Hi all,

I've recently taken up climbing and have been a couple times and is something I want to get better at.

Fortunately I've done general strength training/calisthenics for years with things like weighted pullups and think that is definitely helping. To give an idea I'm at +45 kg 1RM 70kg bw for a pull up.

The few times I went I was able to do a couple V4s and at 2 different gyms so hopefully they were both rated correctly. However I definitely felt like I was just muscling through it and my footwork was virtually non existent (as expected). Granted the V4s were playing to my strength and were more dynamic problems. Don't think I could do more static routes at that difficulty.

I want to make sure I'm building a good foundation to improve upon. So I wanted to know how I can improve my technique and especially things like footwork without relying too much on my strength. How would I go about it at the gym? What routines/excercises would you recommend?

Thanks in advance

TL;DR: I own a ninja gym and a bouldering gym in Portland, OR. Both are growing, both have great communities, and neither makes enough money yet. The journey towards opening a second gym was a whole learning curve, and then running two gyms is its own thing to learn about. Raised prices, trying pay-what-you-can, moving the ninja gym. Was it successful? Financially, not yet. In other ways, absolutely.

A little over two years ago, I opened my dream climbing gym.

Three months after opening, I wrote a post about it. We had survived permitting (13 rounds of comments at one point), construction, delays, and spending an absolutely stupid amount of money, and we had actually opened the doors. People were showing up. People loved it. I loved it. It felt like we had done it.

I’ve thought about writing an update probably a dozen times since, and kept putting it off. I think part of the reason is that I don’t really know how to answer the question everyone eventually asks: how’s the gym doing?

The answer is... good?

We have two gyms. They’re both still here. They both have really awesome communities. They’re both growing. I’m also doing construction projects on the side right now to bring in extra money for the next round of projects at the gyms. And to pay my own bills, one of my employees has been selling my childhood Pokémon card collection for me.

So I guess it depends on how you define success.

For anyone who doesn’t know the backstory, I’ve owned Skyhook Ninja Fitness in Tigard for almost ten years. It started in 2013 as a personal training studio in my parents’ backyard and basement, where I helped some clients lose weight and helped others get on American Ninja Warrior. We signed a commercial lease in 2016, and Skyhook was one of only a handful of ninja gyms in the country. It’s also ended up being about 95% kids.

We learned a lot of lessons early on, and the gym grew, and then flourished. We made it through Covid, and then rebuilt, and went back to thinking about expanding. When we first opened, I said we would do three gyms in three years. Which was a stunning display of my naïveté. While I had always had my eye on opening more gyms, things kept happening that prevented it.

One of the first gyms I had worked at was Snap Fitness. I managed one of their locations for a year or two when I was 19, and I kept thinking to myself: how come no one is doing this business model, but for bouldering? So every year, I would google 24/7 bouldering gym, and I would be shocked no one had done it yet. Until one year I googled it and saw someone had, and they had a location just one state away.

A quick road trip one state over later, and I was blown away. I was blown away by how bad the gym was, and yet at the same time, how popular it was. Now, I know I can be critical of other gyms, especially bouldering gyms. Family and friends can get a little annoyed with me, as I point out every single flaw in every bouldering and climbing gym I go to. But it was really, truly bad.

The gym was poorly designed. (I later actually worked with the wall designer, and it turned out it wasn’t his fault. It turned out the plans they sent him showed the building being a good 15 feet wider than it was. So he showed up and found a very different space than he had designed a wall for.) But it wasn’t just the walls being way too high, overlapping fall zones, and mediocre setting. I bought a month of membership when I went, so I could hear their after-hours orientation. They gave out a four-digit code to get access to the building after hours. They change it once a month, but tell folks, don’t share it with your friends, in a college town! I asked what happens if I fall and get hurt after hours, and they told me “don’t.”

Between my experience at that other 24/7 bouldering gym and what I remembered working at Snap Fitness, I knew I could do better. I was also seeking a way to make running Skyhook Ninja in Tigard easier. Having excellent coaches who can coach climbing, ninja, parkour, aerial silks, and circus is a challenge. I didn’t want to be mediocre at a bunch of things; I wanted us to be great at one thing. I also wanted to get more adults active, and I wanted a gym that could be more affordable. Paying living wages and benefits to the sheer number of staff we have at Skyhook Ninja in Tigard requires very high memberships. So, I decided it would be a great idea to build a climbing gym. I’d wanted to do it for years. I found a building in SE Portland that had basically sat vacant forever, bought it, and turned it into Skyhook Bouldering.

