“Be sure to have frequent rest days, and don’t overstress those small tendons. Gain your strength gradually and safely.”
John Gill
When bouldering you climb close to the ground without a rope. Bouldering is pure climbing—no gear to fiddle with, ropes to encumber you, or time spent belaying. It’s just you and the rock. Bouldering has been a popular pursuit among climbers for decades. Recently, it’s become a sport in its own right, with many boulderers never bothering to climb with a rope.
By not fussing with ropes or hardware, a boulderer can climb dozens of fun and challenging boulder problems in a couple of hours. Climbers have different motivations for bouldering. For some, it’s the ultimate pursuit, while others boulder to train for rock climbing; a climber can quickly gain power and technique by bouldering.
Whatever the motivation, a day spent bouldering with friends in a beautiful place is time well spent.
All you need to go bouldering is a pair of climbing shoes, a chalkbag, maybe a crash pad, and, of course, some boulders. The minimal gear requirements make bouldering accessible to almost anyone, provided they have boulders or a gym nearby. If natural boulders are lacking in your area, most climbing gyms have bouldering walls. Some climbers build their own home bouldering walls in garages, attics, or extra rooms. Another option is “buildering,” climbing on the sides of urban buildings. The downside here is that in many places buildering is illegal—check first.
The best way to learn about a bouldering area is to get a tour from a local. Of course, locals often make monstrously difficult problems look simple because they have them wired, so leave your ego at home during the tour. Some of the more popular bouldering sites are covered in guidebooks. If no guidebook is available, search for a website with information on the area.
A trip to the boulders can be fun, social, a great workout, and aesthetically pleasing—especially if you pull off some good problems. How you conduct your bouldering session depends on your goals for the day. Whatever your goals, start by warming up, then turn it on to crank some challenging problems and work some problems that you can’t do—yet. Wind down on some easy boulders to cool your body down when you’re finished.
Bouldering can put tremendous stress on the muscles and joints in your fingers, arms, back, and other body parts. Stretching and moving on easy ground to begin with warms and loosens your muscles so they’re ready to crank without getting injured. While the warm-up may seem a waste of your climbing time, an injured muscle or joint can stop you cold.
Sharp rock and desiccating chalk can trash the skin. Vitamin E ointment or other salves help keep your skin moist, and triple-antibiotic ointment prevents infections in your wounds so they heal faster. The antibiotic ointment is especially important if the wound is on your knuckle, because constant bending of the knuckle slows healing.
A few wraps of athletic tape can protect the skin on your fingers from tearing on sharp holds. Thin strips of tape wrapped relatively tightly around your fingers between the knuckles can reduce the strain on your finger tendons. Don’t tape your fingers if they’re not injured, though. Taping unnecessarily prevents your fingers from developing callouses and impedes the strengthening of your tendons. If you have skin or tendon injuries that require tape, remove the tape after climbing to promote blood flow to the area.
Climbing easier routes first helps you get in “the flow,” where body and mind work together to create an excellent, smooth performance. Easier routes also help you develop precise footwork, which can be key for unlocking harder moves.
Once you are thoroughly warmed up, your strength and technique are near their peak. Take advantage of these golden moments to attack some harder problems before you get tired. Before jumping on a hard problem, check out the holds and clean the chalk off of them. Visualize the moves in your mind, then step up to the boulder and wipe your feet clean.
Give the boulder problem 100 percent. Keep thoughts of failure out of your psyche or they will be self-fulfilling. You have to give it all physically and mentally on hard problems. Stay focused. If the fall is safe don’t stall or give up—keep cranking. Mental tenacity is valuable in bouldering. It’s a wonderful feeling when you dig deep to keep fighting and suddenly the problem is finished. Climb some hard problems that you can do, focusing on precise, fluid movement. If a boulder problem feels sketchy, work on it over several sessions until it feels smooth and controlled. You can frequently gain insight into a boulder problem by watching others climb it. Often, a subtle difference in body position or foot or hand placement can make a huge difference in the difficulty of the problem. The same thing goes for all climbing.
Work on some problems that you can’t do during each bouldering session. It’s amazing what you can climb if you try. For many, that’s the essence of bouldering—finding ridiculously hard projects, working on them to unlock the sequences, refining the moves, building specific strengths, and finally achieving success. With persistence you’ll earn one of the best rewards of bouldering—climbing a problem that once seemed totally impossible.
Between hard problems, or attempts on hard problems, take a good rest of several minutes or more. Throwing yourself repeatedly at the climb without resting depletes your strength. While you rest, visualize the moves, or better, watch someone else do the moves. Rest, recover, and then give it another go.
