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Show HN: AI climbing coach – visualize how to climb any route based on your body

climbing.ai

141–149 of 149 posts

Re: Show HN: AI climbing coach – visualize how to climb any route based on your body

#141
Considering the notoriety of AI models in making confident but blatant mistakes or simply lying about things they don't have real answers to I don't know how smart it is to trust one with something in which bad advice can kill you very quickly and immediately.

Re: Show HN: AI climbing coach – visualize how to climb any route based on your body

#142
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about when you try to solve the problem and you get stuck and can't? Or solve it but in a bad way that requires way too much exertion? The point is to try to solve it yourself, then compare with an expert solution, and therefore learn how to improve. If you're just blindly trying to problem-solve through trial and error without ever comparing against expert feedback, you're going to learn climbling extremely slo…

Getting stuck is part of the game. It could take several sessions or it could take several years. It's what makes a climb truly hard, a "project". It's an essential part of the sport - the satisfaction of using one's own body and mind to overcome the seemingly impossible. If you never get stuck, how could you possibly experience it?

Games are no fun if they're too hard.

When faced with a challenge, you want to figure out as much as you reasonably can, and then learn what you were missing.

Struggling at the same problem for several sessons, or god forbid years, sounds like misery to me. I'd rather use that time productively learning, rather than struggling for the sake of it, because I refuse to learn from others.

Re: Show HN: AI climbing coach – visualize how to climb any route based on your body

#143

I feel like I’m the right audience for this - a not very good climber with unusual distribution of limbs. But I’m not interested - part of the fun in climbing is on sight climbs and solving problems yourself.

Came here hoping to see something like this. Glad to see it’s the top comment. Part of the beauty of climbing is solving a puzzle and figuring things out. Edit: Unsurprised to see the demo on a gym route instead of actual rock.

gym route is also important and heavily used

Re: Show HN: AI climbing coach – visualize how to climb any route based on your body

#144
post #127
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that, absent that information about the exact right way to grab a hold, or the exact way to put a foot on a hold, you'll be limited to beta suggestions , which is fine, I think. It'd be like having a group of other climbers nearby to suggest different beta, even if you don't have any friends. So, in terms of solving complicated beta faster, I see real utility to this. It is very interesting that since the A…

(Long time climber here) > It is very interesting that since the AI climber is trained on actual climbers, it could, in principle, provide beta to climb consistent with your own style. If you train the bot exclusively on footage of yourself, it would return movement based on your style. If your style is finessy-all-backstep-all-the-time (aka The Edlinger), it can provide beta consistent with that. If your style is to…

>I can agree with this. But, to the point that others have made, I do wonder what this and the availability of beta videos for many, many routes and blocs does to climbing skill overall.

That's a fair concern. That said, there are certain sequences that I'm physically incapable of doing without a dedicated multi-month program of stretching beforehand. Turns out falling on a thumbs-down jam is close enough to a shoulder dislocation that I maybe should've done some PT about it. The extreme is, obviously, the Edlinger vs. American example, but I think the middle ground actually addresses people's peculiar body geometry and/or range of motion. Alex Honnold's exact hip or elbow position might not be as meaningful for Ashima, even if they're on the exact same route.

Such nuances have made a difference in some cases (the one that springs to mind is Todd Skinner's observation that Steve Petro's hips sagged just a little mid-crux on Fiddler on the Roof, which, until corrected, had prevented Petro from nabbing the first ascent of one of the hardest cracks ever climbed to that point). Probably a net-bad for folks projecting Midnight Lightning or similar, but definitely useful for somebody looking to repeat Silence or whatever.

Re: Show HN: AI climbing coach – visualize how to climb any route based on your body

#145
post #110

I feel like I’m the right audience for this - a not very good climber with unusual distribution of limbs. But I’m not interested - part of the fun in climbing is on sight climbs and solving problems yourself.

Man, where is the hacking spirit? OP posts a very cool, impressive hack and all everyone can talk about in the comments is how it actually isn't interesting to them.

In 2024, the "hacking spirit" aligns well with not using an app to do everything.

Re: Show HN: AI climbing coach – visualize how to climb any route based on your body

#147

I feel like I’m the right audience for this - a not very good climber with unusual distribution of limbs. But I’m not interested - part of the fun in climbing is on sight climbs and solving problems yourself.

As an experienced, very poor climber myself, I enjoy the process of problem solving. However, knowing many experienced, very good climbers - studying beta is how many of them excel. As an aside, the term beta also came from the use of beta tapes by climbers to record themselves climbing so they could study the minutiae of their movement to find improvements. In higher levels of bouldering especially, a nuanced and fi…

To clarify and define the time period: beta as in Beta Max video cassette tapes.

Re: Show HN: AI climbing coach – visualize how to climb any route based on your body

#148
post #128
post #84

Your demo video is monetized and showing 30 seconds of ads. Might not be a bad idea to switch the ads off.

Pff, they're sharing their work for free and you complain about a 30s ad?

I assume it's an oversight rather than an actual attempt to earn few pennies.

Re: Show HN: AI climbing coach – visualize how to climb any route based on your body

#149
post #11

It looks really interesting, but as an experienced climber I'm not sure if just watching a video of my avatar climbing would really help with skill acquisition. Also, this claims that the wall type or video quality doesn't matter, but I have a hard time understanding how the model would be able to understand that a small crimp could possibly be dual textured and therefore has only a few specific ways of approaching i…

What do you think are some use cases where an avatar simulation of you can help (if any)?
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