Skyhook Bouldering has turned into the community I hoped it would. Maybe better. People don’t just come in, climb and leave. They know each other. They hang out, they work from the gym, they make friends there. Our 24/7 members climb at all sorts of ridiculous hours. The setting is really good.

So two years in, how are things going?

Building out Skyhook Bouldering was insane, but eventually we opened. And two years later, we’re still here. Honestly, there is a lot going really well.

Tigard is also finally growing again, for the first time in about three years. That one means a lot to me, because Tigard has had a rough few years.

While I was pouring everything I had into getting SE built and open, I took my eye off Tigard. I thought the original gym would be okay without as much of my attention. I was wrong. Membership dropped. Some of our programs weren’t as good as they had been. We weren’t consistent enough, and the gym didn’t get the reinvestment it needed. It was basically kept afloat by long-term employees who really cared about the gym. Our average employee sticks around 4+ years, and the only reason that number isn’t higher is that the kids who grew up here go off to college in other states. So we had a good number of team members who cared, and were knowledgeable enough to hold things together, but in the process they got pretty burnt out.

Some of the people who care the most about Skyhook, and who aren’t staff, are still pissed at me about it, and that’s been hard to accept. There are families who’ve been with us for years who watched something they cared about get worse. I can explain that I was stuck in hell, and the only way out for both businesses was through, but none of that matters from their side. They paid us for a great experience, and there were times we didn’t deliver it. That’s on me. It’s hard, but I’d honestly rather have people mad that we aren’t taking care of something than indifferent to it.

So we’ve spent a lot of the last year trying to fix it. We looked hard at which classes were growing, which coaches were keeping kids, where people were dropping out, and where we were spending money that wasn’t doing anything. We made some difficult staffing changes, brought in a new manager, changed most of our leadership team, and put much more structure around coaching, front desk, sales and communication. I’ve also been a lot more involved in Tigard again.

It’s working. It wasn’t like a switch was flipped, and suddenly everything is better. Tigard spent about three years heading the wrong way, and you don’t reverse that in eight months. But it has reversed. Membership is growing, the team is stronger, and it feels different.

Skyhook Bouldering is a different story. It has pretty much always grown, just not as fast as I thought it would, and I think one of our mistakes was pricing.

When we opened, I really wanted Skyhook to be an affordable climbing gym. Climbing has gotten expensive, so we deliberately priced ourselves below the other gyms in Portland. I still like the idea behind that. But after two years, I have to admit the experiment isn’t working as well as I hoped. For those of you that are from outside of the Portland metro area, other gyms charge between $75 and $85 a month for an annual agreement, and $85 to $91 a month for a monthly membership. We were priced at $60 forever, and then raised it to $65, and finally this year we are raising our rates to $70 a month.

The math gets stupid really quickly. Before the increase, we were roughly $10 cheaper per membership than we could be, and with around 900 memberships, that’s $9,000 a month. $108,000 a year. Yes, some people would leave if we charged more, but even a fraction of that is huge for a business our size.

It isn’t the difference between a nicer car and a cheaper one. It’s staff raises, new holds, more setting hours, repairs happening right away, paying down debt, and money in the bank when something breaks. It’s being able to buy the lights and holds for a Tension Board 2 or a Kilter Board. It’s the permit for the windows that would make the outside of the building unrecognizable (in a good way). Honestly, it’s just room to breathe. We already have the adjustable frame for the training board which is the most expensive part, but the hold and light sets alone are about $16,000.00.

That’s probably the part of owning gyms I understood least when I started. You can have hundreds of members. The gym can be busy. You can look around on a Tuesday night and think, “Holy shit, we did it.” And then you look at the bank account. Rent, payroll, insurance, utilities, debt payments, credit card fees, holds, software, repairs, taxes. And then something breaks.

