Recommended holds for home wall

Hello

I am building a home climbing wall for limit bouldering / training. Approximately 10 feet tall x 4 feet wide.

Basically modeled after the Moon Board, but I'd like to try to avoid the expense of Moon holds.

What holds does everyone recommend?

Thanks in advance.

I would say this depends on a lot of things...

Angle of your wall?

What is your goal with the wall? Are you training for a specific route or are you just looking to get generally stronger by messing around on boulders you set?

Do you want to have it be a fun place to set problems with your homies or do you want it to be a training wall (like a system board?)

I think if you answer those questions, picking holds will be easier.

Generally, all the big name companies make really nice holds and you can often find factory seconds for a discount. I am personally a sucker for the DRCC holds...love those evil things.

Look up the Outdoor Gear Lab article "The Best Climbing Holds". They have a pretty detailed guide on how to choose based on your goals.

I would recommend the So iLL 53 pack on Amazon. They seem to be great so far, and include a nice variety for training specifically.

Thanks a lot.

The angle of the wall will be approximately 20 degrees only bc I am combining it with a campus board and also bc any more and my car won't fit in the garage.

My goal will be to get generally stronger but I am certain that I will end up emulating sequences of the routes I project - 20 degrees seems to be representative of some of the routes I'd like to try this season.

Will check out DRCC. Thanks again!

Check out this forum if you haven't already:
What does your woody look like?

I finished my wall about a month ago and this was a great resource.

Rocky Mountain Climbing Holds are super inexpensive and have been awesome for a starter pack if you also buy some chips for foot holds.

I use a lot of Atomik climbing holds due to their price and how good they are. I've quite enjoyed using them, and they aren't too expensive.

My first wall was about that size and it got boring very fast. There just want enough moves to make it interesting. My advice is to just build a campus board and a hang board. Frankly anything less than 4 sheets of plywood isn't worth it.

If you decide to make one anyway, you can make cheap holds out of wood. MDF works great, oak is strong but gets polished.

J Hawl wrote:Rocky Mountain Climbing Holds are super inexpensive and have been awesome for a starter back if you also buy some chips for foot holds.

I agree that Rocky Mountain Climbing Holds are great. I installed them on my home wall and they seem super durable and feel like real rock. They are mostly jugs which is perfect for my steeply overhung wall. Like others have said it all depends on your wall.

Set of 50 holds for only $70 with free shipping on Ebay:
ebay.com/itm/50-ROCK-CLIMBI…

A friend of mine has a wall with the Rocky Mountain holds too, they're great and really inexpensive. Feel like real rock, and seem to be pretty durable. Plus I'm pretty sure that they're made of recycled materials, which is another plus.

mountainproject.com/v/inexp…

I'd recommend SynRock Holds. Great for home walls. Good price and durable. Jim will custom make holds as well if you need something specific.

I've had a lot of holds over the years. Metolius, Atomik, SoIll, SynRock, can't even remember them all. I think I've had 4 or 5 different home walls now, at a variety of angles. I probably use my bouldering wall WAY more than the typical home gym owner does as well so I've logged a lot of mileage on a lot of holds.

I would suck it up and spend the dough on quality polyurethane holds, especially for anything that's not a jug. Teknik and eGrips are my favorite manufacturers hands down. The have a good variety of hard holds and the shapes are great. Texture is good and doesn't turn into a greasy mess like most resin holds seem to. I like the SoIll material and quality, I just don't personally need a wall covered in lightbulbs and baby heads.

I think the best use of resin holds is jugs and footholds. These are the areas where the disadvantages of resin kind of turn into a benefit. It's hard to find footholds that even remotely replicate climbing outside. But the slickness of the resin makes footholds a lot tougher, especially once you get a good coat of shoe rubber on them. Resin jugs are beneficial because jugs are generally pretty expensive and the resin is so much cheaper than poly. It's an easy place to cut costs and the texture is pretty irrelevant on a jug anyway.

If I could do it all over:
Atomik for feet and Jugs
Teknik and eGrips for almost everything else

I'm not familiar with the Moon Wall, but I assume you are building this out of wood?
Just make your holds out of the scrap pieces. That's what I did for the wall I built at school and it worked great.
If you need more wood, then just go to any lumber yard and ask for the scraps. They're free and you don't need large pieces anyway. You're just training on it, don't worry if the holds look like crap.

Despite some other comments, there is plenty you can do on a 20-degree wall given your red-point level and training objectives. In general you will have to use smaller holds for your angle, for example 1/2-inch or less edges.

I have two walls one at 20 (6'x 12') and one at 40 (8' x 8'), both on a Moon grid. I use Atomik Training holds mostly and have them set up for system board training / rhythm intervals and limit bouldering.

Read this
rockclimberstrainingmanual.…

Best $40 you can invest in your wall. And getting stronger/better. Unless you are crunching 5.13/V8, this is the place to start.
I have 10º, 25º, 35º and 42º walls, and what i use most is the 10 and hangboard. Learn about ARCing. If this is preaching to the choir, forgive and forget.
Also look into HIT strips. Great system for limited space.
And to answer your question, go with what you can afford, make sure you have LOTS of t-nuts in the wall (i go for 160 per sheet, random pattern), and make nice at your local climbing gym. The rotate their stock, might be able to pick up some deals.
My $.02

Thanks for all of the comments!

I am familiar with the Anderson brothers philosophies; agree that the manual is outstanding.

Rui, could you post a pic of your 20 degree wall? I live nearby as well, any chance I could come and have a look? If ok I will PM you.

If you're specifically interested in Limit Bouldering, here is a post I wrote describing some specific hold sets that I think are perfect for Limit Bouldering. Many of these should work well on a 20 degree wall.

Monomaniac wrote:If you're specifically interested in Limit Bouldering, here is a post I wrote describing some specific hold sets that I think are perfect for Limit Bouldering. Many of these should work well on a 20 degree wall.

Excellent post.

Thank you Mark!

here is my 20-degree wall. It is mostly set up with rhythm interval holds (Atomik and Detroit training edges/crimps), larger holds for warming up and a variety of holds for simulating route cruxes and for limit bouldering problems.

If you want the most bang for your buck, Atomik is the way.