By: Louie Anderson

Since the first American climbing gym opened its doors in the 80’s, there has been a meteoric rise in their popularity. More people are looking to climbing gyms for their fitness fix, a social outlet, or even just a birthday party venue.

As such, many new gyms are opening up and these new facilities offer jaw-dropping terrain and more wall and bouldering space than gyms had ever before.

If you climb at one of these newer facilities consider yourself lucky. Many people however, are climbing in gyms that are 10 to 20 years old.

These facilities were built in a time when the people designing and operating them didn’t really understand training, setting, and marketing like today’s industry does. Because of this, these original gyms are now showing their age.

But there are a few things these industry dinosaurs can do to revitalize their facilities and enhance their customer’s experience.

Holds

Get rid of the old, chipped, polished, drably colored plastic and buy some modern, brightly colored and larger holds. These new toys will give your walls more color, add focal points, and re-motivate the climbers and setters.

Consider joining a hold subscription program in order to get a regular infusion of new shapes. Most of these programs are not very expensive and many hold companies offer them.

Time to Grid Bolt

Older gyms have very defined leading terrain, with distinct lines of bolt hangers. One thing that can be done to expand the climbing (and setting) options in a gym is to add more hangers. Most gyms have wall space that is under utilized, due to the lack of hangers.

Adding hangers in between (vertically, horizontally and diagonally) the existing locations allows for longer, wandering lead lines. This is especially beneficial in shorter gyms, where it can result in climbs of double the length.

Adding additional bolt hangers may involve consulting a structural engineer or climbing wall builder, but is not very involved or expensive.

Volumes

Volumes are a great way to add a little dimension to flat vertical terrain. These can be bolt on, urethane and fiberglass options available from climbing hold companies or larger, home-made, triangular and diamond-shaped plywood jobs.

Adding these will introduce your climbers to different movements and sequences that they would normally not be able to experience. Challenge yourself to move or rotate the volumes regularly to keep things interesting and new.

Piggybacked or Pop out Terrain

Older gyms were not built with much steep terrain. As such, most of your redesign will be to add steeper terrain. This new terrain can be built in front of the existing terrain and could simply involve building a pop-out or piggyback structure that hangs on the existing wall. Look to where vertical walls transition into a horizontal roof (extremely common in old gyms). Filling these areas with an overhung transition panel is a cheap and easy way to modernize this terrain.

Check out Hanger 18’s new bouldering pop-out.

The options when adding these pop outs are endless, but a structural engineer or wall builder should be consulted in the design and the connections to the existing walls.

Bouldering Additions

Does your gym have space to build more bouldering terrain? If so, build walls that offer angles (probably steeper) than what is available on the other bouldering terrain.

Bouldering walls used to be shorter than today’s walls. But by adding 2-3 feet of vertical height to your old bouldering walls you incorporate more moves into your problems.

If you don’t have room for these expansions, consider setting boulder problems in other areas. Many times the base of lead walls offers valid terrain. In most cases problems can be set that do not interfere with lead climbing usage.

Here’s a sample of a bouldering addition at the Hanger 18 climbing gym.

Flooring – Adding the Big Blue

If your gym has crushed tire rubber, Teva scraps, or any of the other dirty flooring options commonly used in the early days, it may be time for an upgrade. The addition of newer, gymnastics style flooring is a great way to clean up, brighten up, and provide a safer alternative. Sometimes it can be difficult to dispose of your old flooring, but the long-term benefit to the facility is well worth the effort and expense.

Get Fit

Try setting aside the space and funding to add simple training equipment like cardio and weight machines or systems, campus and hang boards. Your members may be splitting their money between your facility and another fitness gym elsewhere.

Adding this type of equipment will also serve to spread people out within the gym and increase the gym’s overall capacity, while providing users with a better environment for more complete training.

Lighten up

One of the simplest areas a facility can revamp their appearance is brightness and color. Give the walls and ceiling around the climbing walls a fresh coat of paint and consider using brighter colors. Look around and see what details could be painted in bright, accent colors.

Try painting the fire sprinkler pipes, air conditioning ductwork, doors, window frames, handrails, benches, you name it paint it. Many of the older gyms were not very bright to begin with and look downright dismal today.

You might also consider adding some painted or stained water streaks to give the drab walls some accent. Here’s a sample of water streaks.

Sometimes building space, budget, manpower, laziness, or any number of rationalizations keeps gym owners from modernizing their facilities. Any of the things discussed above (and many more options) could have a huge impact on the facility’s business and the enjoyment and loyalty of its users. I challenge all gyms to take a serious look at their space and make the decisions and commitments required to make it all that it can possibly be.

 |   Subscribe to post | Leave a comment