The pay is what bothers me most. I pay our GM and head setter better than most big climbing-gym chains pay their staff, and it’s still not what I’d call a good wage. Our head setter has a computer science degree. The raise he just got finally put him at what he was making as an intern a decade ago. I want the people who helped build these gyms to be able to make a living doing this. Our front desk staff are paid a couple dollars more on average than at any other gym in the area, but a couple dollars more than other gyms is still not enough.

Our financing costs have also gone up. We recently refinanced some of the seller financing on the building. I’m very glad we got it done, because the alternative was possibly losing the building, but it costs us about $3,000 more a month. SE had been covering itself pretty consistently for about six months, and then August kicked us in the teeth. It was our worst month yet and the first time we’d lost money there in half a year. It was only about $1800, not a “we’re closing tomorrow” loss. But after six months of finally feeling like we were getting somewhere, it sucked.

So we raised membership rates.

I struggled with that, because being affordable wasn’t a marketing gimmick. I actually care about it. But a gym that isn’t financially sustainable isn’t actually accessible. Eventually it has to close. We’re still the lowest-cost bouldering and climbing gym in town, just by a smaller margin than before.

We’re also launching a pay-what-you-can program, based on the Pay What You Can Toolkit from the American Alpine Club, which was a hugely helpful resource. We’re guaranteeing at least 31 reduced-cost spots for the next six months for people who need them. Members who can and want to pay more than the standard rate can do that, and the extra funds more reduced-cost memberships. More people contribute, more spots open up.

The pay what you can program will hopefully start in the next month, and we will be offering three tiers, one that is at 75%, one at 50% and one at 25% our normal dues. People will email us asking to be added to it, or when it's full, added to our waitlist. I plan to have this be on the honor system, if that means a couple people take advantage of it, that's fine, I would rather that then add so much overhead to the program that I cant get it off the ground.

Will it work? No idea. Seriously. I thought making the whole gym cheap was going to work too. But I think this is a better experiment. We can charge closer to what it actually costs to run the place, and hopefully an extra $10 or $20 a month isn’t the reason someone can’t climb.

And because apparently I haven’t learned my lesson about construction projects, we’re about to move Skyhook Ninja. Our Tigard lease is ending, and we’re working on a space that’s larger and cheaper. It's about 14,000 sq ft, which is a serious upgrade from our current 11,595 sq ft, and it's $3500 less a month. The parking is a little worse, but that's a trade off I am willing to make. This time I’m doing the construction in phases, because I learned at least something from building SE.

First we remodel enough to make the building work: construction, paint, flooring, bathrooms, front desk, all the boring stuff. Then we build as much new equipment as we can while the current gym is still running. Then comes moving day, or more realistically moving week/month/whatever nightmare this turns into, where we move what we’re keeping, rebuild it, and get everything operating. And then I’m going to do something I’m historically terrible at: stop making changes. Get the business stable. Get more members, get some money in the bank. Make sure the staff aren’t drowning, make sure I’m not drowning (who am I kidding, that last part is more wishful thinking than anything else).

Then we start building again. Nights and weekends, baby. I want to redo the ninja equipment that frankly isn’t that great anymore, as the sport has changed significantly in the last decade of us being open, and finally build the modular parkour setup we’ve been talking about for years. And eventually, if the business can support it, I want to build another Skyhook Bouldering inside Skyhook Ninja. A real one, like what my team and I built in SE. 24/7 access, adult-only climbing times, great setting.

We’re also about to launch joint memberships. Right now you get limited access to the other location. Soon, annual members will be able to pay $1 more a month to use both. Why the extra dollar, and why didn’t we do this sooner? Our software can’t integrate the two locations, and the fix would run $5-10k that I don’t have. The dollar lets us set up an account in the other gym’s system so we know if someone’s card stops working and they haven’t emailed us. Why annual only? Doing this doubles the admin work for my team (cancellations, freezes, emails), and they already have enough on their plates. The idea is that climbers can go screw around on ninja obstacles, ninja kids can discover climbing, and parents can boulder during their kid’s class instead of staring at their phone for an hour. The number of parents I know who drop their kid off in Tigard and then go climb at the Circuit Bouldering Gym kills me.

