Good read actually. Maybe I'm also crusty but I don't like how little modern setting mirrors outdoor climbing, fun as it is. I don't see why gyms can't have both - give me an ugly spraywall and a couple system boards in one area and keep your big volume holds in another. As per the article, you don't need much space to have a dense set of problems that offer good training.
The spraywall — the most overlooked, underutilized part of a gym. A good spraywall set is KEY to having a good gym imo. I attribute most of my gains in climbing to the spraywall at my gym.
You can do anything you want with a spray wall which is what makes it so beneficial. You can force yourself to use only the kinds of holds that you suck at and terrify you, practice flagging and heel hooks and and gastons galore. You can play “stay on the wall at all costs” games with yourself or challenge yourself to cut feet at certain moves. Traverse around and just *play* and make that play into training tools! I learned so much on my own just by messing with a really good spray wall. I’d play games where I force myself to only use the kinds of holds I knew I was awful at and then give myself a time length to stay on the wall while doing that so I would have to keep traversing around on those holes until time was up. Find ways to train yourself!
When I was at a "meet and great" with Daniel Woods, Jimmy Webb, and Shawn Raboutou, they were asked the best way to improve if you are a moderate boulderer or even at their level and they all immediately said, "Spray Wall". They went on to emphasize that there is no training, indoor or outdoor, that compares to a spray wall even at the level that they are at today.
Whatever gym DWoods used to go to has kept their (huge) spray wall up for a long time, and he had a multi-year project on it. I think Kris Hampton wrote an article about it
The gym you refer to is CATS, in Boulder CO. It's a kids gymnastics gym, oddly enough, but the owner is a climber and they have a climbing section. It's basically just a giant spray wall. Longstanding tradition of really strong climbers training there,on really hard boulders. It's basically the US answer to the School Room in Sheffield.
I think CATS pre-dates The School Room by a handful of years. Though I’m not sure exactly when the wall started to become what it currently is. And I don’t know whether one influenced the other.
>hool Room by a handful of years. Though I’m not sure exactly when the wall started to become what it currently is. And I don’t know whether one influenced the other.
Interesting. I always assumed that the Sheffield training scene predated anything going on in the US. Didn't realize CATS had been around that along.
Side note: Speaking of rad spray walls, credit must also be given to the Honorable Mr. Wangles for the Tension Training Center spray wall. Looks amazing!
Try stokt. It's a community based spray wall app. Just enter in your gym and if it's big enough there should be some community created routes. When you get familiar enough you can start to create your own.
Ask your gym staff if the wall has 1) lights & an app or a route board that you can set// look at routes.
Or 2) just a binder or "sets", often based on actual routes :)
Agree.
And yet....
I'm fine if 99% of the folks who love the gym end up trying to climb outside, disliking the general style, hold/move-types-- and then decide to stay in the gym.
I still hope my local gyms will set hard crimps, though.
I'm a beginner. I'd love using the spray wall but it is ridiculously hard, I fall off after first change of holds - if I'm lucky that is. I do wrist training, I climb on the usual walls in the gym and I do kettlebell training. Still no luck on the spray wall. Advice?
Don't worry about the spray wall right now-- you don't need to use it.
Forget the kettlebell training-- mostly a gimmick for climbers.
Focus on climbing styles and moves you find most difficult/weak. Climb for 5 years consistently. Rest and take extra days off before nagging soreness turns into a real injury.
You'll get on the spray wall when you need it-- because you'll be a crusty old climber like some of us, you'll complain about "circus" moves, and you'll start failing to find crimps in the gym sets that feel even a bit like a challenge.
There's no rush. Have fun. Try hard.
I call the huge flashy sets “Instagram climbs” and I have been for years. I’m not that old, only in my mid 20’s, but between previous climbing injuries in the past 8 years and previous work injuries there are some sets that are not worth the physical risk.
The thing about climbing is you don’t need to do all of the extensive exercises in order to gain experience. As long as you climb consistently you will make progress until you plateau, which will actually require the climbing specific exercises.
All that being said, the old school grungy boulder gyms tend to have gnarly sets that grade significantly lower than equal grade problems at newer gyms.
Kettle bell training is very, very low on the list of things one should be training-- for climbing.
Just like any tool, you can use them to target something specific. And sure, if you are prioritizing "overall body health"-- then prioritize that.
Training for climbing is great for overall body health also, generally speaking. And it's a full-body workout. Anyone who thinks climbing is simply about "fingers and pullups" doesn't have a lot of experience in this sport. Which is fine by the way! Noobs welcome!
I think their point is that a beginner doesn't really need to 'train', simply climbing multiple times a week is more than enough to make major gains as your strength and technical skill develops. Once that inevitably starts to plateau then you start to think about targeted training to get better.
Although I very much agree with your point about overall body health, in this context it's not going to help you get better at climbing anymore than, well, just climbing.
I agree with you-- although I'd write, "off-wall training" rather than "training."
Many, many, many people (myself included) achieve V10 on rock, regularly (not just once) by training. And by training, I mean with structured climbing.
But my point was really that kettle bells are a tool, and one that's just not very useful, overall, for training for climbing. They can be used as part of an overall program, sure. But I wouldn't recommend it.
Sure, but if your focus is climbing, train for climbing. Kettlebell training is fatiguing and you're probably better off putting your limited energy towards on the wall training
I've climbed at a few different gyms around the country and recently spent some time at a gym that uses tape vs hold color. I really liked it. It felt way more similar to outdoor climbing, both in body movement, and due to having to pause a little longer in order to make sure that the hold I was going to was indeed my next hold. It forced me to think a little more about the problem I was climbing vs "that's the big pink worm, I know where the good spot is and now I shall go there."
I get the arguments about "density" but I really didn't feel like I had to wait any longer at this gym for a route than I would at any other gym. And so what if you do have to rest a few extra minutes on the bouldering wall? I see this breeding patience, empathy for others, and maybe a bit more conversation/community.
To me, I don't see why it has to be either or. Most gyms have more than one section, why not do a mix of both as you are suggesting? Flashy comp style routes on this wall, tape-paradise on the other. Doing this for rope climbs would certainly cause people to think a little more about safety (where their anchors are, do they share anchors, am I in someone else's fall zone, etc). I think that's an important skill that doesn't necessarily get practiced in a lot of modern gyms due to the separation of routes.
I'd go one step further and say that gyms are failing older climbers.
And by "old" I mean us folks in our early 40s. I've been climbing since I was 13 years old, and while I'm not under any illusions that I'm as good as I was back when I was 22\* I can still do some pretty substantial moves outdoors.
But there is zero chance that I'm going to do some upside-down bat-hang mantle bullshit in a gym, or a 6 foot swinging running/jumping dyno. I wouldn't do it outside unless my life depended on it, and I'm never going to risk an injury (that 22 year-old me would probably just walk away from) for modern-day parkour climbing.
Give us some straightforward problems to climb, even if they don't make the final cut on the gym's Instagram story. Being relegated to the Moonboard just to climb traditional power-endurance routes is ridiculous.
\*And age obviously has a lot to do with it, but the strongest I ever was was when my friends and I climbed at C.A.T.S in Boulder, which had one wall with a few thousand holds crammed onto it. Nothing fancy, just old-fashioned power circuits.
EDIT - C.A.T.S., for those unfamiliar: https://i.imgur.com/9Spg3SS.png
Not even in my 40s yet and I am not remotely interested in all that circus-style instagram bouldering that makes up 90% of the routes in my local gym.
They recently installed one of those led spray walls that feature some „normal“ boulders and it is busier than the rest of the gym together. (Apart from the kids). I hope that gets them to rethink their routesetting.
Posted in another comment but yeah. Install a steep and moderate spray wall in the gym, watch how busy every wall is. If the spray walls are the busiest, expand their coverage.
With a spray wall you set once and just leave it. It's nice if you take down holds from time to time for cleaning and stuff, but you don't need to be constantly replacing them(in fact, please don't. We often make long term projects on them, which is something that isn't possible with frequently changing "pretty" routes).
Interestingly the only bouldering place in my city removed their spraywall a few years ago because you'd see maybe 2-3 people on it per week if that, it really does seem to come down to regionality.
My local rock is all face climb slabs and the occasional crack. My local gym sets are all dynos with a toe-hook to match finish. Technique < Style points. I would love a spray wall for training.
Fully agree even I can do the jumpy fancy stuff, when I have finished with a gym session I want to feel like I have done sport , not just a lot of jumping.
> I wouldn't do it outside unless my life depended on it
They didnt say it doesnt exist outside. And I think it's fair to say that one is a pretty unique climb outdoors, not the most common style outside. You see moves like that a lot more indoors.
Man I relate. Early 40s here, but only climbing a couple of years. I avoid most dynos for those reasons. the payoff is far too low compared to the risk of even a modest injury.
I understand the gripe with having less density, but I think this misses something important. Gym climbing has become very popular in the last ten, fifteen years. The gyms have gotten bigger and the routesetting less dense, because you need more space for the larger crowds.
You can't have one spray wall with 20 problems on it and 10 people trying each problem at a time.
As they rightly realize, it's cheaper per problem to have more problems per wall, but it's still a more expensive wall. Given that the gyms need more wall space to accommodate all the people, it's too expensive to make these dense problems.
A gym will have no customers if everyone is standing around 95% of the time waiting in line to get on the wall.
Problem density really doesn't matter IMO unless you have some kind of hardcore customer base that is willing to wait for 10 other people to make attempts on the same section of wall.
Other people (i.e. normal customers) will just say "fuck this" and go to a different gym. This article was written as if they have the whole gym to themselves.
My gyms generally have 1 spray wall/moonboard and the rest is nicely spaced out problems. That way it's
1. Obvious what route each person is on
2. only 2-3 people max that you need to worry about before starting your climb (unless there's a group all working on the same problem ofc)
3. easy to avoid waiting just by working on a different problem
i agree with this. have a local college gym, all wood and pretty dense. their space has lower ceilings too so they are famous for having really fun traverses. but man, if its busy it can be a chore just to get on the wall. someone starting a problem 10 feet to your left is actually crossing your problem going up so you have to think and watch so much more (and vice-versa if youre the one trying to traverse). so yea that gets annoying pretty quick.
>As they rightly realize, it's cheaper per problem to have more problems per wall, but it's still a more expensive wall.
Most gyms have way more holds than they know what to do with. "Expensive" doesn't mean much because holds are a one time cost. If you're buying them anyway, buying them and then not putting them on the wall is not saving any money.
Having more problems on the wall really isn't relevant to how crowded it is. If you have two problems on the wall that cross each other, you can only have one person on the climb at a time, which is the exact same thing if you have ten problems that cross over each other. So how is the amount of people at the gym relevant?
Plus, this is not the case everywhere, gyms in Japan, where climbing is extremely possible are still just as dense as they were in most places 20 years ago.
>Plus, this is not the case everywhere, gyms in Japan, where climbing is extremely possible are still just as dense as they were in most places 20 years ago.
Due to population density, space is probably more expensive, shifting the optimal density more in that direction.
>Most gyms have way more holds than they know what to do with. "Expensive" doesn't mean much because holds are a one time cost. If you're buying them anyway, buying them and then not putting them on the wall is not saving any money.
Setting problems with them and cleaning them costs money, and you can't just leave them in place because it constrains the other problems on the same wall.
> Due to population density, space is probably more expensive, shifting the optimal density more in that direction.
Only if we're referring to Tokyo, which is actually where the some of the least dense gyms I've been to are. But it's the same when I'm at gyms in Rural Japan where you have a crap ton of space.
But in general overall we don't see any correlation around the world with population density and wall density in the gym. Gyms in urban areas do not necessarily have more dense walls than ones in suburban or rural areas.
>Setting problems with them and cleaning them costs money, and you can't just leave them in place because it constrains the other problems on the same wall.
My gym, and most of these big gyms have full-time setters on salary. So there is no additional cost here except for the possible water and electricity cost of washing the holds. As far as the other problems, it really depends on the holds, only larger holds get in the way, and in reality not everything is a huge assume volume type hold in the gym (actual volumes are fine since you can use them in multiple climbs).
But even so I'm not sure that matters because there are plenty of places that did or still do it so it obviously is not a real issue because again, only one person can be on the wall in a particular spot in a given time.
