How gym bouldering can make you better at trad climbing
After I spent a year on the road climbing in Yosemite, Indian Creek, and Joshua Tree, climbing in the gym again felt like a completely different sport—especially when it came to indoor bouldering. Though I theoretically knew that bouldering was an effective way to get stronger, I couldn’t quite get psyched on 16’ plastic walls.
Eventually, my desire to get stronger eclipsed my aversion to bouldering, and I made a conscious effort to find the “good” in pebble wrestling. Months later, I’ve come around to my anti-style discipline, and have actually found huge gains in both physical and mental strength that I can apply to my outdoor climbing. Indoor bouldering may feel like the opposite of granite splitters, but with deliberate practice, this easily available terrain can help us make progress toward bigger goals.
Photo by Katie Arnst / West by West Co.
Before we dive into the benefits, let’s break down a few common roadblocks that hold people back from improvement in their bouldering.
1. Feeling bad for not sending a grade you think you “should” be able to send
If you avoid working on problems that are at or below your onsight grade because you’re afraid you’ll be disappointed if you don’t send, you’re letting your ego get in the way of improvement. This discomfort you’re avoiding is actually where the greatest skill development will happen. Reminder: sending harder doesn’t make you a better person and you won’t get better by keeping your ego comfortable.
2. Fixed judgments
It’s so common to hear people make excuses for not sending because they’re “not a boulderer,” or they’re “more of a ropes climber,” or they’d rather focus on “real climbing.” It’s okay to prefer ropes, but every time you say things like this out loud, you’re giving yourself an easy out in case you fail. If you want to really take advantage of skill development in bouldering, don’t waste energy talking yourself out of bouldering.
Along the same lines, declaring yourself “too short” or “too tall,” or labeling a problem “too awkward,” “too dynamic,” etc. is also going to limit your improvement. Rather than placing judgments on yourself or the problems, stay curious and open-minded.
3. Fear of falling
Unlike roped climbing, you’ll actually hit the ground when you fall bouldering (duh). If you don’t boulder often, you may find that fear of falling keeps you from unleashing your full try-hard. Rather than avoiding hard moves, stay curious about this feeling when you notice it creeping in. Practice dropping from height rather than downclimbing. Like climbing movement, falling well is a skill, and your confidence will build with persistent practice.
While these entrenched habits may be hard to break, it’s worth it! Improvement in bouldering requires a curious mindset. Here are four ways bouldering can improve your trad climbing.
1. Creating security in hard moves
Hard trad climbing often requires holding strength in insecure stances. Whether you’re placing gear before a crux or delicately dancing through a thin sequence, mental clarity, and sharp focus will make all the difference. While the terrain is different, gym bouldering is an excellent way to practice this awareness. Because of the risk of falling and hitting the ground, bouldering requires consistent assured movement in a way that sport climbing does not. The mental risk assessment that happens as you move through a boulder problem can train your brain to remain calm during similarly heightened risk assessment on a trad climb.
Moderate trad climbs offer moments of security along the route. As you progress through the grades, these moments of security will become rarer, if you are offered any at all. Instead, harder trad climbs will require you to create those positions of security yourself.
I used to hold myself back from difficult boulders because of my fear of falling, but I realized that I was cutting myself off from a super valuable learning opportunity. Gradually, I began working taller indoor boulder problems, only moving forward when I felt I could do the next move without gambling on a big fall. Patient practice of this skill has trained my brain to be able to create security in tenuous positions faster. This mindset is absolutely essential for difficult trad climbing.
Trad climbing demands laser-sharp focus. If you’re only entering this headspace on the weekends when you climb outside, you’ll progress slower than if you can find a way to recreate that feeling while training at the gym.
2. Analyzing beta
Bouldering uniquely gives us the opportunity to climb cruxes over and over and over again. In this repetition, we have the ability to quickly try many different iterations of beta to learn what works. On routes, a fall often means you’ll have to lower and reclimb in order to get another shot at the move that kicked you off. When you’re bouldering, the feedback is quicker. You’ll learn to carefully dissect your movement and try options other than your body’s default. This curious and precise mindset is hugely applicable to outdoor climbing when the rock affords infinite combinations of possible beta. Indoors, the options are more limited, and therefore we get to practice working within more restrictive constraints. Creating the habit of careful beta analysis indoors will train your mind to do the same when you head outdoors.
3. Moving powerfully
As you push your limits in trad, you’ll find that harder routes require new skills that can be difficult to acquire through climbing alone. While there is absolutely no substitute for outdoor climbing experience, learning to stick powerful moves is a skill that can be trained faster in a bouldering gym. Building muscle memory for snappy power moves requires diligent repetition and the confidence to play with new movement styles, which can be a lot less intimidating indoors.
Take the start move on the problem in the video below, for example. In order to make this move work, I had to drop down really low to generate momentum and explode to the donut-shaped hold. This sort of powerful, dynamic climbing is not something I gravitate towards, and so working on this move took a lot of persistence. I ingrained in my brain and body the way it felt to do this right–how low was low enough, and what combination of tension and fluidity allowed me to really fly. And while that donut hold looks like an easy target, I learned that I actually needed to aim higher than my initial assessment in order to hit it in a way that allowed me to stick the move.
While it looks very different, the movement progression on this boulder is not unlike what we might find on a crack with reachy pin scars or other specific finger lock placements. Powerful and dynamic movement can be executed with just as much certainty as static beta–it just takes a lot of practice!
In my earlier years of climbing, I admittedly was not a believer in building power through bouldering. When I set aside my limiting expectations and instead committed to consistently training powerful bouldering, I found that I was capable of a lot more than I initially believed. I have already seen this come into play in my trad projects, and I now have a lot more confidence in big moves that require accuracy.
4. Committing to projects
In order to really improve in bouldering, you have to commit to projecting what you haven’t sent. Outdoors, it can be easier to make excuses and walk away. Repeated bouldering offers a low-commitment way to practice getting in the mindset of projecting. If you’re someone who avoids returning to unsent outdoor climbs, practicing projecting inside will help you get comfortable with what this process feels like. Every time you climb something more than once, you have the opportunity to learn something new and improve. If you can commit to this process, you will grow. Trad projects are demanding, but if you can get in the habit of learning from failure in the gym, you’ll be much more prepared to do it outside.
We won’t always have the ability to take months-long climbing trips to inspiring places. Sometimes, we’ve got to make the most of the tools at hand. Improving at trad climbing through indoor bouldering requires curiosity, grit, focus, and a bit of optimism. With persistence and clear goals, you can stop dreading bouldering and instead start seeing it as an opportunity to do more of what you love.
As a personal trainer and passionate trad climber, I’m excited to be able to combine indoor and outdoor tools to help you push your limits. I’ll be opening a small number of 1:1 coaching spots at the end of the summer. If you’re curious about how you can use the climbing gym to train for trad climbing, enter your email below to get on the waitlist so you’ll be the first to know when spots open!