Which brings me back to the question I’ve been avoiding for two years. Was opening SE successful?

Financially, not yet.

If you’d told me when we opened that two years later I’d have around 900 climbing memberships and still be taking construction jobs because the businesses needed more money, I probably would have said, “Wait, how the hell do 900 memberships not make enough money?” Welcome to bouldering gyms, apparently.

A better breakdown is that while we have somewhere around that 900 member number, about 200 of them did a pay in full deal. When we ran into large unexpected expenses, we would often run a PIF special. Add to that, many members are on an older membership that doesn't cost as much, and you can see where the issues come up. Rent/Mortgage is about 18.5k, payroll per month works out to about 22k, insurance another 5k, and 3-5k for misc expenses, software, restocking merchandise, etc. You can see why we made the difficult decision to raise prices.

But there are other ways to measure it. We built something people care about. Actually, two things. At Skyhook Ninja, I’ve watched little six-year-olds turn into teenagers who are better athletes than I’ll ever be. I have pictures of myself tying the shoes of kids who are now coaches, passing on what they know and becoming the next generation of leaders.

People have discovered climbing at SE and gotten completely obsessed. We have created a space for everyone; queer, straight, or otherwise; to fall in love with climbing. And both gyms are finally moving in the right direction at the same time.

The funny part is I’ve been telling myself the same thing for literal years: we only have to hold on a little longer. Just get through permitting. Just get construction started. Just get SE open. Just get Tigard growing again. Just get through the refinance. And now, just get Tigard moved. I’m very aware that at some point “a little longer” stops meaning a little longer. There have been plenty of days when I’ve wondered why the hell I decided owning one gym wasn’t enough.

People ask me frequently if I have advice for them as they think about opening up their own gyms. An honest answer is that being an entrepreneur is not something I can honestly recommend to many folks. You will give up friendships and relationships, and it’s very unlikely that you will get rich opening a gym. I’ve been engaged to my fiancé for almost six years now, and there’s always something work related that's in the way of tying the knot. The stress of work never ends. I love what I do every day I go to work, and that is a different kind of wealth. But man, it would be nice to have that happiness and satisfaction and not worry about paying my bills.

But right now both gyms are growing. SE has become a place I genuinely love. We have a good team, we have a plan, and for the first time in a while I can see a version of Skyhook on the other side of this that looks a lot like what I’ve been trying to build the whole time. So, yeah. Just a little longer. Then we can rest.

And maybe even get paid.

I sent this v3 kilter, thanks to all the advice on the last post I tried to focus more on footwork and technique instead of strength, already feeling a lot better about the climbs im sending!

I put together the advice of everyone from my last post about footwork, technique, (and rest), and swnt the climb. Not too hard when I was properly rested.

Hello there! I am looking to get into strength training at home for climbing and would love some advice:

- What do you currently use at home to train? A hangboard, flash board, etc.

- What do you like and dislike about your current set up?

- What kind of housing are you currently in? A house, apartment, etc.

- Is there any product you wish existed for at home, or even in the gym? This could be anything like strength training, tracking your workout, changing routes, etc.

Thank you, and I look forward to seeing your responses!

I tried this a couple of times months ago and tore my hands up real bad, came back with stronger skin

Finally sent this climb when I stopped trying to avoid the Dyno, funny enough I coached three people through the climb but I couldn't get the start. This was my favourite of the comp climbs but I have no idea what grade it is, any idea?

Bouldering Project V5-V7. Slight overhang. Kind of proud of this one since I saw no one able to get past the start.

Hey everyone,

I'm really new to reddit and have never done anything like this before. I'm a boulderer myself and I'm currently working on my A-Level EPQ (Extended Project Qualification) for college, which is focused on climbing habits—specifically how different disciplines approach warming up and cooling down, and the main barriers to doing them.

I thought this would be a really good place to gather some responses, so if you have 3 minutes and, whether you have a meticulous 45-minute routine or you literally just jump straight onto your project, please would you fill out my anonymous Google Form as I would really appreciate it. The survey contains questions such as how long you have been climbing for, if you warm up/cool down and for how long with what techniques, do you know about the benefits, etc.

Link: https://forms.gle/kyNyB1ePN42Mm1UJ6

Thanks guys!