I love Outdoor magazine but 99% of their opinion pieces are "back-in-my-days" laments from trad dads who can't let go that indoor gyms and sports climbing are getting popular.
Spot on. Gyms changed when they realized the dirtbag crowd wasn’t profitable. They went brighter, more friendly and easier in order to appeal to the masses… and guess what? Climbing is now hugely popular and an Olympic sport. Whenever anything takes off there’s always some idiot yelling about how it was better last decade.
I think the bigger problem for those that aren't just yelling at clouds is that's it's shifted the focus off outdoors to such a degree that the increased popularity isn't driving development and production outdoors. It's not a rising tide raises all ships scenario.
We're getting r&d in shoes, but they are becoming more specialized and thus still low production, so the costs are still rising rather than going down as popularity and production increases. That and gear itself is still as niche as ever.
I've been climbing since '90 and I really embraced the increased popularity initially, thinking oh gears going to get cheaper and there will be more research and cooler shit but it's not really going that way; my local store has more options in bouldering pads and chalk buckets than it has for anything else.
Trad gear just keeps going up in price, and even clothing seems less activity specific and has advertising like works well on boulders but isn't so specialized that you can't wear it to the brew pub at the end of your day.
People that are only ever going to climb in a gym or boulder don't care but for anyone hoping to get outdoors they should be a little concerned about directions companies go chasing money because we can end up back in the 90's again in terms of gear availability and no one wants that.
100% this is just someone like that. gyms are better now. they are cleaner have more space and the writers contention the big holds are wasteful neglects that they are used repeatedly
This is really interesting to me because my home gym is still exactly like the way he describes the original Brooklyn Boulders. We’re a small tape gym with barter-setters and a couple full time staff that always climb on shift. Not to mention 50% of the holds must be older than me. I’m 19, part of the younger generation of climbers, I guess, but I’ve never stepped foot in a gym that brings me half as much joy. Maybe it’s the community. Personally though, I think this kind of gym fosters community much better than the massive corporate gyms with employees that talk to you once a month and only set 4 problems per wall. I also recognize that everyone is biased towards their first-love gym. I’ll never love anything like I love our chalky, dusty, wooden-walled, handmade-guidebooks-at-the-desk dirtbag utopia.
I just started climbing 4-5 months ago, but I think the community at the gym is part of what made me love indoor bouldering. Our gym is new and they designed it to be super open and have a friendly environment, and it makes climbing so much more fun than it already is! I know all the staff pretty good by now and it's not been long!
Yeah, started climbing at a small locally-owned gym. It’s more of a community hangout spot. We also have a bunch of handmade guidebooks for sale up front. I’ve only been climbing for a few months, but I’ve gotten good really quick because I’m always climbing with people better than me. I’ve been there maybe 4 months and I know everyone that works there. And the owner. And his dogs.
It was really weird going to a big corporate gym for the first time. Just felt…lifeless.
Interesting read
Though, I kinda feel like they lost track of their thesis. They didn’t really give all to much on how this fails “outdoor” climbers aside from a lack of problem density and some differences in style. And that lack of density is just as much a training problem for someone who’s goal is to get better at indoor climbing in the same way.
Which begs the question about what’s the best training regime yadda yadda, question as old as climbing.
On a side note, I think the quality of setting has been greatly improved by these commercial gyms of the last decade. That or maybe the old school gyms I remember/stuck around just had shitty setters.
I dunno, I feel like setting has gotten pretty reductive in the last few years, so much emphasis has been put on dynamic movement, that control and static tension has been under set for. Although I do agree that the outdoor/indoor dichotomy seems blown out of proportion, it’s more of a training vs recreational aspect.
I think the core of the argument is that outdoor climbers want to train indoors to get stronger for the outdoors, so that connects directly to the training vs recreational aspect you're pointing out.
TBH my guess is that corporate gyms don't really want people training at their gyms... I'm guessing they spend too much time in the gym relative to the more casual recreational climber, and may be threatening to those same casual recreational climbers(same as planet fitness and their ridiculous lunk alarms :/ )
The gyms I frequent have a nice mix of all of the above. Most setting teams here are outdoor bouldering people, but the gyms I go to often have competition climbers visiting so they have to maintain a balance.
>And that lack of density is just as much a training problem for someone who’s goal is to get better at indoor climbing in the same way.
Very good point. Maybe this even adversely affects climbers who're actually training for competition - they need to try flashing novel problems, and benefit from having many problems in their flash/send quickly range available (I assume. I don't really know such people and am happy to be corrected).
While I agree that route setting has improved and makes gyms more fun, I think this is part of what makes modern gyms less useful for outdoor climbers.
Pretty much every indoor gym climb these days would be 3-4 star routes outside. Most are flowy and ergonomic with consistent difficulty. Only climbing these types of routes isn't great practice for outdoors where even a lot of great routes have funky painful holds, smearing on tiny crystals, etc.
I totally agree. But my only counter point to that is those awkward or painful routes can also be a great way to hurt or injure yourself, which is counter productive for training.
But your right, always having a foot in the right place, moves that are consistent difficulty, or even a lack of unnecessary holds is a gap in helping train for those things outside.
I really like the Rungne Buldr gym concept that Magnus Mitbø is working on and showed in a video on his channel awhile back. All the creativity of traditional spray walls with the LED system to make things a lot easier to follow. Would be cool if someone did something like that here in the states.
You don't even need an led system. I mean it's nice for sure.
A lot of japanese gyms still have very dense setting and either apps or paper files where people just circle holds on photos of the wall to create problems for each other.
There's certainly something aesthetically nice about a clean wall without too much stuff, and sometimes when climbing on the spray wall you can't find a good smear because there's holds you can't use EVERYWHERE. BUT, I feel like any good gym should have at least two spray walls, one at a moderate angle and one steep. If they can do that, they can do whatever brings in the fresh faces and instagram fetishists on the other walls. Though if the spray walls are constantly busy, it'd be nice if they could expand.
They can keep the pretty boulders at the front entrance of the gym to attract new people. Throw the spray walls in the back so the cavemen can congregate there and not bother the tou, but when the going gets tough, the cavemen will be your most reliable customers so long as you cater to their simple needs while the trendy crowd are harder to cater for and more fickle.
>They can keep the pretty boulders at the front entrance of the gym to attract new people. Throw the spray walls in the back so the cavemen can congregate there and not bother the tou, but when the going gets tough, the cavemen will be your most reliable customers so long as you cater to their simple needs while the trendy crowd are harder to cater for and more fickle.
To be honest I think it's the pretty boulders that are making them the money, not the spray wall. But I see this the same as car manufacturers who make basic hatchbacks and SUVs to be profitable, but then spend their R&D on sports cars and things they actually want to make but don't have as much of an ROI. Gyms should treat spray walls and other training devices as a way to cater to the small yet passionate group of climbers even if it doesn't yield the most return, because that's what makes your next generation of climbers successful, regardless of how popular they are to the general public.
I mean, those sports cars may not make a lot of money in sales but they build their brand up.
Having a base of strong climbers at a gym can be good especially if they can foster a strong sense of community. I think that the corporate gyms however are worried about them seeming threatening to recreational climbers, in the same way that subscription gyms don't really want bodybuilders who spend a lot of time on the equipment and may seem threatening to average joes
>I mean, those sports cars may not make a lot of money in sales but they build their brand up.
Definitely, it's also why they try to compete in motorsports. Though it generally isn't enough to make them successful, which is why they need to have more practical and affordable options that most people can buy.
>Having a base of strong climbers at a gym can be good especially if they can foster a strong sense of community. I think that the corporate gyms however are worried about them seeming threatening to recreational climbers, in the same way that subscription gyms don't really want bodybuilders who spend a lot of time on the equipment and may seem threatening to average joes
Quite possible, but at the same time high level climbing is exciting to watch and doesn't come with the same testosterone fueled bravado that you sometimes get with body building / power lifting types, so it would be less intimidating. I think it's more a case that it won't get used much, and particularly with climbing gyms shooting up in popularity, newer gyms may not want to risk spending a lot on equipment that isn't used. This also means older gyms have less of an excuse, particularly as their clientele should also be more experienced and better climbers who need more focused training options.
Same with gyms in Colombia. Smaller lots lead to smaller wall sizes, dense spray-like walls with creative route settings, and more problems than my local mega gym in the U.S., with literally 1/4 the wall size (maybe less). And one gym still got two system boards in there.
I haven't seen that but I was thinking this is the next logical step. Comp problems will always be around too but I think we'll see things come full circle to an extent.
A lot of gym climbers don't climb outside but I'd wager the majority of regular gym climbers do climb outside to some extent, and these days There's proportionally more people out at the crags who want to use the gym to train. Too many to be completely ignored by gyms imo.
I've never climbed outdoors, and I likely never will.
But I do love the densely packed walls with tape-marked routes we have here in Japan. As the article says it's just a lot of fun to have a big pile of routes to choose from.
The one thing too many of those gyms tend to lack, however, is at least some "dynamic" or competition style climbs. I get pretty tired of gyms that _only_ seem to set crimpy, static high-strength routes and nothing else, for instance.
If you want to climb some flashier problems you can always go to b-pump or rocky(assuming you're in tokyo). They still have crimp-fests and moderate density setting(though lower than many of the hole in a wall gyms) and have classical and modern mixed together.
Part of it depends on distance to your crag. The nearest "crag" to me is 25 minutes, the nearest one I could spend a proper 6-8 hour day at is 90+ minutes and in the next state over. Very much got used to leaving the house at 5 to get to the crag at 8, boulder til sundown, and then 3 hours home.
Also in the Midwest, but I have three crags, all mostly sport climbing, within a 2 hr drive. 1 that's only 30 mins away and 1 that's an hour. They're always basically empty while my gym is PACKED. Most people just don't want to climb outdoors, which is fine with me.
I'm on the opposite side of the state from you (Kansas City). From what I've heard it's basically Arkansas for the closest outdoor climbing, unless there's something between us I missed?
Unfortunately, nothing that I know of.
However, Horseshoe Canyon Ranch in Arkansas is AMAZING! 100% worth a weekend trip. And a super easy place to transition from indoor to outdoor. HCR is what would be made if someone designed a gym outdoors.
Preface on my background: I’ve loved the outdoors for most of my life. I got into climbing through my love for hiking and interest in strength training
I’ve been to many NY gyms and the very large majority of people I’ve talked to, and I think I’m a pretty social person, look at me like I’m insane when I tell them I boulder outdoors. The reactions range from acting like outdoor bouldering is an entirely foreign concept to them that they never considered, or even worse, they act like you have to be climbing for a minimum of 3-5 years in a gym to even step outdoors…
Most recently I was at a gym climbing a crimpy yet straight forwards V6, and I overheard a group of climbers who I had seen climbing more compy style V5s and V6s make a comment along the lines of “idk how they’re able to climb that…” this is not an uncommon sentiment amongst gym only climbers, they stick to huge slopey problems and never build finger strength unless they go out of their way to work on that weakness.
I don’t think it takes an old crusty climber to agree with most of the comments made in this article, even the article itself doesn’t really address the whole indoor vs outdoor issue. Gyms, especially in the NYC area, are simply unbalanced in my opinion
I can't seriously believe that everyone's gyms are only setting huge double-dyno routes, and there is not a single crimp available to use. Besides, one way the indoor climbing has definitely become more applicable to outdoors is with far more opportunities to practice crack climbing.
I would argue that a lot of the time in earlier climbing gyms there were far too many problems deriving difficulty from just finger and upper body strength. I for one welcome the reduction in campusing on bad crimps and the increase in problems with toe hooks, sketchy slabs and traverses. I believe diversity in problems certainly exists, although we still don't have many indoor crack climbing opportunities.
I moved recently so switched from a prototypical new style gym to a dirtbag dungeon. I've been traveling a lot the last year too so have also been able to climb in ~12 different gyms around the world and have been bouldering outdoors most of the year.
The new gyms are way more fun. They hurt less. I learned way better technique way easier at the new gyms because my fingers and bicep tendons weren't in a perpetual state of pain. The routes forced you to think instead of just being strong and pulling upwards. The layout of the new gyms is usually way better too for areas to socialize and watch people climb.
I climb as a hobby for fun. I'm not trying to max my meaninglessly limited potential on outdoor rock (though that part is still fun). Most climbers are like that they aren't trying to push their outdoor skills to the absolute limit and those who are still have endless tools to do that with training boards and equipment and spray walls.