A 10-foot-wide boulder may have a hundred different routes, and often there will be some bouldering rat around who knows them all. Many boulderers are friendly about giving beta on problems. If someone else’s sequence isn’t working, experiment with different possibilities to find a different way; what works for one boulderer isn’t always best for another.
It is easy to get sucked into the trap of trying a move again and again exactly the same, and falling off exactly the same. Doing the same move but trying harder is sometimes the solution, but don’t forget to try other possibilities.
Boulder problems often place incredible demands on your muscles, requiring you to pull hard on small holds and steep rock, so they cultivate power in your climbing. Some of the strongest climbers in the world developed much of their power by bouldering. If you always focus on powerful boulder problems, though, you’ll fail to develop endurance, so it will be hard to keep hanging on for a long boulder traverse or challenging pitch. Tommy Caldwell, one of the best big wall free climbers, trains for free climbing on El Capitan by riding his bike and going bouldering.
To improve endurance, find problems that keep you on the rock for several minutes or more, with a good deal of weight on your arms. Bouldering on long traverses, where you link many moves by climbing sideways just above the ground, is good for increasing endurance. You can also crank laps on pumpy problems, or climb several problems without resting to build endurance.
Creating a bouldering circuit, where you move quickly from one problem to the next, is fun and helps you learn to climb fast. If you minimize resting between problems, a bouldering circuit will also help build endurance.
If you hope to climb some powerful problems, save your endurance work for the end of the bouldering session when your power is tapped out. If you climb the endurance problems first you’ll sap your power.
During your first time at a new bouldering area, you have a unique opportunity to onsight a bunch of problems. Scope each problem well before you step up to climb it. Spot the holds and envision the moves. Once you step off the ground, give it a full effort—you get only one chance to onsight. Onsighting hard boulder problems develops your skills for reading the rock, which helps when climbing longer routes.
If you haven’t been on a problem before, consider climbing the easiest way up the boulder to scope the finishing moves. This also allows you to clean the finishing holds and check out the descent. More than one boulderer has completed a hard, high problem, only to realize that there’s no easy way back down.
Downclimbing is an important skill for a boulderer: If you can’t crank a move high on a problem, you can often climb back to the ground rather than jump or fall. Plus, sometimes you need to climb down the back side of a boulder after completing a problem. Downclimbing was even more important before the advent of bouldering pads: If the drop zone is well padded, you can often just jump onto the pads if you get stalled on a problem.
Bouldering builds power like nothing else, as Dai Koyamada demonstrates in Japan on one of the world’s hardest bouldering problems.
Bouldering allows an aspiring lead climber to practice downclimbing, which could save the day if you get stuck on a lead. On boulders there are only three options: fall, jump, or downclimb. Often, downclimbing is the better choice.
You can find a tremendous variety in boulder problems. Mix it up when possible to increase your climbing diversity, build new strengths, and keep things interesting. Often, you’ll just take the most natural line of holds from the ground to the top of a boulder, but there are also many other options in bouldering.
Traverses. Find a wide boulder and traverse it, staying close to the ground. You can go right to left or left to right. After you’ve mastered the traverse using the best holds, start eliminating key holds to make the traverse more challenging.
Dynos. One of the most exhilarating bouldering moves is the dyno, where you hurl your body upward to grab a hold that’s beyond your static reach. An improbable variation is the double dyno, where you toss both hands simultaneously to the target handhold. Dynamic problems are exciting and fun, but be careful not to drop onto your joints.
Eliminations. To make the most of a small piece of rock, boulderers often “eliminate” or call off-limits certain holds to create new variations. By creating contrived problems that require using specific holds, you can create dozens of problems on a small boulder.
One-hand and no-hand boulder problems. To improve your balance and footwork, try climbing a low-angle boulder problem with one hand, then with no hands. These exercises force you to concentrate on your feet and teach you to trust small footholds.
Sit-down starts. You can make a problem longer and often harder by starting from a seated position. Grab whatever holds you can while sitting, put your feet on the rock, lift your bottom off the ground, and climb.
Highballs. Some boulderers enjoy the thrill of climbing highballs—tall boulder problems from which you really don’t want to fall. Often they’ll use several bouldering pads to soften the ground. Nonetheless, highballs are the realm of the expert: You need total control once you get well off the ground or you’re asking to get hurt. Beginning or intermediate climbers should top-rope high boulder problems.
While working hard problems, you might fall dozens of times in a single bouldering session. Learn to fall in control or your session might end with a trip to the emergency room. When falling, try to land balanced on your feet like a cat. If you have bouldering pads in the drop zone, shoot for the middle of the pads; landing on the edge of the pad can twist an ankle. As you land, bend your knees to help absorb the energy of the fall.