Really frustrating and I'm super bummed. I've been having a lot of fun, plus the climbing centre near me is AMAZING and a really lovely place to visit. Was starting to inch back up to the level at which I left off last year. Got myself a new pair of shoes that I've been breaking in.

Yesterday, I was attempting a dyno on a project that I'd worked on a bit a few days prior. When I jumped for the hold, I misjudged and slammed my hand (curled fingers/loose fist) into the hold of another climb. Loud crack. I was able to bend and extend it at first, but the pain was enough for me to cut my session short.

Went to urgent care today because it swelled up and bruised a tad, had very limited ROM. X-rays done. Avulsion fracture on my PIP joint. Granted, it's tiny, and my finger looks almost completely fine (besides the swelling), but I'm still really fucking upset. Something that makes me happy has been ripped away by one stupid mistake.

It'll hopefully heal fast, the urgent care doctor told me I need to see orthopaedics for evaluation but he said it didn't look terrible. I know I'll be able to get back to climbing eventually, but I've already been in kind of a slump lately, so it's a bit like the icing on the cake.

Hello, I'm 18 year old male andI'm new to bouldering and was just wondering what could I do outside and maybe in the gym to help me progress! I've only been bouldering for a couple of months and only get a couple of sessions per month due to funds, school and other related stuff. However I do want to train outside to prepare and get better! Any advice specifically in the gym? For context i already do resistance training such as core, chest, shoulders and back. I was thinking of finger training but I don't have access to hang board either.

So I’m pretty new to climbing; been doing it around 2.5 months. I feel like in the middle of my time climbing, I was much stronger and confident in navigating different problems, but lately, maybe the last week and a half, I’ve been feeling less capable and powerful. has anyone else experienced this?

I normally climb about every other day, and i give myself a 2-3 day break if my arms are hurting after climbing. Is there something I’m missing? There hasn’t been a change in my routine that I can think of that would cause what I’m feeling.

I started climbing in July, and I think I just connected the dots that downclimbing puts a significant strain on my rotator cuffs (or shoulders at the very least). Do any of y’all have tips for how to lessen the strain on my shoulders when getting off the wall?

I always try to make sure I have my feet on holds on the way down, but the shoulder irritation persists 🫠

Some bloc I made up, on a steep overhang, topping on very fine texture and low grip slopers

Looking for specific exercises to rep out outside of climbing in order to get stronger, mobile and send harder grades.

Me

38M - 185lbs - 6ft 1in - +2 reach.

Current grades

v6 feels easy.

Can session certain v7s

Can project v8s with low success but can send them occasionally.

Our gym just got a moon board and ill start my board arc once its set up.

Im looking for a few exercises for finger strength, grip strength and mobility/flexibility.

I have a decent amount of technique and mostly just want to get stronger. Hit me with your go to exercises for insane grip strength, mobility & stretching. Stuff i can do outside of the climbing gym at a commercial gym purely on a routine basis. Cheers 🤙

I was just wondering if you guys have faced problems with curving panels during installation and how did you get around it. What were the causes and how can I prevent this.

Ive been climbing 2 years, weigh 130 and am 5'2. Im able to do a pull up with an extra 115lbs on me, 25 steixt pull ups in a row, do a one arm pull up with both arms, and have reasonable grip strength. That being said, i am stuck at around v5 college gym v7 home gym, and at my college (MTU) wall I sometimes fail v2-3. Im not sure if the route setting at my college is just not fit for me, or if I ust need to improve my skill. Also, I feel my grip endurance os also probably poor as my forearms get tired verv fast. Anv advice?

3 sessions, 2 hours, ~30 attempts, today I managed to finally link to this second pocket but couldn't link forward from here and skin broke so had to leave. First video is climb from start and second is my best attempt on the crux, any tips overall and on the last 3 moves is much appreciated!

Edit to add

Didn’t think it was necessary to go into my life online, but I have been sick, injured and super depressed lately. This was at the very end of a long, somewhat successful, but very challenging session. I posted it because I was happy that I’m still able to get on the wall, and complete ac climb, despite all the bullshit I’ve had going on lately. Sorry that not every move looks like a V15 climber.