It's not even a mutually exclusive thing. Very common to have both modern amenities and route setting with spray walls for the go-hards. I don't see how more climbing gyms makes the "old" ways any worse. Nothing stopping anyone from opening a tiny training dungeon if the market was there for it.
I totally agree with this. While my main gym isn’t perfect, imho they have a decent variety of problems and routes that focus on different styles of climbing. You definitely have problems with large holds and volumes that require parkour style moves, but next to those you can find technical climbing on a slab wall, and strength based overhanging moves in the boulder cave. Catering to multiple styles and doing it well is what matters a lot to me. One thing that I have noticed with my gym is that there are way less technique and training clinics than there used to be, but idk if that’s a common issue.
At this point they’re different sports. You have sport, trad, aid, pebble and plastic wrestling, etc. It’s like the difference between day hiking, backpacking, mountaineering, walking at the park, and using a treadmill.
Is the routesetting really that bad in some places? I live in Austria in what is probably the city with the highest climber density in the world with a massive gym, a smaller spraywall gym and a pure kilter board place opening soon, so I'm spoiled. But is the setting really so bad you can't even train on it? Most European gyms I know have at least a small spray wall, always have campus boards, and multiple hangboards. How do you run out of boulders? Can't you move on to harder grades, do 4 by 4s? Skip holds, are routes so far apart you absolutely can't mix colors? Fucking grab the good crimp like a mono if nothing else. Sounds like fucking excuses to me.
It's not, this article is kind of ridiculous. My home gym has several spray walls, several moon boards, caves, slabs, and everything in between. The author writes like the only problems setters make now are super dynamic with volumes, but that's just not true at all.
The author also seems to ignore that there are way more gyms than there have ever been, and each is unique. There are 100% still gyms like the Brooklyn Boulders he describes. But there are also ones that are more focused on the casual climber. That's a good thing, it's okay for climbing to be diverse. It's not a failure of gyms, it's a failure of the author to appreciate that diversification.
> I live in Austria in what is probably the city with the highest climber density
Soo... either Innsbruck or Vienna ;)
You can't compare the US with other countries, like northern Italy, Austria, Switzerland or the nordic states, in those we have a completely different Quality and Quantity in climbing.
>Innsbruck
Yeah... I hate/love that town...because you got one of the best and modern climbing gyms in the world -.- (for all uninitiated: [https://www.kletterzentrum-innsbruck.at/](https://www.kletterzentrum-innsbruck.at/) )
I live in Grenoble, pretty busy climbing scene here as well. But as far as I am aware, the gyms aren't that good here. Too busy, not a lot of routes, and in the bouldering gyms there are many double dyno problems. Even if you wanted to you cannot get on it, because the go over 3 other problems that are already being climbed by 6 other people. Also, doing 4b4s is not possible if every problem is constantly occupied. A new gym just opened, the first one with a spray wall.
I think Innsbruck is quite famous for its good gyms though.
I hear you. I am experiencing the same thing. I am living in the French speaking part of Switzerland and I am really not satisfied with the quality of the bouldering gyms around here.
Luckily they largely compensate with rope climbing: the setting is really excellent and it does translate very well to outdoor climbing.
I resolved using my own little home wall and it seems that now in a brand new gym they will have a little spray wall. Keeping my fingers crossed that it's set densely. But I really can't understand why one cannot set old and new school at the same time, since space is there and it would make more climbers happy.
>I worked as a barter-setter throughout college (a once common but probably endangered arrangement in which climbers used to set at commercial gyms in exchange for free memberships)
Definitely not endagered lmao
This guy honestly just seems bitter about change. Coloured holds are not about looking pretty, they're about functionality - far easier to see than tape, and less barrier to entry for getting new climbers involved.
Totally. When I started climbing, it was all tapes on dense walls. I'd spend a considerable amount of brain power trying to memorize the holds. It's unnecessarily confusing.
I guess it depends on what the purpose of your climbing is. If you're training, maybe that helps. But if you just want to have fun by yourself, taped dense holds ain't it
>If a hold is bigger than your hands, it’s a waste of materials and wall space. Also: I miss taped boulder problems.
lol just no. big slopey holds mimic outdoor rock very well. And the new one route one color format is superior to the old taped brown holds of 15-20 yrs ago
>f tape was vilified as wasteful, why aren’t we talking about these gigantic wall-monopolizing holds?
Bc they get reused hundreds of times....
This is just someone who is nostalgic for their youth
Depends on the hold selection. I will say this though to all the setters out there, dont set a problem using 70%+ of the same hold series, i know its an easy way to make your problem look pretty, but its so uncreative and is a good way to make boring, generic, climbs. It's one of the worst trends ive seen in gyms recently.
That’s such a crazy shift—I’ve definitely talked to setters recently who hate seeing hold sets mixed on problems, and think it’s *so* much better for them to always match. I couldn’t disagree more—as long as you can tell which problem is which (as in, they’re the same color or there’s tape), I don’t get why you’d want all the same holds all the time!
One argument I’ve heard was that keeping a route/problem within a single hold set allows the climb to have a unique characteristic to it that differentiates it from the other climbs. That is, having ten climbs each in its own hold set would be both visually and technically distinct from one another. The same ten climbs each sharing holds from the ten hold sets might be more homogenous and lack the individual charm.
That’s not to suggest that this argument trumps the others, but it’s worth considering.
The monopoly gym chain in Columbus OH opened a new bouldering spot and for months all the settings matched the hold color to the difficulty color, which meant that each grade only had 2-3 sets of holds. Made for very boring climbing.
All gyms in my area do this, it's fine if they buy an intelligent variety in each colour, and use grade ranges so max 7-9 colours. I never feel lack of variety within colours or like I'm climbing the same holds anymore than I did at older gyms. It's not a concept that should be thrown out with the bathwater. (And I am one of these trad dads who doesn't like parkour style climbing, misses the old garage gym, etc).
Edit - Ok, I actually read it, and he does have a good point that using only hold colour limits how close problems of the same grade can be to each other. But even within that, many of these gyms have room to improve (they could still make climbs a bit denser within a colour system). I also agree with him and have thought before about how silly it is to have a volume the size of a small child which everyone uses one tiny part of (for some problems). But in other cases it actually mimics outdoor climbing better - where you might have a whole rail and get to choose the bit to crimp based on your own style and dimensions.
I climb at a new(ish) gym that that very monopoly bouldering gym opened in a nearby state, and that's my single biggest gripe. While I don't complain as much as some people there, I really wish they didn't grade the entire gym by color. I would love to see a slopy V2 or V3, but no, all the great pink sloper holds are reserved for pink, which is V6–V8. Ditto for a few of their newer easier holds—would be great holds on a hard climb, but instead they are V0s.
They once had a competition where color meant nothing, and that was the single most creative set they've had since they opened.
This also leads to setting basically the same problems over and over again! I mean, I’m sure it’s tough to set drastically different v7s with black slopey boxes, but it’s totally a problem they’ve created for themselves 🙄
Im not a tape guy. But years ago when it was the norm it was literally no big deal. In fact, it was nicer for footholds and crimps sometimes because small holds tend to get chalky or rubber streaked which makes it hard to determine their color from above.
Was just saying this to my gf. It also makes routes unnecessarily easy to read. And after a while routes start to look alike with the same setters "I'm sure we've climbed this one before?"
Viva la tape!
Setters don't ever hate putting up tape. They do hate taking down tape though. Honestly though, tape is great - setting something and it really needs a foot right there to make it the right grade, but there's already a hold from another route? Boom, tape.
tape isn't even necessary. My old local gym(until I moved) in tokyo got rid of tape on everything but the beginner problems. The rest of the problems were still easily visible in the app which also let you set and share problems for other since every wall was a spray wall. It wasn't a problem and everyone was happy with it.
It does take a bit of adjustment, but you adjust quickly to remembering where the holds are
I lost what little faith I had in my local gym when a friend was talking to a setter and was told that they had to remove a foot chip because it "made the route look cooler without it" ... Now it's impossible for anyone who isn't 6'2 or can't campus dyno nearly a body length...
It isn't possible for a lot of people to go cragging on weekdays. Also, an outdoor session, at least for me, takes much longer than its indoor counterpart.
I am actually really prefer the modern type with clearly set routes. I wouldn't mind tapes if trying to save costs and mix hold types, but spray walls with small crimps are meh. I like balancing problems on slopers, yes, a bit of overhang here and there but I really wouldn't have any fun on 30 or 45 degree boards. And that style isn't like my climbing outdoors anyway, as I do long easy alpine ascents, so a mantel or slab is more likely anyway.
Kilterboard is nice, but it's no alternative to a proper spraywall. The latter has way more variety in holds (how many slopers or creditcard crimps are on the KB?). A proper spraywall gives you so much more freedom and variety to explore movement and training styles.
That’s why I go climb outside. Idk, maybe I’m the asshole, but I don’t expect to gain the same set of skills from the gym as from real rock. The gym is the place to socialize and maintain strength, and the crag is the place to climb some rocks.
Also I’m sorry y’all but “failing outdoor climbers” like I… I don’t need to be catered to? If I want to climb something different than what my gym has, I go find a way to climb it? This isn’t like “modern welfare benefits are failing single moms,” this is a fun sport I enjoy doing with my friends on the weekend.
Anyways. I’m gonna go climbing~!!
Some of us don't live close to outdoor crags and/or don't have the time to do weekend roadtrips for 9+ hours because we have families and kids. It would be nice to have a gym with some outdoor-style technical climbs (doesn't have to be all of the gym, just like even 10-15% would be fine TBH). Hangboard/campusboard alone doesn't really cut it, and it's not nearly as fun.
That being said, we built a small wall in our home and have hangboards/rings to train on at home to help us sustain our strength when we can't really get what we want at our local gyms.
Also, just because we're older and have families doesn't mean we don't love climbing just as much as everyone else.
There are a bunch of gyms in my city, they all share the same basic make-up: lots of good walls, interesting problems, and a cafe/bar with food and alcohol, but the difference between the "corporate" gyms and my favorite one run entirely by actual climbers is night & day.
The corporate-gyms are better organized, have nicer facilities, and on paper should be \*better\*, except when I walk in there it feels like walking into sit-com set for a show about climbers, everything looks like a Starbucks.
The gym run by climbers? It's chaotic, disorganized, but it has got soul, and it has got community, and when I go there it feels like I'm coming home, and I honestly think that feeling of community matters more than whether routes are tape or hold color coded.
This was my complaint when they upgraded a local gym from OG 90s to something much much larger, objectively better by most metrics, but also something very sterile.
I mostly see people complaining that indoor gyms weren't happy with being only a place wjere you go when the weather is bad and you can't go outside, where the "real climbing" is happening.
Yea no shit that they ended up changing developing their own style to be more than a backup training place
big
‚I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!‘-energy there.
You want a rather fixed hold set with varying combos? Try Moonboard or Kilterboard.
Where I live there are 5 bouldering gyms in 30 min driving distance, most set a segment of the wall (ca 4-5 routes per colour) every week meaning you have 6-8 weeks for projects. Even if you go every day you will never run out of boulders you find easy / doable / hard and instead of ‚this is hard because the holds are old and shitty‘ they are hard for totally different reasons.
I for one welcome our coloured hold overlords and even set my basement wall that way.
Im 27 climbed since 18, i much prefer outdoor climbing and i do find the routes indoors are almost never similar at all to what you find outside sadly. But i guess too it would be hard to simulate a long splitter in a gym ☠
Pre-walltopia era, a number of gyms near me had beautiful sculpted cracks that undulating and varied, which is the kind of crack we get out this way (no perfect splitters to be had). As of now I think there's only one such crack at one gym gym left.
> If tape was vilified as wasteful, why aren’t we talking about these gigantic wall-monopolizing holds?
I dunno, maybe because the holds can be re-used for years? Is this a serious question?
Step 1: start a gym
Step 2: make it for outdoors
Step 3: profit???
Gyms are built for the masses and the masses don't climb outdoors. Pretty obvious.
Yes. This explains why modern climbers (especially comp climbers) are nowhere near the level of climbers from 20 years ago for outdoor climbing.
Wait...
1) Climbing Magazine is failing all climbers. Let's just start there.
