The first time John Sherman went rock climbing, he wasn’t some
daredevil looking for mountains to conquer. He was a bored teenager wandering
the neighborhood a few blocks from his home in Berkeley, California.
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It was 1974 and he stumbled across a small city park, Indian
Rock, where local climbers were practicing without ropes on house-size rhyolite
boulders.
“I couldn’t do a single pull-up when I started,” he said. “I
really struggled at first.”
A self-described pudgy, unathletic kid, he was drawn to the
balance and the challenge of bouldering. No ropes or axes or even partners —
just skill and stone. He went on to spend the next 50 years creating new
boulder routes — called “problems” in the sport — and helped popularize
bouldering through books, articles and outrageous stunts.
Today, indoor bouldering is an Olympic event and among the
world’s most popular adventure sports, even during the pandemic. In 2021, more
new U.S. climbing gyms opened than ever before, most of which were for
bouldering.
“It’s a collaborative group activity, people get together, they
mingle,” said David Sacher, founder of Vital climbing gyms.
It’s also the easiest way to enter the wider world of
mountaineering, especially in urban areas. But it can be intimidating,
wandering into some musty warehouse full of people hanging upside down from
chalky fingers.
If you want to try bouldering, here’s what you need to know.
Climbing is a full-body workout.
One of the first things first-time boulderers notice is that the
next day they are sore in very odd places. That is because climbing exercises
large muscles and small muscles, including a few you rarely use. It is both
anaerobic and aerobic and works the upper body, lower body and core.
“It is a full-body commitment to understanding your relationship
between your whole body and the surface that you’re trying to climb,” said
Lanae Joubert, an assistant professor at Northern Michigan University who has
studied rock climbing for decades. “Every muscle, I think, except your tongue
maybe. Unless you do climb with your tongue out.”
Joubert, a veteran climber herself, said there is no body size
or type that predicts a good climber. Men have no advantage over women, she
said, and what really matters is how much time you practice.
Climb with your legs, not your arms.
As a skinny, awkward high school kid, I quickly learned that
good climbing technique comes from the legs, not the arms. It is about balance,
strong legs and a solid core.
The best climbers learn to take weight off their arms, focus on
their hips and look for good footholds, rather than handholds. Good climbers
don’t lurch up the rock, they ooze up.
Climbers can be intimidating, but don’t be put off.
Walking into a climbing gym by yourself can be daunting. There
is the strange lingo, the annoying bravado and the occasional bloodcurdling
scream. Not to mention the lack of shirts and not-so-subtle flexing.
But climbing was founded by affable misfits lurking in the
woods, and that culture mostly continues to this day. It is not like surfing,
where people get peeved if you bumble onto their wave. The wall isn’t going
anywhere, and many climbers are happy to chat about strategy.
Part of climbing is falling.
While there are no published numbers on indoor bouldering
injuries, “every climbing gym in the country is going to have a few sprained
ankles every year,” said Scott Rennak, publisher of Climbing Business Journal.
But with modern wall-to-wall pads, there are ways to protect yourself.
If you are scared of heights, start with traverses, or routes that
go side to side, rather than up. When it is time to fall, tumble and roll
backward when you hit the mat. Better to land on your butt than an ankle.
Practice a bit: Just climb up a few holds, drop off, and practice rolling onto
your backside.
See the problem, be the problem.
Bouldering is at least as much mental as it is physical. People
often call it chess with your body. By pivoting a knee in or shifting your hips
a little higher, an impossible problem can become doable, even easy. Should you
have grabbed that hold with your right hand instead of your left? What if you
put your other foot on that little blue hold? These are the questions that
plague a boulderer.
If you fall off a problem, don’t just jump back on it. Take a
moment, shake your arms out and ponder other ways to go up. Watch someone else.
Bouldering can be expensive. Or it can be dirt cheap.
Many beginners can be taken aback by the price tags: fancy $200
shoes, gyms that cost $130 per month (though most places have day passes),
$1,500 Louis Vuitton designer chalk bags.
But you don’t have to climb with the best shoes in the hippest
gyms. You don’t even have to climb in a gym at all — I started at the same rock
as Sherman with a pair of cheap shoes and ill-fitting jeans. Beginner shoes
should cost $70 to $100 (gyms often sell used shoes even cheaper).
Then buy some chalk and you are ready to go. The world is full
of rocks. Mountainproject.com has a tool to locate nearby bouldering areas, and
it’s relatively easy to show up and make friends.
Bouldering outside, you will eventually need a crash pad — a
portable cushion for landing on — but people are usually happy to share with
beginners. There are also plenty of online forums for people looking for
bouldering partners.
Feel comfortable outside — but not too comfortable.
If you eventually head outside to climb, even if it is to some
random chunk of granite in the middle of a suburb, never forget you are in
nature. Treat the rock like the visitor you are, treading lightly, keeping it
clean and leaving portable speakers at home. Just enjoy the fresh air, the rock
under your fingers and the movement of your body.
“I’m hoping I’ll be doing it for another two decades,” Sherman
said. “I love it, there’s nothing I’d rather be doing, nothing else that
fulfills me like bouldering.”
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