What Makes a Great Climbing Gym?

My favorite features for a world-class gym:

Autobelays for those times when your partners are unavailable or you need to get in a quick hard session.

Walls feature a variety of terrain including slab, dead vertical, overhang of various degrees, dihedrals, aretes, and cracks. I don't know much about the terrain in Idaho, but if you have much slab, please please please don't exclude slab walls. So many people who have no idea about slab technique get on a moderate outdoor slab and get freaked out, stranded, injured, or worse. Slab is not only practical for getting the skills to handle outdoor situations - where you might face big slabby runouts on old school routes -  but FUN for many of us. Similarly, if much of your outdoor terrain is trad, cracks are pretty essential. I like good, built-in crack lines of different sizes with some texture and variation, not a boring crack trainer.

Skilled route-setting that considers a variety of body types. At 5'7", I'm taller than about 90% of American women. If a problem is reachy for me, it's reachy for the vast majority of women. I don't mind the occasional big throw because that's the reality of outdoor climbing sometimes too, but it shouldn't be a feature of every hard gym route.

Routes rotate about every 4-6 weeks. That gives you plenty of time to work and enjoy a problem but enough variety. 

Locker rooms and showers are essential. A foot shower or detachable showerhead on a hose are especially nice so that I'm not washing my feet in the sink. Gender neutral or family restrooms. 

Wi-fi and a comfy spot to use a laptop.

Some method to facilitate matching up partners. My gym currently has a "trade a belay" Facebook group but not everyone is on FB. They're also trying in-person events that are like speed dating for finding belay partners, but I've never gone. Seems like a lot of potential embarassment if you don't match someone but are going to bump into them in the gym a lot. Then there's the traditional paper sign up clipboard where you can leave your number and what you're looking for, and some folks have tried a What's App group.

Radical idea - climbing classes should be free to members. I understand the economics but it boggles me that most climbing gyms have free yoga and fitness classes but charge for classes in climbing safety and skills.

Considering partnering and co-locating with (or renting space to) a yoga studio, crossfit box, or other fitness studio that's popular where you live. Give members the option to join one or both so that members are paying only for the services they use, members get a professional class experience, you get cross-over from the other studio's population, and you don't have to coordinate the non-climbing instructors. 

highaltitudeflatulentexpulsionwrote:

ALL gyms should have a no barefoot policy!!

Seriously, foot stank is contagious and hard to get rid of. I've known some dirtbags to have feet and shoes that smell worse than a sewage treatment plant.

M Mwrote:

Seriously, foot stank is contagious and hard to get rid of. I've known some dirtbags to have feet and shoes that smell worse than a sewage treatment plant.

My gym has a no barefoot policy....I got you on the shoe stank but It's the bros who don't use deodorant that can knock a buzzard of a gut truck "fasterer" than a sweaty shoe 

I had a group of women turn around looking for the source after I took my shoes off once (my wife who was belaying me noticed)   drypointe shoes inserts are in all my shoes now.   

If you're at a gym, wash your feet before you put your climbing shoes on and after you take them off. Cuts down on the bacteria that goes into your climbing shoes (and street shoes & socks) to breed in the dark dank. Simple concept, but so few people do it.

Also - boot bananas. I had TSA look at me funny when they saw bananans stuffed in my shoes on the x-ray, but other than that, pure gold. amazon.com/Boot-Bananas-Ori…

No people, free climbing.

The Depot Sheffield but maybe make it 24/7 card access.

holds that spin and rip off the wall to emulate choss. 

Trevr Taylrwrote:

holds that spin and rip off the wall to emulate choss. 

Yes and

Each wall should require a 45 minute incline treadmill session, while the staff beats you with slide alder and pine branches to simulate Washington approaches.

Periodically throughout the day the overhead sprinklers will come on to force people to bail.

Making the prepubescent gym rats keep their shirts on

Clint Helanderwrote:

Making the prepubescent gym rats keep their shirts on

No shaved or waxed chest bros either.

Shirt-on policy please. 

grug gwrote:

Shirt-on policy please. 

Or blanket no shirt policy

Magnus can take his shirt off if he wants to. 

grug gwrote:

Shirt-on policy please. 