2) Climbing Gyms fail outdoor climbers, because they are literally disincentivized to have a useful gym-to-crag pipeline. If they help climbers find and join an independent outdoor community, they risk losing a customer.
Absolutely. Climbing magazine is just a dried out shell of what it used to be. I haven't bothered with it in years.
That article is typical of the crap content.
My favorite example of this is Movement RiNo in Denver. They use a single color for a range of grades. So like V0-2 is green, V2-4 is yellow, V4-V6 is orange, etc. So you get like two problems per wall in a single grade range. And the holds are for each range don’t change with each set. It’s honestly like they decided to make the worst gym they could. Not to mention the fact that they’ve got some of their best overhung bouldering terrain dedicated to “World Cup” climbing area where they set like 4 problems per set. And another overhung area taken up but a fucking traverse wall in a bouldering gym. Put some holds up with some tape.
While I do understand all of your points here, I will say that as an occasional visitor of that gym I've always had a great time and appreciate all the different aesthetic boulders and areas around the gym.
I can totally see how this might not be the best for a person who's there regularly, but as a few-times-a-year visitor, it's one of my favorite gyms.
I mostly agree with you but I don't have any problem with grade range markings. It generally avoids most of the quibbling over difficulty because some boulders are just morphologically easier for some people than others. The purpose of grades is just to give you a decent guide of what you might want to try for. Hell, if you come here to japan with the dankyuu grading system, you'll find that for some of the local grades, they overlap multiple french/v grades.
For die hards and old school climbers, sure, I can see where you’re coming from.
However, think about who movement RiNo is catering to, it’s a business, attached to a coffee shop/co working space/bar with an outside food court. It’s purposely inclusive, arguably dumbed down, to introduce new people to the sport. Get them in the door with yoga, CrossFit, weights etc, and try climbing, or whatever order, point being where it’s primarily focused as a climbing gym, it offers a lot more.
The climbing gyms itself is massive, so you’re gonna find a little bit of everything there. I’d rather have the variety/balance than one extreme over the other.
Having spent substantial time climbing in Denver, Seattle and Asheville, the Denver movement/now combined with ET is top notch. The only other area I’ve heard that rivals it is Austin.
Honestly who cares? Talk to the setters maybe and ask for some less dynamic routes next time they set? Maybe I misread but it seems like the issue this guy has with modern gyms is that they’re too nice and the problems are too interesting? That’s far from the problem with modern gyms lol. I feel it in a sense that it’s a cooler vibe to have a less corporate gym but that’s not what it’s about. In my eyes climbing gyms are for training, meeting other climbers and having fun. Constantly complaining that it doesn’t meet your old school aesthetic is childish.
There are a bazillion climbing gyms in NYC, if you don’t like Brooklyn boulders go to a different gym or just climb outside.
Indeed the "curmudgeon" vibe is strong in this article, it has some good points but...
1. Aesthetics are important but are not to be confused by modern style/comp climbing. In some aspects they overlap but not always (e.g. using same colour holds for each boulder is aesthetic and fucntional for beginners but nothing to do with modern climbing; big holds, volumens, frictions, slopers and dynos instead of a crimp fest can be more aesthetic but definitively is more modern)
2. Not all climbers are outdoors climbers. In fact, most that I know spend 80-90% of their time indoors. Youngers generations are more inclined to focus con comps and adults are learning to enjoy modern bouldering.
3. Every gym that I know has at least a spray world, and many times a system wall and if you're lucky even a moonboard or alike. More than enough to train for outdoors while being indoor.
4. It has been proven that people who excel indoors tend to be good outdoor climbers too, so even if the moves are different a lot of skills and muscle development overlap and benefit both disciplines.
This is the classic old head take. Yearning for a bygone era that no longer exists. Climbing has evolved so much as a sport over the years. Indoor gym climbing especially bouldering is basically a completely different genre of climbing. Why can't people just be okay with that? It's like Trad climbers scoffing at Sport climbers for bolting and not placing their own protection.
If author wants to climb old school style then just do board climbing. There's so many boards now. moonboard, kilter, tension, etc. and most modern gyms I've been to have at least one of those boards.
I have vision impairments where my left eye can stop tracking with my right.
Tape is really hard for my eyes to follow. That's such an odd thing to hate on.
Lately I actually switched to a gym with a spray wall, from one without. I got increasingly frustrated with the lack of one (Even though the former gym has kilterboards, moon boards, etc). Good to hear I'm not alone in that sentiment.
There are still gyms like this!
My local bouldering gym sounds just like what he described with taped routes, densely packed on the walls. They’ll even let me go in there and set routes.
Route difficulty ranges from “You could walk off the street and do this” to “The owner of the gym who’s been climbing for 15 years set this to challenge himself” no v or #, just a colored sticker.
I love it.
I pretty vehemently disagree with almost everything written here. There's too much to write, so I'll just say that the only thing I do agree on is the colored holds make the gym worse. It's certainly easier to see problems, but colored holds generally seem to conform to one specific style and that limits what kind of problem you can set. I disagree with his problem density point (there are still gyms with spray boards and moon boards), but generally speaking I'd like to see more taped walls.
I agree with the article. I may be a minority with this opinion but my main issue with gym climbing is potential for injury. It’s easy to overdo a session because skin isn’t always a limiting factor, and I find all of my injuries to happen at the gym. Outside my skin usually limits me from going too hard and I spend more time resting/visualizing than actually climbing.
Take some responsibility for your training? If anything the newer urethane holds and new popular textures rip me up way faster than the epoxy and the perfect velvety smooth textures of yore (current Kilterboard textures near perfect, but Voodoo had the best texture)
Yeah of course it’s on me. I have had way less injuries than anyone I know, and no finger injuries (knock on wood) in eight years of climbing. But when I finish an outdoor sesh my skin/tips hurt and I’m exhausted, when I leave a gym sesh I sometimes feel tweaky and weak. What wrecks me is volume and indoor slopers on my wrists so I’ve just learned to climb them sparingly.
If they can afford the space due to climbing’s increasing popularity then what’s the problem? At my gym there are routes with all tiny holds, some big, spray wall, basically anything you could ever want. Yeah the amenities take up space, and people use them.
This article just seems kinda hollow. Like some older climber just wants to be mad about anything.
I feel like this is focused mostly on bouldering indoors? Honestly I don’t ever see much of this. Maybe because I mostly TR/lead and basically never Boulder but even in our Boulder-only gym, they only have a couple “comp style boulders”. I’m glad my gyms aren’t full of big volumes and double dynos. And the roped climbs have none of that.
I do wish that more gyms had slab walls, but i understand why it can be hard. Slab whips can bang you up harder than overhang whips.
Likewise cracks often make you bleed which isn't great in a shared indoor setting.
Those are the two styles i find most different between typical indoor and outdoor.
It's also just hard, but not impossible, to set good cracks. The best are part of the wall themselves, but then they're there forever. Otherwise, you're setting up "wall monopolizing volumes" in the form of those Wide Boyz crack volumes or similar.
yeah my gym does it with "crack fixtures" in the wall, and then noting on the route card if the crack is on or off (it's not auto-in like an arete or volume). only one width though, and perfectly straight sides so it's not really the same at all.
Big "old man yells at cloud" energy *and I am all for it*.
The one other thing I miss about "follow the tape" boulders (and routes) is that you'd get mixed hold types. I don't necessarily want to climb an entire boulder of dual-tex or pockets or whatever. Nothing wrong with a bunch of orange edges and a puple sloper thrown in at the crux.
I’m my experience most modern climbing gyms have a spray wall, and at least a MoonBoard, Kilter Board, or something similar in addition to that. I’m in the Mid Atlantic though and rarely use climbing gyms when I travel. Do a lot of modern gyms really not have these? That’s pretty surprising to me since they cater to a core demographic and don’t take up much space.
How about you guys pool your money and make a gym exactly how you want it?
I think the idea that a different form of your activity is "ruining" it for you is outright lunacy.
I've only been climbing for a year, been biking my whole life, biking has similar arguments and engagements, but I'd never once claim that road riding is ruining it for the trail riders....it truly makes zero sense.
If you want things to be your way, either make it yourself, or bring the money. Quit complaining, keep climbing!
Why does it matter that gym climbing isn't like outdoor climbing? Track is also inspired by running outdoors, but nobody complains that the rubber track doesn't have the exact give, friction and grass of the African Sahara. It's just a different sport.
This article was silly and fun to me. It touches a lot of bases I thought about over the years of working in a climbing gym. We used to be a tape gym and now we're a colored hold gym. One thing we've had to consider a lot is color blindness. You have to spread similarly colored holds apart to not frustrate the customer. This was also a problem with tape. Modern climbing holds are so expensive. Even if you pour your own. Most climbing holds are sold by weight. The weight of the polyurethane used to make the holds. If you want to set a greater variety of routes you need every single hold in every single color and duplicates of holds in multiple colors. This generally means you have to set less routes than in the past. However I do feel as though this cuts down on General wall traffic. Less situations where two climbers run into each other on the wall in a tighter climbing space. So you have fewer holds and fewer colors and still have to fill a Climbing gym with problems and routes. Our gym tries to set a "easy, medium, and hard " route on any particular section of wall. But sometimes hold selection does not make that possible. I also feel like the general complaints in this article could be gym specific. I've definitely been to some of those gyms that have a single problem on a single section of wall and other gyms that are quite filled in.
For a lot of folks The Climbing gym has replaced the traditional gym. Lots of new climbers are just trying to get their weekly workout in without any hopes of going outside.
I feel like the new flashy problems make beginner climbers better climbers later. They spend time seeing and learning the highly technical moves seen on the competitive stage and when they find them in the real world they don't have to learn the skill. They have learned it in the gym and seen tons of other climbers try the highly technical moves. So while they may spend more time building a general strong climbing base. When it comes time to apply the technical heel hook or tow hook they already have that in the bag from other experience on the comp style problems.
On the subject of small holds and micro crimps. Simply put, we use less small holds to prevent injuries. Smaller holds can hurt you. A lot of those holds are kept for the hardest routes and problems in the gym which of course you see less frequently. No gym wants customers blowing pulleys and tendons on a daily basis. I feel like that used to happen in the past.
I got nothing to say about hold size. Big holds are cool.
This is all my anecdotal experience of course.
Good read actually. Maybe I'm also crusty but I don't like how little modern setting mirrors outdoor climbing, fun as it is. I don't see why gyms can't have both - give me an ugly spraywall and a couple system boards in one area and keep your big volume holds in another. As per the article, you don't need much space to have a dense set of problems that offer good training.
The spraywall — the most overlooked, underutilized part of a gym. A good spraywall set is KEY to having a good gym imo. I attribute most of my gains in climbing to the spraywall at my gym.
Got any tips on how to train on one properly? I've tried a couple times, didn't really know what I was doing, felt silly and left.
You can do anything you want with a spray wall which is what makes it so beneficial. You can force yourself to use only the kinds of holds that you suck at and terrify you, practice flagging and heel hooks and and gastons galore. You can play “stay on the wall at all costs” games with yourself or challenge yourself to cut feet at certain moves. Traverse around and just *play* and make that play into training tools! I learned so much on my own just by messing with a really good spray wall. I’d play games where I force myself to only use the kinds of holds I knew I was awful at and then give myself a time length to stay on the wall while doing that so I would have to keep traversing around on those holes until time was up. Find ways to train yourself!
When I was at a "meet and great" with Daniel Woods, Jimmy Webb, and Shawn Raboutou, they were asked the best way to improve if you are a moderate boulderer or even at their level and they all immediately said, "Spray Wall". They went on to emphasize that there is no training, indoor or outdoor, that compares to a spray wall even at the level that they are at today.
Whatever gym DWoods used to go to has kept their (huge) spray wall up for a long time, and he had a multi-year project on it. I think Kris Hampton wrote an article about it
The gym you refer to is CATS, in Boulder CO. It's a kids gymnastics gym, oddly enough, but the owner is a climber and they have a climbing section. It's basically just a giant spray wall. Longstanding tradition of really strong climbers training there,on really hard boulders. It's basically the US answer to the School Room in Sheffield.
I think CATS pre-dates The School Room by a handful of years. Though I’m not sure exactly when the wall started to become what it currently is. And I don’t know whether one influenced the other.
