As climbing gyms continue to expand across America, more and more and more (and more) people are discovering the joy and challenge of using only their hands and feet to climb sets of colorful plastic holds. And as anyone who has used social media in the last five years knows, one of the best parts of climbing in gyms is sharing the problems you’ve done with your friends and followers on social media. This has become such a prominent part of climbing-gym culture that many premier climbing gyms have installed phone stands throughout their facilities, giving their members an easy way to set up their devices to capture footage of themselves projecting and sending.
“We only set ‘Instagrammable’ problems now,” says Davis Davison, head setter of GahhhhStone Monkey gym in Duluth. “If it’s not ‘grammable, it’s not climbable.”
According to Davison, “grammable setting” means show dynos, run-and-jump starts, and outward-facing stem corners that give viewers a little taste of what the front side of their favorite climbing influencers look like.
But, perhaps as a backlash to the glut of gym-climbing content choking everyone’s feed, a new trend has emerged among more mindful climbers. It’s called “rawdogging the climbing gym,” and it means doing a climbing workout without taking a single photo or video of yourself the entire time.
Like many trends, this one is playing out on social media—ironically—with TikTok users boasting about their most epic rawdogging climbing-gym feats: “Just got back from rawdogging an epic three-hour board sesh—no phone, no camera, no headphones. Just straight tugging!” stated @buttermilker69, a climber from Orange County, on the Tok. “The power of the mind knows no bounds!”
Climbers who have caught onto the rawdogging trend see this as an opportunity to not only train their fingers but also strengthen their willpower. As the deleterious effects of social media, with its addiction-forming feedback loops and narcissistic-inducing algorithms, become better known, many climbers are taking on the additional challenge of stepping back from platforms that seem to do little beyond raising the stature of the most shameless and superficial people in society. At least for as long as it takes them to get in a climbing workout.
For some climbers, rawdogging the gym simply means not filming themselves, but otherwise using their phones to light up the Kilter Board, as well as stimulating their brains with the usual incredible and insightful fare that streams through their feeds.
Other purists, however, have taken to a more extreme version of rawdogging, in which they use no technology at all during their sesh, but also, they speak to no one. Not even eye contact.
“Rawdogging doesn’t get real until you’re on hour five, blowing yourself out on the campus board when your dank bro walks in and starts talking to you,” says @buttermilker69. “You just have to play possum on a mat until they stop asking if you want to go JTree next weekend.”
Climbers have mixed feelings about the new trend. “I mean, we still need to create content,” said @slabqueen in a TikTok. “Otherwise, all we have is OnlyFans.”
Experts agree that rawdogging might not be for everyone. But they do say that if you try it, make sure you tell people about it on social media afterward. “That’s the key,” says @slabqueen. “Because obviously, if you don’t share it, it may as well never have happened.”
“Possum on the mat” sounds almost downright extroverted to me. The late night loners at my gym will go full on fainting goat mid-problem to avoid saying hello. Mentioning slabqueen and only fans in the same article, get ready for your next cancelling and a whole lot more reddit bitching.