While the concentration of climbers in Boulder is obviously quite high, I’ve wondered on the sustainability of all the gyms.

I just read an interesting post from the BRC (which is located literally one block away from Movement) in which they describe their new pricing changes. The summary: they’ve reduced all their prices.

When Movement opened, the lowest monthly rate for the BRC was $60 while Movement was $62. Two dollars extra a month for a shiny new gym and all their extras (full fitness center, yoga classes) was an easy decision for me to check it out for a few months. Now, the BRC’s lowest monthly rate is $55, about 8% less. But comparing apples to apples, that rate is for a 12 month commitment. The comparable rate to Movement’s $62 is now $58. While officially lower, for most people that’s a wash. And while this was more expensive than The Spot, the added fitness center justifies the price in my opinion.

These moves were obviously made to counter the new gym’s presence. The question for the BRC is will it be enough? I’ve heard a few rumors (likely just pure speculation) that Movement’s goal is to put the BRC out of business and then raise their rates. Personally, I find this hard to believe as it wouldn’t necessarily be the best business idea.

My membership to The Spot is ending soon and I’ve decided to switch over to Movement for now mainly because I need to be climbing more routes with my finger injury. I felt quite limited at my rehab efforts in a bouldering-only gym (yes, I know, nice problem to have). But if Movement eventually raises their rates too high, I would quickly go back to The Spot no questions asked.

Competition in all industries in good – it promotes innovation, better service, and a competitive price structure. For Boulder climbers, let’s hope all the gyms can continue to coexist and thrive.

So far, I’ve enjoyed climbing at Movement, but I’ve been limited in my climbing due to the finger injury rehabbing. Peter Beal has a good review from the perspective of someone who can hit the hard stuff there.

If you’ve been to the new gym, what were your thoughts?

There are some amazing photos of climbers’ home gyms in this very long thread. If I ever get around to putting up a wall in my house, I’ll be using these for ideas.

The Movement gym’s blog has an update on the ongoing construction and I thought it was interesting to take a brief behind the scenes look at a climbing gym being constructed.

I recently stumbled on this site and was impressed by the depth of each review. Each has a video of their hold testing along with suggested uses for your climbing wall.

They have a great variety of reviews on many brands of holds you don’t often see in your local gyms like Sequence Climbing, Three Ball Climbing, Teknik, Climb It, Atomik, and Project Holds; but also some of the bigger players like Nicros, Metolius, and EntrePrises.

Why is this news? There’s already three good sized gyms in Boulder already. But as I found out in my trip to Boulder a couple weeks ago, everyone you meet there is a climber. I’d love to see actual numbers on what percentage of the population in Boulder actually considers themselves a climber though.

It’s a safe bet that the founders of this new gym did their research and the demand is there. On a personal note, now that I’m moving out there, I welcome more indoor climbing gym opportunities!

To be honest, I’m having a hard time going to my local climbing gym with the prospect of having bigger and better gyms available in the very near future. Ahh, a tough problem to have, right?

Routesetter.com teaches how to stop climbers from using the bolt hole as a mono in the gym. At first I thought this was humorous, then I remembered how many times I’ve seen climbers try using them as pockets (especially those with tiny fingers).

1. Take a two-foot (or so) long piece of standard issue setting tape.
2. Loosely bundle the piece of tape into a cylinder-shaped ball that is longer than it is wide.
3. Stuff it. Shove that ball of tape into the offending bolthole. Be careful not to pack it in unless you never plan on moving the hold again.You may have to put more tape in the hole to fill it up. But using one single long piece will make it much easier when its time to get it out. Try to make the tape flush to the holds as best you can.

Check out the article for pictures on their steps. There’s also a nice follow-up discussion in the comments.

A few of my comments were taken out of context (the gym does set routes and I most definitely did not call it “choose your own adventure”), but it’s an overall good article.

They took two short videos as well. Here is one of them. Feel the frustration of the first time climber:

Check out the full article here.

From the scotsman.com,

The study by German researchers was based on the rates and types of injury at the 2005 World Championships in rock climbing in Munich, Germany, which involved almost 500 climbers from 55 countries.

The championships had an injury rate of 3.1 per 1,000 hours compared to adult male national soccer competitions where players face an injury rate of 30.3 per 1,000 hours.

Over the course of the competition’s events that totaled 520 climbing days, only three of 18 medical problems were treated as significant injuries, including a broken ankle, back sprain and knee sprain, while the majority of the problems were just bruises.

An interesting study for the average person who thinks climbing is more risky than other sports, but what I would be more interested in reading is a study that compares the injury rate within the various climbing disciplines. Personally, I find I get more injuries when climbing indoors (especially bouldering) compared to climbing outside. With bouldering, I think the reason is obvious. If you’re bouldering outside, all the problems are spread out across more time, usually the whole day. When bouldering indoors, a climber typically compress the same amount of problems (or more) into a 2 hour session. This simply stresses the body much more.

joost.climbing.nl also has some additional reporting on this study.

If I manage to get all this accomplished successfully, I’m thinking of building an adjustable standalone wall to avoid having to make permanent changes to the basement. Something along the lines of this.

I plan on blogging this project with lots of pictures. I spent a lot of time looking for ideas and examples of home climbing gyms on the web and was disappointed with what I could find. So, hopefully my efforts will help other climbers out there contemplating building a home gym.

Some of the best resources I did find for building a home climbing gym are listed below:

Climberware
IndoorClimbing.com
Uncarved Block
Synrock
Tradgirl
Pawn Climbing

The high school senior continues to train in the gym’s bouldering section, a cavernous area that looks a bit like the alien bar scene in “Star Wars,” with walls splotched with wild colors and shapes.

You have to appreciate any reference to Star Wars and climbing.

The Rock City boulder in Minneapolis, Kan., is part of a series of “huge sandstone concretions… round balls of sandstone that look like massive billiard balls sitting on the plains of Kansas”

That said, I may still build a home wall just because it looks like great fun and can only help my climbing. I’ve seen numerous sites that show step-by-step how to build a climbing wall. Here are some of the best:

How to Build a Home Bouldering Wall – indoorclimbing.com
Chockstone
Climbing Wall Project Estimator
The Indoor Climber’s Resource
The Edge Climbing Wall Systems
Metolius guide to building a climbing wall (PDF)
Pawn Climbing
Home Climbing Walls – Tradgirl