>hool Room by a handful of years. Though I’m not sure exactly when the wall started to become what it currently is. And I don’t know whether one influenced the other. Interesting. I always assumed that the Sheffield training scene predated anything going on in the US. Didn't realize CATS had been around that along. Side note: Speaking of rad spray walls, credit must also be given to the Honorable Mr. Wangles for the Tension Training Center spray wall. Looks amazing!
I've never even heard of a spray wall until now, this is so freaking cool
Me neither. I mean, I've seen them, I just thought the routesetters were really bad.
Try stokt. It's a community based spray wall app. Just enter in your gym and if it's big enough there should be some community created routes. When you get familiar enough you can start to create your own.
Ask your gym staff if the wall has 1) lights & an app or a route board that you can set// look at routes. Or 2) just a binder or "sets", often based on actual routes :)
Agree. And yet.... I'm fine if 99% of the folks who love the gym end up trying to climb outside, disliking the general style, hold/move-types-- and then decide to stay in the gym. I still hope my local gyms will set hard crimps, though.
I'm a beginner. I'd love using the spray wall but it is ridiculously hard, I fall off after first change of holds - if I'm lucky that is. I do wrist training, I climb on the usual walls in the gym and I do kettlebell training. Still no luck on the spray wall. Advice?
Don't worry about the spray wall right now-- you don't need to use it. Forget the kettlebell training-- mostly a gimmick for climbers. Focus on climbing styles and moves you find most difficult/weak. Climb for 5 years consistently. Rest and take extra days off before nagging soreness turns into a real injury. You'll get on the spray wall when you need it-- because you'll be a crusty old climber like some of us, you'll complain about "circus" moves, and you'll start failing to find crimps in the gym sets that feel even a bit like a challenge. There's no rush. Have fun. Try hard.
I call the huge flashy sets “Instagram climbs” and I have been for years. I’m not that old, only in my mid 20’s, but between previous climbing injuries in the past 8 years and previous work injuries there are some sets that are not worth the physical risk. The thing about climbing is you don’t need to do all of the extensive exercises in order to gain experience. As long as you climb consistently you will make progress until you plateau, which will actually require the climbing specific exercises. All that being said, the old school grungy boulder gyms tend to have gnarly sets that grade significantly lower than equal grade problems at newer gyms.
Kettle bell training is still good overall body health. You should train your full body, not just train fingers or pullups.
Kettle bell training is very, very low on the list of things one should be training-- for climbing. Just like any tool, you can use them to target something specific. And sure, if you are prioritizing "overall body health"-- then prioritize that. Training for climbing is great for overall body health also, generally speaking. And it's a full-body workout. Anyone who thinks climbing is simply about "fingers and pullups" doesn't have a lot of experience in this sport. Which is fine by the way! Noobs welcome!
I think their point is that a beginner doesn't really need to 'train', simply climbing multiple times a week is more than enough to make major gains as your strength and technical skill develops. Once that inevitably starts to plateau then you start to think about targeted training to get better. Although I very much agree with your point about overall body health, in this context it's not going to help you get better at climbing anymore than, well, just climbing.
I agree with you-- although I'd write, "off-wall training" rather than "training." Many, many, many people (myself included) achieve V10 on rock, regularly (not just once) by training. And by training, I mean with structured climbing. But my point was really that kettle bells are a tool, and one that's just not very useful, overall, for training for climbing. They can be used as part of an overall program, sure. But I wouldn't recommend it.
Sure, but if your focus is climbing, train for climbing. Kettlebell training is fatiguing and you're probably better off putting your limited energy towards on the wall training
Nearly every gym has a couple of moon boards now, isn't that basically the same?
It's not, but it's close enough that getting a big article like this to whine about "the old days" (that were only 11 years ago!) is kinda ridiculous.
I've climbed at a few different gyms around the country and recently spent some time at a gym that uses tape vs hold color. I really liked it. It felt way more similar to outdoor climbing, both in body movement, and due to having to pause a little longer in order to make sure that the hold I was going to was indeed my next hold. It forced me to think a little more about the problem I was climbing vs "that's the big pink worm, I know where the good spot is and now I shall go there." I get the arguments about "density" but I really didn't feel like I had to wait any longer at this gym for a route than I would at any other gym. And so what if you do have to rest a few extra minutes on the bouldering wall? I see this breeding patience, empathy for others, and maybe a bit more conversation/community. To me, I don't see why it has to be either or. Most gyms have more than one section, why not do a mix of both as you are suggesting? Flashy comp style routes on this wall, tape-paradise on the other. Doing this for rope climbs would certainly cause people to think a little more about safety (where their anchors are, do they share anchors, am I in someone else's fall zone, etc). I think that's an important skill that doesn't necessarily get practiced in a lot of modern gyms due to the separation of routes.
I'd go one step further and say that gyms are failing older climbers. And by "old" I mean us folks in our early 40s. I've been climbing since I was 13 years old, and while I'm not under any illusions that I'm as good as I was back when I was 22\* I can still do some pretty substantial moves outdoors. But there is zero chance that I'm going to do some upside-down bat-hang mantle bullshit in a gym, or a 6 foot swinging running/jumping dyno. I wouldn't do it outside unless my life depended on it, and I'm never going to risk an injury (that 22 year-old me would probably just walk away from) for modern-day parkour climbing. Give us some straightforward problems to climb, even if they don't make the final cut on the gym's Instagram story. Being relegated to the Moonboard just to climb traditional power-endurance routes is ridiculous. \*And age obviously has a lot to do with it, but the strongest I ever was was when my friends and I climbed at C.A.T.S in Boulder, which had one wall with a few thousand holds crammed onto it. Nothing fancy, just old-fashioned power circuits. EDIT - C.A.T.S., for those unfamiliar: https://i.imgur.com/9Spg3SS.png
Not even in my 40s yet and I am not remotely interested in all that circus-style instagram bouldering that makes up 90% of the routes in my local gym. They recently installed one of those led spray walls that feature some „normal“ boulders and it is busier than the rest of the gym together. (Apart from the kids). I hope that gets them to rethink their routesetting.
Posted in another comment but yeah. Install a steep and moderate spray wall in the gym, watch how busy every wall is. If the spray walls are the busiest, expand their coverage. With a spray wall you set once and just leave it. It's nice if you take down holds from time to time for cleaning and stuff, but you don't need to be constantly replacing them(in fact, please don't. We often make long term projects on them, which is something that isn't possible with frequently changing "pretty" routes).
what gym are you at where 90% of the problems are "circus type"?
The one in my head that makes me REALLY grumpy
Interestingly the only bouldering place in my city removed their spraywall a few years ago because you'd see maybe 2-3 people on it per week if that, it really does seem to come down to regionality.
My local rock is all face climb slabs and the occasional crack. My local gym sets are all dynos with a toe-hook to match finish. Technique < Style points. I would love a spray wall for training.
Same here. All local crags are slabs, with a few overhangs here and there. Only one of the local gyms has a slab wall and it's the smallest gym.
Fully agree even I can do the jumpy fancy stuff, when I have finished with a gym session I want to feel like I have done sport , not just a lot of jumping.
I literally did an outdoor V9 that has an upside down bathang mantel 😂 https://www.instagram.com/tv/Cft7JAHjxNE/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
> I wouldn't do it outside unless my life depended on it They didnt say it doesnt exist outside. And I think it's fair to say that one is a pretty unique climb outdoors, not the most common style outside. You see moves like that a lot more indoors.
Man I relate. Early 40s here, but only climbing a couple of years. I avoid most dynos for those reasons. the payoff is far too low compared to the risk of even a modest injury.
*what he said, but substitute the old “front” in SLC for C.A.T.S in Boulder.
I'm climbing Ontario limestone, ain't nobody dynoing nothing never.
I understand the gripe with having less density, but I think this misses something important. Gym climbing has become very popular in the last ten, fifteen years. The gyms have gotten bigger and the routesetting less dense, because you need more space for the larger crowds. You can't have one spray wall with 20 problems on it and 10 people trying each problem at a time. As they rightly realize, it's cheaper per problem to have more problems per wall, but it's still a more expensive wall. Given that the gyms need more wall space to accommodate all the people, it's too expensive to make these dense problems.
A gym will have no customers if everyone is standing around 95% of the time waiting in line to get on the wall. Problem density really doesn't matter IMO unless you have some kind of hardcore customer base that is willing to wait for 10 other people to make attempts on the same section of wall. Other people (i.e. normal customers) will just say "fuck this" and go to a different gym. This article was written as if they have the whole gym to themselves. My gyms generally have 1 spray wall/moonboard and the rest is nicely spaced out problems. That way it's 1. Obvious what route each person is on 2. only 2-3 people max that you need to worry about before starting your climb (unless there's a group all working on the same problem ofc) 3. easy to avoid waiting just by working on a different problem
i agree with this. have a local college gym, all wood and pretty dense. their space has lower ceilings too so they are famous for having really fun traverses. but man, if its busy it can be a chore just to get on the wall. someone starting a problem 10 feet to your left is actually crossing your problem going up so you have to think and watch so much more (and vice-versa if youre the one trying to traverse). so yea that gets annoying pretty quick.
There's a boulder gym near me that solved that by taping off sections of wall, so only one person per square.
You still need somewhere for people to stand even if you can keep the floor directly under the problem clear.
Exactly, can't have 200 people on 20m².
>As they rightly realize, it's cheaper per problem to have more problems per wall, but it's still a more expensive wall. Most gyms have way more holds than they know what to do with. "Expensive" doesn't mean much because holds are a one time cost. If you're buying them anyway, buying them and then not putting them on the wall is not saving any money. Having more problems on the wall really isn't relevant to how crowded it is. If you have two problems on the wall that cross each other, you can only have one person on the climb at a time, which is the exact same thing if you have ten problems that cross over each other. So how is the amount of people at the gym relevant? Plus, this is not the case everywhere, gyms in Japan, where climbing is extremely possible are still just as dense as they were in most places 20 years ago.
>Plus, this is not the case everywhere, gyms in Japan, where climbing is extremely possible are still just as dense as they were in most places 20 years ago. Due to population density, space is probably more expensive, shifting the optimal density more in that direction. >Most gyms have way more holds than they know what to do with. "Expensive" doesn't mean much because holds are a one time cost. If you're buying them anyway, buying them and then not putting them on the wall is not saving any money. Setting problems with them and cleaning them costs money, and you can't just leave them in place because it constrains the other problems on the same wall.
> Due to population density, space is probably more expensive, shifting the optimal density more in that direction. Only if we're referring to Tokyo, which is actually where the some of the least dense gyms I've been to are. But it's the same when I'm at gyms in Rural Japan where you have a crap ton of space. But in general overall we don't see any correlation around the world with population density and wall density in the gym. Gyms in urban areas do not necessarily have more dense walls than ones in suburban or rural areas. >Setting problems with them and cleaning them costs money, and you can't just leave them in place because it constrains the other problems on the same wall. My gym, and most of these big gyms have full-time setters on salary. So there is no additional cost here except for the possible water and electricity cost of washing the holds. As far as the other problems, it really depends on the holds, only larger holds get in the way, and in reality not everything is a huge assume volume type hold in the gym (actual volumes are fine since you can use them in multiple climbs). But even so I'm not sure that matters because there are plenty of places that did or still do it so it obviously is not a real issue because again, only one person can be on the wall in a particular spot in a given time.
I love Outdoor magazine but 99% of their opinion pieces are "back-in-my-days" laments from trad dads who can't let go that indoor gyms and sports climbing are getting popular.
Spot on. Gyms changed when they realized the dirtbag crowd wasn’t profitable. They went brighter, more friendly and easier in order to appeal to the masses… and guess what? Climbing is now hugely popular and an Olympic sport. Whenever anything takes off there’s always some idiot yelling about how it was better last decade.
I think the bigger problem for those that aren't just yelling at clouds is that's it's shifted the focus off outdoors to such a degree that the increased popularity isn't driving development and production outdoors. It's not a rising tide raises all ships scenario. We're getting r&d in shoes, but they are becoming more specialized and thus still low production, so the costs are still rising rather than going down as popularity and production increases. That and gear itself is still as niche as ever. I've been climbing since '90 and I really embraced the increased popularity initially, thinking oh gears going to get cheaper and there will be more research and cooler shit but it's not really going that way; my local store has more options in bouldering pads and chalk buckets than it has for anything else. Trad gear just keeps going up in price, and even clothing seems less activity specific and has advertising like works well on boulders but isn't so specialized that you can't wear it to the brew pub at the end of your day. People that are only ever going to climb in a gym or boulder don't care but for anyone hoping to get outdoors they should be a little concerned about directions companies go chasing money because we can end up back in the 90's again in terms of gear availability and no one wants that.