Would you be more comfortable if i wore nipple covers?

John Clarkwrote:

Would you be more comfortable if i wore nipple covers?

Pasties required for sure

John Clarkwrote:

Would you be more comfortable if i wore nipple covers?

keep the "dirty brown flesh" covered

Logan Petersonwrote:

Best practices for creating the ideal gym:

• Don't host gym-to-crag days. …the best thing about a climbing gym is that people are climbing there rather than outdoors.

The last couple “gym-to-crag” courses I saw were taught by some grom employee who only started climbing (indoors) a year ago and has only actually climbed outdoors a handful of times at the local choss crag.

Teton Tomwrote:

The last couple “gym-to-crag” courses I saw were taught by some grom employee who only started climbing (indoors) a year ago and has only actually climbed outdoors a handful of times at the local choss crag.

In my experience, this a common theme with gym climbing.

There is a huge difference from being certified and qualified. The instructor may have taken a class about teaching, but never put in years of training on real rock.

Gym employees, often pretty new to the sport, think they have a huge understanding of climbing. To be fair, they may have a good understanding of how their local gym works. Even the most skilled competition climbers have to learn to transfer their skills to real rock, and some become the best rock climbers in the world. But gym climbing it is not the exact same skill set as outdoor climbing. We have all seen people that are strong in the gym but are horrible at slabs, cracks and reading routes / boulder problems. They often have what I call "5.12 hands with 5.8 feet." It is hard to know where to put your hands and feet when they are not bright pink and protruding from the wall, if that is what you are used to. 

Shaun Johnsonwrote:

In my experience, this a common theme with gym climbing.

There is a huge difference from being certified and qualified. The instructor may have taken a class about teaching, but never put in years of training on real rock.

Gym employees, often pretty new to the sport, think they have a huge understanding of climbing. To be fair, they may have a good understanding of how their local gym works. Even the most skilled competition climbers have to learn to transfer their skills to real rock, and some become the best rock climbers in the world. But gym climbing it is not the exact same skill set as outdoor climbing. We have all seen people that are strong in the gym but are horrible at slabs, cracks and reading routes / boulder problems. They often have what I call "5.12 hands with 5.8 feet." It is hard to know where to put your hands and feet when they are not bright pink and protruding from the wall, if that is what you are used to. 

None of this is the issue. Good climbers climbing badly is fine.

The issue is using the gym as a step towards getting outdoors. Using employees who are more interested in spreading psych and pumping up the sport than they are about the nuance of litter, impacts, and safety.

At the end of the gym to crag class, do these people have an experienced partner to continue to show them the way?

Sometimes the gym is enough. Let it be.

highaltitudeflatulentexpulsionwrote:

None of this is the issue. Good climbers climbing badly is fine.

The issue is using the gym as a step towards getting outdoors. Using employees who are more interested in spreading psych and pumping up the sport than they are about the nuance of litter, impacts, and safety.

At the end of the gym to crag class, do these people have an experienced partner to continue to show them the way?

Sometimes the gym is enough. Let it be.

While I have very mixed feelings about 'gym to crag' , advocating being an ostrich regarding the issue, is not a solution either. Like it or not, a percentage of folks who start climbing in gyms are, sooner or later, going to want to start climbing outdoors. Over the years, partly as a result of the availability and ease of gyms as the 'entrance drug' for climbing, many of the former ways folks were introduced to outdoor climbing ( especially trad) --such as climbing clubs or opportunities for developing mentor relationships, have withered or disappeared entirely. I know that this has been happening fairly extensively in the Northeast for several years---there are still some such opportunities, but much more limited both in number and location. The main options now available are guides or commercial climbing courses which are costly, not available in many locations, and rarely offer the ( non-commercial) infrastructure for continuing mentoring. Those factors are resulting in increasing numbers of gym-'trained' climbers venturing outdoors on their own. While that isn't always necessarily a bad thing ( long tradition of learning to climb with 'mother's clothesline'--those surviving such beginnings often developing into very accomplished climbers), the potential negatives are multiple and obvious. Given these circumstances, a well-thought out and well-run ( emphasis on both) gym-to-crag program can be worthwhile.