Spotting means helping a climber control his fall. Good spotting takes practice. Predict the trajectory that the climber’s body will take in a fall so you can position yourself to give a good spot. Focus on the climber’s body, especially near his center of gravity, not the moves he’s making. You may have to move around as he climbs, especially if the problem traverses, to stay positioned well. Don’t get too close underneath the boulderer or you can flip him on his head if he falls, especially if the rock is overhanging.
Keep both hands up, ready to direct the climber to a safe landing. Some spotters prefer to tuck their thumbs into their hands so they don’t dislocate them by snagging a falling boulderer. If the ground is padded, direct a falling climber to the center of the pad. If there is no pad, help him land on his feet. If that’s impossible, at least protect his back and head from hitting the ground or a rock. Sometimes you can grab a climber’s shirt to keep him upright when he lands.
Some problems are very technical, forcing the boulderer to keep changing the way he leans against the holds. This changes the trajectory of a possible fall, so the spotter has a tough time staying in position. In this case it helps to have an extra spotter, or even a posse of spotters, each with their own zones to protect.
One of the most vulnerable positions in bouldering is on overhanging rock. If your hand slips off the hold, your upper body falls first, and your head can smack the ground. Careful pad placement and attentive spotting are essential on overhanging problems. Spot the climber very closely, with your hands almost on them in off-balance or exposed positions. If you’re the climber, drop your feet first if possible, before you cut both hands loose.
All too often spotters don’t pay attention. The boulderer falls and hits the ground without a single hand to help guide the fall. Often, two spotters will look at each other and say, “I thought you had him.” Good spotting is one of the best defenses against getting hurt while bouldering. If you expect to receive a good spot, then give a good spot. It’s actually infectious—once your partners have experienced good spotting from you, they are likely to get the idea and return the favor.
Every bouldering fall ends on the ground. Bouldering pads have made the sport much safer, but it still takes diligence to keep it safe. It’s easy to break a handhold or foothold and fall unexpectedly.
Bad landing zones also pose a problem. Often the drop area is littered with randomly scattered rocks that can break your ankle or smash your skull. Again, the best way to reduce the threat is with pads and good spotting, and by falling in control. Boulderers also sometimes clear jagged rocks from the drop zone under a problem. This may not be appropriate on protected lands.
Be aware that bouldering can be more environmentally destructive than other forms of climbing. The heavy traffic at popular problems, crash pads laid over plants, and sometimes even the removal of trees exact a heavy toll and give land managers good reason to close areas to climbing. Do your best to minimize your impact in order to protect access, as well as the environment and wildlife habitat.
EXERCISE: WORKING BOULDER PROBLEMS
This is a fun exercise. Head with a trusted partner to a good bouldering area or a gym that has a bouldering wall. Bring a crash pad and your other gear. Warm up on some easy problems, then find a few that are challenging. Take turns climbing these routes and spotting each other.
Now find a problem you can’t do. Give the climb your best attempt, then let your partner try. Maybe you can learn something from his attempt. Keep a positive attitude. If you don’t complete the climb today, you haven’t failed; after all, it’s a project. You can only fail by giving up on the project and never returning, or by having a bad attitude and making others around you feel uncomfortable. On each attempt, analyze why you fell and see if you can find a way to make the moves easier.
Ask questions such as:
Is there a better hold, or a better way to use the holds?
Can I improve my body position?
Do I need to concentrate on keeping my feet steady?
Do I need to move more dynamically?
Attempt the problem several times. Hopefully, each try will be a little better than the previous. If a friendly climber who climbs hard is around, ask her to show you the climb. Watch which holds she chooses and how she grabs them. Note her body positions and the way she moves. Her approach may not exactly fit you, but you can gain some insight by seeing the problem climbed.
Each time you step up, think through each move before getting on the problem. Look at each hold and visualize the sequence; otherwise, you may repeat the same mistakes. Once your progress begins to fade, give it up for the day and move on. Work two to four problems like this with a concerted effort.
Find a boulder with plenty of holds. An artificial wall can work, too. Climb the boulder using only holds pointed to by your partner, whose job is to get you so pumped that you fall off big holds.
Find a pumpy traverse to work. Cross the boulder from left to right and then right to left; your partner should do the same. Repeat the traverse a few times, striving to become more fluid and efficient each time. Once your arms are thoroughly pumped, move to some easy climbs, warm down, and call it a day.
Take at least one rest day, and then return to the boulders to pick up where you left off. As you begin to complete your boulder projects, move them into the circuit of problems that you routinely climb and add on new, harder projects. This will spur your progress in bouldering and climbing.