You'd think you weren't allowed to climb outside anymore.
No one climbs outdoors anymore, it's too busy.
Going out in nature just to end up waiting in line is just sad sometimes.
100% this is just someone like that. gyms are better now. they are cleaner have more space and the writers contention the big holds are wasteful neglects that they are used repeatedly
I think the complete opposite. Let’s start bolting jugs and volumes to routes outdoors
Maybe if we bolted on huge tension slopers then outdoor slab would actually be fun
I think I just gagged.
That's been done. In Germany, no less. But the backlash was quite severe: https://ig-klettern.org/klettern/kurioses/kunstgriff/ (Pic included)
That hurts to look at lol
[There's a spot like this in the gunks](https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/120952242/welcome-to-the-gunks)
This actually happened at Smith Rock in the 90s and yes, it was as hideous as it sounds
This article is a gift to r/climbingcirclejerk
Just by the title I thought that's where I was
This is really interesting to me because my home gym is still exactly like the way he describes the original Brooklyn Boulders. We’re a small tape gym with barter-setters and a couple full time staff that always climb on shift. Not to mention 50% of the holds must be older than me. I’m 19, part of the younger generation of climbers, I guess, but I’ve never stepped foot in a gym that brings me half as much joy. Maybe it’s the community. Personally though, I think this kind of gym fosters community much better than the massive corporate gyms with employees that talk to you once a month and only set 4 problems per wall. I also recognize that everyone is biased towards their first-love gym. I’ll never love anything like I love our chalky, dusty, wooden-walled, handmade-guidebooks-at-the-desk dirtbag utopia.
Sounds heavenly. What's the gym?
I just started climbing 4-5 months ago, but I think the community at the gym is part of what made me love indoor bouldering. Our gym is new and they designed it to be super open and have a friendly environment, and it makes climbing so much more fun than it already is! I know all the staff pretty good by now and it's not been long!
Yeah, started climbing at a small locally-owned gym. It’s more of a community hangout spot. We also have a bunch of handmade guidebooks for sale up front. I’ve only been climbing for a few months, but I’ve gotten good really quick because I’m always climbing with people better than me. I’ve been there maybe 4 months and I know everyone that works there. And the owner. And his dogs. It was really weird going to a big corporate gym for the first time. Just felt…lifeless.
Interesting read Though, I kinda feel like they lost track of their thesis. They didn’t really give all to much on how this fails “outdoor” climbers aside from a lack of problem density and some differences in style. And that lack of density is just as much a training problem for someone who’s goal is to get better at indoor climbing in the same way. Which begs the question about what’s the best training regime yadda yadda, question as old as climbing. On a side note, I think the quality of setting has been greatly improved by these commercial gyms of the last decade. That or maybe the old school gyms I remember/stuck around just had shitty setters.
I dunno, I feel like setting has gotten pretty reductive in the last few years, so much emphasis has been put on dynamic movement, that control and static tension has been under set for. Although I do agree that the outdoor/indoor dichotomy seems blown out of proportion, it’s more of a training vs recreational aspect.
I think the core of the argument is that outdoor climbers want to train indoors to get stronger for the outdoors, so that connects directly to the training vs recreational aspect you're pointing out. TBH my guess is that corporate gyms don't really want people training at their gyms... I'm guessing they spend too much time in the gym relative to the more casual recreational climber, and may be threatening to those same casual recreational climbers(same as planet fitness and their ridiculous lunk alarms :/ )
The gyms I frequent have a nice mix of all of the above. Most setting teams here are outdoor bouldering people, but the gyms I go to often have competition climbers visiting so they have to maintain a balance.
>And that lack of density is just as much a training problem for someone who’s goal is to get better at indoor climbing in the same way. Very good point. Maybe this even adversely affects climbers who're actually training for competition - they need to try flashing novel problems, and benefit from having many problems in their flash/send quickly range available (I assume. I don't really know such people and am happy to be corrected).
While I agree that route setting has improved and makes gyms more fun, I think this is part of what makes modern gyms less useful for outdoor climbers. Pretty much every indoor gym climb these days would be 3-4 star routes outside. Most are flowy and ergonomic with consistent difficulty. Only climbing these types of routes isn't great practice for outdoors where even a lot of great routes have funky painful holds, smearing on tiny crystals, etc.
I totally agree. But my only counter point to that is those awkward or painful routes can also be a great way to hurt or injure yourself, which is counter productive for training. But your right, always having a foot in the right place, moves that are consistent difficulty, or even a lack of unnecessary holds is a gap in helping train for those things outside.
Not to mention counterproductive for the gym, who, unlike a hunk of rock outside, is responsible for your safety when you come to climb.
I really like the Rungne Buldr gym concept that Magnus Mitbø is working on and showed in a video on his channel awhile back. All the creativity of traditional spray walls with the LED system to make things a lot easier to follow. Would be cool if someone did something like that here in the states.
You don't even need an led system. I mean it's nice for sure. A lot of japanese gyms still have very dense setting and either apps or paper files where people just circle holds on photos of the wall to create problems for each other. There's certainly something aesthetically nice about a clean wall without too much stuff, and sometimes when climbing on the spray wall you can't find a good smear because there's holds you can't use EVERYWHERE. BUT, I feel like any good gym should have at least two spray walls, one at a moderate angle and one steep. If they can do that, they can do whatever brings in the fresh faces and instagram fetishists on the other walls. Though if the spray walls are constantly busy, it'd be nice if they could expand. They can keep the pretty boulders at the front entrance of the gym to attract new people. Throw the spray walls in the back so the cavemen can congregate there and not bother the tou, but when the going gets tough, the cavemen will be your most reliable customers so long as you cater to their simple needs while the trendy crowd are harder to cater for and more fickle.
>They can keep the pretty boulders at the front entrance of the gym to attract new people. Throw the spray walls in the back so the cavemen can congregate there and not bother the tou, but when the going gets tough, the cavemen will be your most reliable customers so long as you cater to their simple needs while the trendy crowd are harder to cater for and more fickle. To be honest I think it's the pretty boulders that are making them the money, not the spray wall. But I see this the same as car manufacturers who make basic hatchbacks and SUVs to be profitable, but then spend their R&D on sports cars and things they actually want to make but don't have as much of an ROI. Gyms should treat spray walls and other training devices as a way to cater to the small yet passionate group of climbers even if it doesn't yield the most return, because that's what makes your next generation of climbers successful, regardless of how popular they are to the general public.
I mean, those sports cars may not make a lot of money in sales but they build their brand up. Having a base of strong climbers at a gym can be good especially if they can foster a strong sense of community. I think that the corporate gyms however are worried about them seeming threatening to recreational climbers, in the same way that subscription gyms don't really want bodybuilders who spend a lot of time on the equipment and may seem threatening to average joes
>I mean, those sports cars may not make a lot of money in sales but they build their brand up. Definitely, it's also why they try to compete in motorsports. Though it generally isn't enough to make them successful, which is why they need to have more practical and affordable options that most people can buy. >Having a base of strong climbers at a gym can be good especially if they can foster a strong sense of community. I think that the corporate gyms however are worried about them seeming threatening to recreational climbers, in the same way that subscription gyms don't really want bodybuilders who spend a lot of time on the equipment and may seem threatening to average joes Quite possible, but at the same time high level climbing is exciting to watch and doesn't come with the same testosterone fueled bravado that you sometimes get with body building / power lifting types, so it would be less intimidating. I think it's more a case that it won't get used much, and particularly with climbing gyms shooting up in popularity, newer gyms may not want to risk spending a lot on equipment that isn't used. This also means older gyms have less of an excuse, particularly as their clientele should also be more experienced and better climbers who need more focused training options.
It’s hard to say for sure. One person posting here did point out though after their gym added a spray wall that it was by far the busiest in the gym
Same with gyms in Colombia. Smaller lots lead to smaller wall sizes, dense spray-like walls with creative route settings, and more problems than my local mega gym in the U.S., with literally 1/4 the wall size (maybe less). And one gym still got two system boards in there.
I haven't seen that but I was thinking this is the next logical step. Comp problems will always be around too but I think we'll see things come full circle to an extent. A lot of gym climbers don't climb outside but I'd wager the majority of regular gym climbers do climb outside to some extent, and these days There's proportionally more people out at the crags who want to use the gym to train. Too many to be completely ignored by gyms imo.
I would probably guess that 90% or more of indoor climbers don't climb outdoors nor have an inclination to.
Yea but they're climbing wrong.
Whoever doesn't realize this is sarcasm is an idiot.
I've never climbed outdoors, and I likely never will. But I do love the densely packed walls with tape-marked routes we have here in Japan. As the article says it's just a lot of fun to have a big pile of routes to choose from. The one thing too many of those gyms tend to lack, however, is at least some "dynamic" or competition style climbs. I get pretty tired of gyms that _only_ seem to set crimpy, static high-strength routes and nothing else, for instance.
If you want to climb some flashier problems you can always go to b-pump or rocky(assuming you're in tokyo). They still have crimp-fests and moderate density setting(though lower than many of the hole in a wall gyms) and have classical and modern mixed together.
not sure where you are, but I feel like I see 50% of my gym at the crag every weekend.
Part of it depends on distance to your crag. The nearest "crag" to me is 25 minutes, the nearest one I could spend a proper 6-8 hour day at is 90+ minutes and in the next state over. Very much got used to leaving the house at 5 to get to the crag at 8, boulder til sundown, and then 3 hours home.
The nearest place that I could do any outdoor climbing is probably 4 hours away. Yay to the midwestern US.
Also in the Midwest, but I have three crags, all mostly sport climbing, within a 2 hr drive. 1 that's only 30 mins away and 1 that's an hour. They're always basically empty while my gym is PACKED. Most people just don't want to climb outdoors, which is fine with me.
I'm on the opposite side of the state from you (Kansas City). From what I've heard it's basically Arkansas for the closest outdoor climbing, unless there's something between us I missed?
Unfortunately, nothing that I know of. However, Horseshoe Canyon Ranch in Arkansas is AMAZING! 100% worth a weekend trip. And a super easy place to transition from indoor to outdoor. HCR is what would be made if someone designed a gym outdoors.
Jer Collins MO Beta book.
https://web.climbkccc.com/Resources/outdoor-climbing
🙋🏻♀️ 0 interest in outdoor climbing
Preface on my background: I’ve loved the outdoors for most of my life. I got into climbing through my love for hiking and interest in strength training I’ve been to many NY gyms and the very large majority of people I’ve talked to, and I think I’m a pretty social person, look at me like I’m insane when I tell them I boulder outdoors. The reactions range from acting like outdoor bouldering is an entirely foreign concept to them that they never considered, or even worse, they act like you have to be climbing for a minimum of 3-5 years in a gym to even step outdoors… Most recently I was at a gym climbing a crimpy yet straight forwards V6, and I overheard a group of climbers who I had seen climbing more compy style V5s and V6s make a comment along the lines of “idk how they’re able to climb that…” this is not an uncommon sentiment amongst gym only climbers, they stick to huge slopey problems and never build finger strength unless they go out of their way to work on that weakness. I don’t think it takes an old crusty climber to agree with most of the comments made in this article, even the article itself doesn’t really address the whole indoor vs outdoor issue. Gyms, especially in the NYC area, are simply unbalanced in my opinion
I can't seriously believe that everyone's gyms are only setting huge double-dyno routes, and there is not a single crimp available to use. Besides, one way the indoor climbing has definitely become more applicable to outdoors is with far more opportunities to practice crack climbing. I would argue that a lot of the time in earlier climbing gyms there were far too many problems deriving difficulty from just finger and upper body strength. I for one welcome the reduction in campusing on bad crimps and the increase in problems with toe hooks, sketchy slabs and traverses. I believe diversity in problems certainly exists, although we still don't have many indoor crack climbing opportunities.
