as it allows to deter shots, deflect passes or make highlight blocks with greater ease.

How do you measure standing reach?

To measure your standing reach, stand with your side to a wall and reach up as far as you can with the hand closer to the wall. Make sure your feet remain flat on the floor (otherwise you are falsely increasing your standing reach). If you are measuring the standing reach of others, as part of a vertical jump test, make sure the athlete is really reaching up as far as possible. An erroneously low standing reach would artificially inflate the vertical jump measurement.

Measuring standing reach is always the first step of measuring vertical jump using a Vertec or the Jump &#; Reach test. If the standing reach is known, vertical jump height can easily be calculated by subtracting the standing reach from the maximum jumping reach. You can also calculate how high you need to jump in order to dunk. Check out my dunk calculator to find out more.

Is standing reach proportional to height?

As I mentioned earlier, basketball players are often judged by their height. But, is there a standard standing reach &#; height ratio?

On draftexpress.com there is a list of all available measurements of the NBA Pre Draft Combine. If we take all players who have their height as well as their standing reach listed, we get the following distribution of the ratio of standing reach/height:

Relationship between standing reach and height:

As we can see, almost 50% of the basketball players have a reach-to-height ratio of between and The median basketball player in the NBA Draft Combine has a standing reach about times as long as their height. This means the average 6 ft tall basketball player should have a standing reach around 8 feet.

But, the graph also shows there are players with far longer arms than others. Two extreme examples are Luol Deng (who at 6&#;7&#; was measured with an 9&#; &#; standing reach) and Matt Barnes (6&#; &#; with a standing reach of only 8&#; &#;). That&#;s a one-foot difference in standing reach even though both players are basically the same height!

Granted, this could be explained by inaccurate measurements or an attempt to game the measurement of the vertical jump, but it still shows you can&#;t just deduce standing reach from the height.

Calculate your expected standing reach depending on your height:

Knowing the relationship between standing reach and height we can also do some fun calculations! For example, we can calculate the average expected standing reach depending on your height. This way you can find out if you have comparably long or short arms.

If you know your standing reach, you can easily find out how your standing reach stacks up with the average professional basketball player. If it is significantly shorter, don&#;t worry. NBA players probably have longer arms than the average population.

This standing reach calculator is also part of the &#;What&#;s My Vertical&#; iOS App which you can get here.

Current NBA player with the longest (and shortest) standing reach:

Unfortunately, there are no official measurements of all NBA players available. But, going from pre-draft measurements, we come to the following conclusions:

Current NBA player with the longest standing reach (as of March ) :

Rudy Gobert from the Utah Jazz has the longest standing reach with an incredible measurement of 9&#; 9&#;.That&#;s only 3 inches shy of the rim &#; no wonder he is leading the league in blocks per game!

Current NBA player with the shortest standing reach (as of March ) :

On the other end of the spectrum is Tyler Ullis. The rookie of the Phoenix Suns is only 5&#;9&#; tall and he doesn&#;t have long arms either!

His standing reach of only 7&#; &#; is even a lot shorter than the 7&#; &#; standing reach of Isiah Thomas who is also only 5&#;9&#; tall.

Any questions about standing reach left? Leave your question in the comment section, I will answer them as soon as possible!

How tall is 6 ft 7 in centimeters? How high is 6 foot 7? Use this easy calculator to convert feet and inches to metric.

How tall is 7 ft 6 in centimeters? How high is 7 foot 6? Use this easy calculator to convert feet and inches to metric.