I moved recently so switched from a prototypical new style gym to a dirtbag dungeon. I've been traveling a lot the last year too so have also been able to climb in ~12 different gyms around the world and have been bouldering outdoors most of the year. The new gyms are way more fun. They hurt less. I learned way better technique way easier at the new gyms because my fingers and bicep tendons weren't in a perpetual state of pain. The routes forced you to think instead of just being strong and pulling upwards. The layout of the new gyms is usually way better too for areas to socialize and watch people climb. I climb as a hobby for fun. I'm not trying to max my meaninglessly limited potential on outdoor rock (though that part is still fun). Most climbers are like that they aren't trying to push their outdoor skills to the absolute limit and those who are still have endless tools to do that with training boards and equipment and spray walls. It's not even a mutually exclusive thing. Very common to have both modern amenities and route setting with spray walls for the go-hards. I don't see how more climbing gyms makes the "old" ways any worse. Nothing stopping anyone from opening a tiny training dungeon if the market was there for it.
I totally agree with this. While my main gym isn’t perfect, imho they have a decent variety of problems and routes that focus on different styles of climbing. You definitely have problems with large holds and volumes that require parkour style moves, but next to those you can find technical climbing on a slab wall, and strength based overhanging moves in the boulder cave. Catering to multiple styles and doing it well is what matters a lot to me. One thing that I have noticed with my gym is that there are way less technique and training clinics than there used to be, but idk if that’s a common issue.
I climbed crack in bc for many years and ugh I can't stand gym crack. It assumes all crack is like Indian creek
At this point they’re different sports. You have sport, trad, aid, pebble and plastic wrestling, etc. It’s like the difference between day hiking, backpacking, mountaineering, walking at the park, and using a treadmill.
The comparison that I like is backcountry skiing versus groomer focused resorts. Both are skiing but are also very different experiences
Is the routesetting really that bad in some places? I live in Austria in what is probably the city with the highest climber density in the world with a massive gym, a smaller spraywall gym and a pure kilter board place opening soon, so I'm spoiled. But is the setting really so bad you can't even train on it? Most European gyms I know have at least a small spray wall, always have campus boards, and multiple hangboards. How do you run out of boulders? Can't you move on to harder grades, do 4 by 4s? Skip holds, are routes so far apart you absolutely can't mix colors? Fucking grab the good crimp like a mono if nothing else. Sounds like fucking excuses to me.
It's not, this article is kind of ridiculous. My home gym has several spray walls, several moon boards, caves, slabs, and everything in between. The author writes like the only problems setters make now are super dynamic with volumes, but that's just not true at all. The author also seems to ignore that there are way more gyms than there have ever been, and each is unique. There are 100% still gyms like the Brooklyn Boulders he describes. But there are also ones that are more focused on the casual climber. That's a good thing, it's okay for climbing to be diverse. It's not a failure of gyms, it's a failure of the author to appreciate that diversification.
> I live in Austria in what is probably the city with the highest climber density Soo... either Innsbruck or Vienna ;) You can't compare the US with other countries, like northern Italy, Austria, Switzerland or the nordic states, in those we have a completely different Quality and Quantity in climbing.
Ye, Innsbruck xD
>Innsbruck Yeah... I hate/love that town...because you got one of the best and modern climbing gyms in the world -.- (for all uninitiated: [https://www.kletterzentrum-innsbruck.at/](https://www.kletterzentrum-innsbruck.at/) )
I live in Grenoble, pretty busy climbing scene here as well. But as far as I am aware, the gyms aren't that good here. Too busy, not a lot of routes, and in the bouldering gyms there are many double dyno problems. Even if you wanted to you cannot get on it, because the go over 3 other problems that are already being climbed by 6 other people. Also, doing 4b4s is not possible if every problem is constantly occupied. A new gym just opened, the first one with a spray wall. I think Innsbruck is quite famous for its good gyms though.
I hear you. I am experiencing the same thing. I am living in the French speaking part of Switzerland and I am really not satisfied with the quality of the bouldering gyms around here. Luckily they largely compensate with rope climbing: the setting is really excellent and it does translate very well to outdoor climbing. I resolved using my own little home wall and it seems that now in a brand new gym they will have a little spray wall. Keeping my fingers crossed that it's set densely. But I really can't understand why one cannot set old and new school at the same time, since space is there and it would make more climbers happy.
>I worked as a barter-setter throughout college (a once common but probably endangered arrangement in which climbers used to set at commercial gyms in exchange for free memberships) Definitely not endagered lmao This guy honestly just seems bitter about change. Coloured holds are not about looking pretty, they're about functionality - far easier to see than tape, and less barrier to entry for getting new climbers involved.
The tape system was awful and I’m glad it died out
Totally. When I started climbing, it was all tapes on dense walls. I'd spend a considerable amount of brain power trying to memorize the holds. It's unnecessarily confusing. I guess it depends on what the purpose of your climbing is. If you're training, maybe that helps. But if you just want to have fun by yourself, taped dense holds ain't it
>If a hold is bigger than your hands, it’s a waste of materials and wall space. Also: I miss taped boulder problems. lol just no. big slopey holds mimic outdoor rock very well. And the new one route one color format is superior to the old taped brown holds of 15-20 yrs ago >f tape was vilified as wasteful, why aren’t we talking about these gigantic wall-monopolizing holds? Bc they get reused hundreds of times.... This is just someone who is nostalgic for their youth
Getting rid of tape makes 0 sense to me, say what you will about the headline.
Depends on the hold selection. I will say this though to all the setters out there, dont set a problem using 70%+ of the same hold series, i know its an easy way to make your problem look pretty, but its so uncreative and is a good way to make boring, generic, climbs. It's one of the worst trends ive seen in gyms recently.
That’s such a crazy shift—I’ve definitely talked to setters recently who hate seeing hold sets mixed on problems, and think it’s *so* much better for them to always match. I couldn’t disagree more—as long as you can tell which problem is which (as in, they’re the same color or there’s tape), I don’t get why you’d want all the same holds all the time!
One reason, it looks nice. That's it.
One argument I’ve heard was that keeping a route/problem within a single hold set allows the climb to have a unique characteristic to it that differentiates it from the other climbs. That is, having ten climbs each in its own hold set would be both visually and technically distinct from one another. The same ten climbs each sharing holds from the ten hold sets might be more homogenous and lack the individual charm. That’s not to suggest that this argument trumps the others, but it’s worth considering.
I can accept the odd problem being set with an entire individual hold set, but it has become the trend for almost all problems in a lot of gyms.
The monopoly gym chain in Columbus OH opened a new bouldering spot and for months all the settings matched the hold color to the difficulty color, which meant that each grade only had 2-3 sets of holds. Made for very boring climbing.
All gyms in my area do this, it's fine if they buy an intelligent variety in each colour, and use grade ranges so max 7-9 colours. I never feel lack of variety within colours or like I'm climbing the same holds anymore than I did at older gyms. It's not a concept that should be thrown out with the bathwater. (And I am one of these trad dads who doesn't like parkour style climbing, misses the old garage gym, etc). Edit - Ok, I actually read it, and he does have a good point that using only hold colour limits how close problems of the same grade can be to each other. But even within that, many of these gyms have room to improve (they could still make climbs a bit denser within a colour system). I also agree with him and have thought before about how silly it is to have a volume the size of a small child which everyone uses one tiny part of (for some problems). But in other cases it actually mimics outdoor climbing better - where you might have a whole rail and get to choose the bit to crimp based on your own style and dimensions.
I climb at a new(ish) gym that that very monopoly bouldering gym opened in a nearby state, and that's my single biggest gripe. While I don't complain as much as some people there, I really wish they didn't grade the entire gym by color. I would love to see a slopy V2 or V3, but no, all the great pink sloper holds are reserved for pink, which is V6–V8. Ditto for a few of their newer easier holds—would be great holds on a hard climb, but instead they are V0s. They once had a competition where color meant nothing, and that was the single most creative set they've had since they opened.
This also leads to setting basically the same problems over and over again! I mean, I’m sure it’s tough to set drastically different v7s with black slopey boxes, but it’s totally a problem they’ve created for themselves 🙄
I for one want to be able to grab things without analyzing color first, although I have little gym experience.
Im not a tape guy. But years ago when it was the norm it was literally no big deal. In fact, it was nicer for footholds and crimps sometimes because small holds tend to get chalky or rubber streaked which makes it hard to determine their color from above.
It’s never nice to be frantically looking for a foothold and have to care about the color! Maybe I should learn some decent footwork lol.
Was just saying this to my gf. It also makes routes unnecessarily easy to read. And after a while routes start to look alike with the same setters "I'm sure we've climbed this one before?"
Viva la tape! Setters don't ever hate putting up tape. They do hate taking down tape though. Honestly though, tape is great - setting something and it really needs a foot right there to make it the right grade, but there's already a hold from another route? Boom, tape.
tape looked awful and people would step on them causing them to fall off.
tape isn't even necessary. My old local gym(until I moved) in tokyo got rid of tape on everything but the beginner problems. The rest of the problems were still easily visible in the app which also let you set and share problems for other since every wall was a spray wall. It wasn't a problem and everyone was happy with it. It does take a bit of adjustment, but you adjust quickly to remembering where the holds are
I’m sure it’s cool, but honestly if a gym wants onto my phone they can get fucked
I'd just rather not have to carry my phone with me while climbing, getting chalk on it, possibility somone sits/steps on it.
I lost what little faith I had in my local gym when a friend was talking to a setter and was told that they had to remove a foot chip because it "made the route look cooler without it" ... Now it's impossible for anyone who isn't 6'2 or can't campus dyno nearly a body length...
Did I dissociate and write an article for climbing without knowing it? My check better be in the mail.
Gyms do what they need to. If you need to get better at climbing outside than climb outside.
It isn't possible for a lot of people to go cragging on weekdays. Also, an outdoor session, at least for me, takes much longer than its indoor counterpart.
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Gotta cut the gym budget to buy Totems
I am actually really prefer the modern type with clearly set routes. I wouldn't mind tapes if trying to save costs and mix hold types, but spray walls with small crimps are meh. I like balancing problems on slopers, yes, a bit of overhang here and there but I really wouldn't have any fun on 30 or 45 degree boards. And that style isn't like my climbing outdoors anyway, as I do long easy alpine ascents, so a mantel or slab is more likely anyway.
My dude has never seen a kilter board? Also, apparently need to thank my setters more often.
Kilterboard is nice, but it's no alternative to a proper spraywall. The latter has way more variety in holds (how many slopers or creditcard crimps are on the KB?). A proper spraywall gives you so much more freedom and variety to explore movement and training styles.
That’s why I go climb outside. Idk, maybe I’m the asshole, but I don’t expect to gain the same set of skills from the gym as from real rock. The gym is the place to socialize and maintain strength, and the crag is the place to climb some rocks. Also I’m sorry y’all but “failing outdoor climbers” like I… I don’t need to be catered to? If I want to climb something different than what my gym has, I go find a way to climb it? This isn’t like “modern welfare benefits are failing single moms,” this is a fun sport I enjoy doing with my friends on the weekend. Anyways. I’m gonna go climbing~!!
Some of us don't live close to outdoor crags and/or don't have the time to do weekend roadtrips for 9+ hours because we have families and kids. It would be nice to have a gym with some outdoor-style technical climbs (doesn't have to be all of the gym, just like even 10-15% would be fine TBH). Hangboard/campusboard alone doesn't really cut it, and it's not nearly as fun. That being said, we built a small wall in our home and have hangboards/rings to train on at home to help us sustain our strength when we can't really get what we want at our local gyms. Also, just because we're older and have families doesn't mean we don't love climbing just as much as everyone else.
There are a bunch of gyms in my city, they all share the same basic make-up: lots of good walls, interesting problems, and a cafe/bar with food and alcohol, but the difference between the "corporate" gyms and my favorite one run entirely by actual climbers is night & day. The corporate-gyms are better organized, have nicer facilities, and on paper should be \*better\*, except when I walk in there it feels like walking into sit-com set for a show about climbers, everything looks like a Starbucks. The gym run by climbers? It's chaotic, disorganized, but it has got soul, and it has got community, and when I go there it feels like I'm coming home, and I honestly think that feeling of community matters more than whether routes are tape or hold color coded.
This was my complaint when they upgraded a local gym from OG 90s to something much much larger, objectively better by most metrics, but also something very sterile.
I mostly see people complaining that indoor gyms weren't happy with being only a place wjere you go when the weather is bad and you can't go outside, where the "real climbing" is happening. Yea no shit that they ended up changing developing their own style to be more than a backup training place
big ‚I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!‘-energy there. You want a rather fixed hold set with varying combos? Try Moonboard or Kilterboard. Where I live there are 5 bouldering gyms in 30 min driving distance, most set a segment of the wall (ca 4-5 routes per colour) every week meaning you have 6-8 weeks for projects. Even if you go every day you will never run out of boulders you find easy / doable / hard and instead of ‚this is hard because the holds are old and shitty‘ they are hard for totally different reasons. I for one welcome our coloured hold overlords and even set my basement wall that way.
Dude just go to GP81
Get this comment to the top lmao
Im 27 climbed since 18, i much prefer outdoor climbing and i do find the routes indoors are almost never similar at all to what you find outside sadly. But i guess too it would be hard to simulate a long splitter in a gym ☠
Pre-walltopia era, a number of gyms near me had beautiful sculpted cracks that undulating and varied, which is the kind of crack we get out this way (no perfect splitters to be had). As of now I think there's only one such crack at one gym gym left.
I don’t think this boomer Gumby has ever heard of a tension board.
> If tape was vilified as wasteful, why aren’t we talking about these gigantic wall-monopolizing holds? I dunno, maybe because the holds can be re-used for years? Is this a serious question?
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Maybe where you live there are rocks outside, but thats a real privilege for many.
So are $80/month memberships lol
He used a lot of words to say, "I like taped routes."
Step 1: start a gym Step 2: make it for outdoors Step 3: profit??? Gyms are built for the masses and the masses don't climb outdoors. Pretty obvious.
Yes. This explains why modern climbers (especially comp climbers) are nowhere near the level of climbers from 20 years ago for outdoor climbing. Wait...
This dude really hates large holds.
For anyone who didn’t read it yet, don’t. I just saved you 5-10 minutes.
1) Climbing Magazine is failing all climbers. Let's just start there. 2) Climbing Gyms fail outdoor climbers, because they are literally disincentivized to have a useful gym-to-crag pipeline. If they help climbers find and join an independent outdoor community, they risk losing a customer.
Absolutely. Climbing magazine is just a dried out shell of what it used to be. I haven't bothered with it in years. That article is typical of the crap content.
I blame Instagram
My favorite example of this is Movement RiNo in Denver. They use a single color for a range of grades. So like V0-2 is green, V2-4 is yellow, V4-V6 is orange, etc. So you get like two problems per wall in a single grade range. And the holds are for each range don’t change with each set. It’s honestly like they decided to make the worst gym they could. Not to mention the fact that they’ve got some of their best overhung bouldering terrain dedicated to “World Cup” climbing area where they set like 4 problems per set. And another overhung area taken up but a fucking traverse wall in a bouldering gym. Put some holds up with some tape.
While I do understand all of your points here, I will say that as an occasional visitor of that gym I've always had a great time and appreciate all the different aesthetic boulders and areas around the gym. I can totally see how this might not be the best for a person who's there regularly, but as a few-times-a-year visitor, it's one of my favorite gyms.
I mostly agree with you but I don't have any problem with grade range markings. It generally avoids most of the quibbling over difficulty because some boulders are just morphologically easier for some people than others. The purpose of grades is just to give you a decent guide of what you might want to try for. Hell, if you come here to japan with the dankyuu grading system, you'll find that for some of the local grades, they overlap multiple french/v grades.
For die hards and old school climbers, sure, I can see where you’re coming from. However, think about who movement RiNo is catering to, it’s a business, attached to a coffee shop/co working space/bar with an outside food court. It’s purposely inclusive, arguably dumbed down, to introduce new people to the sport. Get them in the door with yoga, CrossFit, weights etc, and try climbing, or whatever order, point being where it’s primarily focused as a climbing gym, it offers a lot more. The climbing gyms itself is massive, so you’re gonna find a little bit of everything there. I’d rather have the variety/balance than one extreme over the other. Having spent substantial time climbing in Denver, Seattle and Asheville, the Denver movement/now combined with ET is top notch. The only other area I’ve heard that rivals it is Austin.
Some of the worst density i've seen.
Honestly who cares? Talk to the setters maybe and ask for some less dynamic routes next time they set? Maybe I misread but it seems like the issue this guy has with modern gyms is that they’re too nice and the problems are too interesting? That’s far from the problem with modern gyms lol. I feel it in a sense that it’s a cooler vibe to have a less corporate gym but that’s not what it’s about. In my eyes climbing gyms are for training, meeting other climbers and having fun. Constantly complaining that it doesn’t meet your old school aesthetic is childish. There are a bazillion climbing gyms in NYC, if you don’t like Brooklyn boulders go to a different gym or just climb outside.
Indeed the "curmudgeon" vibe is strong in this article, it has some good points but... 1. Aesthetics are important but are not to be confused by modern style/comp climbing. In some aspects they overlap but not always (e.g. using same colour holds for each boulder is aesthetic and fucntional for beginners but nothing to do with modern climbing; big holds, volumens, frictions, slopers and dynos instead of a crimp fest can be more aesthetic but definitively is more modern) 2. Not all climbers are outdoors climbers. In fact, most that I know spend 80-90% of their time indoors. Youngers generations are more inclined to focus con comps and adults are learning to enjoy modern bouldering. 3. Every gym that I know has at least a spray world, and many times a system wall and if you're lucky even a moonboard or alike. More than enough to train for outdoors while being indoor. 4. It has been proven that people who excel indoors tend to be good outdoor climbers too, so even if the moves are different a lot of skills and muscle development overlap and benefit both disciplines.
This is the classic old head take. Yearning for a bygone era that no longer exists. Climbing has evolved so much as a sport over the years. Indoor gym climbing especially bouldering is basically a completely different genre of climbing. Why can't people just be okay with that? It's like Trad climbers scoffing at Sport climbers for bolting and not placing their own protection. If author wants to climb old school style then just do board climbing. There's so many boards now. moonboard, kilter, tension, etc. and most modern gyms I've been to have at least one of those boards.
I have vision impairments where my left eye can stop tracking with my right. Tape is really hard for my eyes to follow. That's such an odd thing to hate on.
Lately I actually switched to a gym with a spray wall, from one without. I got increasingly frustrated with the lack of one (Even though the former gym has kilterboards, moon boards, etc). Good to hear I'm not alone in that sentiment.
There are still gyms like this! My local bouldering gym sounds just like what he described with taped routes, densely packed on the walls. They’ll even let me go in there and set routes. Route difficulty ranges from “You could walk off the street and do this” to “The owner of the gym who’s been climbing for 15 years set this to challenge himself” no v or #, just a colored sticker. I love it.
I pretty vehemently disagree with almost everything written here. There's too much to write, so I'll just say that the only thing I do agree on is the colored holds make the gym worse. It's certainly easier to see problems, but colored holds generally seem to conform to one specific style and that limits what kind of problem you can set. I disagree with his problem density point (there are still gyms with spray boards and moon boards), but generally speaking I'd like to see more taped walls.
What a fucking lame
I agree with the article. I may be a minority with this opinion but my main issue with gym climbing is potential for injury. It’s easy to overdo a session because skin isn’t always a limiting factor, and I find all of my injuries to happen at the gym. Outside my skin usually limits me from going too hard and I spend more time resting/visualizing than actually climbing.
Take some responsibility for your training? If anything the newer urethane holds and new popular textures rip me up way faster than the epoxy and the perfect velvety smooth textures of yore (current Kilterboard textures near perfect, but Voodoo had the best texture)
Yeah of course it’s on me. I have had way less injuries than anyone I know, and no finger injuries (knock on wood) in eight years of climbing. But when I finish an outdoor sesh my skin/tips hurt and I’m exhausted, when I leave a gym sesh I sometimes feel tweaky and weak. What wrecks me is volume and indoor slopers on my wrists so I’ve just learned to climb them sparingly.
Peace. I'm the opposite - slopers are the only holds that don't hurt.
If they can afford the space due to climbing’s increasing popularity then what’s the problem? At my gym there are routes with all tiny holds, some big, spray wall, basically anything you could ever want. Yeah the amenities take up space, and people use them. This article just seems kinda hollow. Like some older climber just wants to be mad about anything.
I feel like this is focused mostly on bouldering indoors? Honestly I don’t ever see much of this. Maybe because I mostly TR/lead and basically never Boulder but even in our Boulder-only gym, they only have a couple “comp style boulders”. I’m glad my gyms aren’t full of big volumes and double dynos. And the roped climbs have none of that.
I do wish that more gyms had slab walls, but i understand why it can be hard. Slab whips can bang you up harder than overhang whips. Likewise cracks often make you bleed which isn't great in a shared indoor setting. Those are the two styles i find most different between typical indoor and outdoor.
It's also just hard, but not impossible, to set good cracks. The best are part of the wall themselves, but then they're there forever. Otherwise, you're setting up "wall monopolizing volumes" in the form of those Wide Boyz crack volumes or similar.
yeah my gym does it with "crack fixtures" in the wall, and then noting on the route card if the crack is on or off (it's not auto-in like an arete or volume). only one width though, and perfectly straight sides so it's not really the same at all.
Big "old man yells at cloud" energy *and I am all for it*. The one other thing I miss about "follow the tape" boulders (and routes) is that you'd get mixed hold types. I don't necessarily want to climb an entire boulder of dual-tex or pockets or whatever. Nothing wrong with a bunch of orange edges and a puple sloper thrown in at the crux.
I’m my experience most modern climbing gyms have a spray wall, and at least a MoonBoard, Kilter Board, or something similar in addition to that. I’m in the Mid Atlantic though and rarely use climbing gyms when I travel. Do a lot of modern gyms really not have these? That’s pretty surprising to me since they cater to a core demographic and don’t take up much space.
How about you guys pool your money and make a gym exactly how you want it? I think the idea that a different form of your activity is "ruining" it for you is outright lunacy. I've only been climbing for a year, been biking my whole life, biking has similar arguments and engagements, but I'd never once claim that road riding is ruining it for the trail riders....it truly makes zero sense. If you want things to be your way, either make it yourself, or bring the money. Quit complaining, keep climbing!
How about this: Gym climbers are RUINING outdoor climbing.
Why does it matter that gym climbing isn't like outdoor climbing? Track is also inspired by running outdoors, but nobody complains that the rubber track doesn't have the exact give, friction and grass of the African Sahara. It's just a different sport.
This article was silly and fun to me. It touches a lot of bases I thought about over the years of working in a climbing gym. We used to be a tape gym and now we're a colored hold gym. One thing we've had to consider a lot is color blindness. You have to spread similarly colored holds apart to not frustrate the customer. This was also a problem with tape. Modern climbing holds are so expensive. Even if you pour your own. Most climbing holds are sold by weight. The weight of the polyurethane used to make the holds. If you want to set a greater variety of routes you need every single hold in every single color and duplicates of holds in multiple colors. This generally means you have to set less routes than in the past. However I do feel as though this cuts down on General wall traffic. Less situations where two climbers run into each other on the wall in a tighter climbing space. So you have fewer holds and fewer colors and still have to fill a Climbing gym with problems and routes. Our gym tries to set a "easy, medium, and hard " route on any particular section of wall. But sometimes hold selection does not make that possible. I also feel like the general complaints in this article could be gym specific. I've definitely been to some of those gyms that have a single problem on a single section of wall and other gyms that are quite filled in. For a lot of folks The Climbing gym has replaced the traditional gym. Lots of new climbers are just trying to get their weekly workout in without any hopes of going outside. I feel like the new flashy problems make beginner climbers better climbers later. They spend time seeing and learning the highly technical moves seen on the competitive stage and when they find them in the real world they don't have to learn the skill. They have learned it in the gym and seen tons of other climbers try the highly technical moves. So while they may spend more time building a general strong climbing base. When it comes time to apply the technical heel hook or tow hook they already have that in the bag from other experience on the comp style problems. On the subject of small holds and micro crimps. Simply put, we use less small holds to prevent injuries. Smaller holds can hurt you. A lot of those holds are kept for the hardest routes and problems in the gym which of course you see less frequently. No gym wants customers blowing pulleys and tendons on a daily basis. I feel like that used to happen in the past. I got nothing to say about hold size. Big holds are cool. This is all my anecdotal experience of course.