The premise of the critically acclaimed art film (documentary?) “Idiocracy” is that people are slowly getting dumber. So dumb, in fact, that when you follow this trend line far enough into the future, we will have forgotten what to use to water plants. Nobody in this dystopian future is able to see just how bad things are. They’re fish in a bowl of water who don’t understand what it means to be wet. In fact, it takes a time traveler of completely average intelligence by today’s standards to clearly see our collective errors in reasoning. The film follows his futile effort at course-correcting before humanity stumblefucks its way off this cliff of its own making.
Of course, I love this dark and funny film since it skewers some of our most unflattering tendencies as humans. It’s also a great metaphor for anything that’s gotten worse for seemingly no reason at all. And with that preface, I’d like to turn your attention toward today’s oversized climbing holds—the bulbous wastes of fossil fuels growing like tumors across America’s climbing walls.
If you had a time machine and zapped someone out of a gym in 2003 and put them in virtually any indoor climbing space in 2023, I think the first thing that person would notice is not that the gyms are bigger, cleaner, more beautiful, and with more crowds. Rather, they’d notice that all the holds are hysterically large.
Climbing holds have gotten so big that one hold now covers 15 T-nuts worth of wall space. Which is to say, one hold is now doing the job (poorly) of 15 crimpers. Zoom out, and you’ll see that one problem today takes up the space of at least five 2003-era problems with 2003-era holds.
As a guy with average intelligence who is mentally stuck, in so many ways, in 2003 with my apple-bottom jeans and fur boots, can I just say one thing: why the fuck are climbing holds so big?
If you sit and ponder this question long enough, it becomes nearly impossible to derive a compelling reason for why we find ourselves in this proverbial Idiocracy. Just as Colgate hasn’t started making toothbrushes that are larger than our mouths, climbing holds, in theory, need never be larger than a single human hand. If the reasoning is that oversized monster holds allow you to bump and match on different parts of the “same hold,” can’t that exact effect be achieved simply by screwing more, albeit smaller holds into the wall in close proximity to one another?
Don’t even get me started about when these monster holds are used for feet upon which you’re supposed to run and leap, parkour-style, across this wasted canvas of climbing space because Instagram has determined that these trick problems get high engagement. There is only one rational response to the plethora of parkour problems set on these giant, colorful warts:
[Insert the international hand sign for jerking off here.]
Every single person reading this will know what it’s like to try to do a move only to whack and abrade your elbow against one of these fat fucks. The worst is when you’re trying to do a normal problem on normal-sized holds, but unfortunately, because there’s no wall space left, the setters tried to squeeze it into whatever T-nuts remain. It would be a great problem, but for the fact that THERE IS A GIANT FUCKING HOLD IN THE WAY!
Have you ever worked a job in which you’re underpaid and under-appreciated? And then you show up to work one day and your boss is wearing a Rolex or driving a brand new Land Cruiser? And it just kind of pisses you off that someone is flaunting an extravagance in front of you while you get screwed? That’s a bit like how I feel when I pay $27 for a day pass to a gym where there are only five problems, each one averaging $5,000 in hold costs, taking up a huge section of wall that could otherwise be filled with 30 problems. Listen, I think I can speak for the climbing community when I say that we would happily give up ever again climbing on macro volumes if it meant:
- More problems in the gym, even if they’re all made up of smaller, worse, and older holds.
- A lower day / gym rate.
- Higher pay for route setters.
- More route setters setting more routes.
The only way out of this mess is to cancel anyone who posts videos of themselves merrily parkouring across thousands of dollars of volumes on Instagram. Daisy chain yourselves to the walls of your gyms in a hunger-strike protest wherever these oversized blights are set. Don’t let indoor climbing become an idiocracy. It’s not too late to save ourselves.
What you’re missing is that large volumes allow setters to change the wall geometry. You can create slab sections, roofs, ledges, all on relativity flat walls. This allows setters to keep things much more fresh and interesting.
This is what I thought, it changes the angle without requiring reframing the whole gym.
You banged your knees? Like, “OUTSIDE CLIMBING?!?”
Yea, that’s what volumes are for. And they’re not the same as holds.
No, noone is missing that. Just remember the first paragraphs of this article and think again… You could easily create slabs sections, roofs and ledges on flat walls simply by attaching volumes, which also contains T-nuts, so you could attach more holds to them – meaning even higher variability. 😉
Why the holds got bigger? The functional aspect of large holds is mostly to give you those large tapered surfaces very hard to grab on or to step on. This is the original concept, a tall hold needs a longer tapered surface… in order for routesetters to force sequences. The same way, dual texture holds try to cancel the slick surface from any use and make routesetters design routes with very complex and interesting sequences.
Right now most brands went over the top with size and dual texture and function aren’t anymore what pushes for this trend. Visual aesthetics and pretentiousness rule the game, if I agree with the first one the last is driving the whole industry to a very dangerous path where gyms are super expensive and unsustainable.
Get off my la…rge climbing holds!
Hey if you’re gonna use AI art as the cover photo, maybe give the poster of the original video you took this from media credit?
Using volumes of any material (plywood, fiberglass) seems to be a good alternative to “break” the flatness of a plywood surface and create something more challenging.
However, what I don’t really get is why the majority of fiberglass or polyurethane holds are that big.
I think they could do the same job with less material used and probably with less cost!
Last but not least most gyms and their customers follow trends.
At some point we might go back to small and minimal and forget the jumping-parkour-kind-of climbing.
I wish! Luckily we have more than 15 climbing facilities here in Prague and some of them are still very old-school. It’s funny, there are usually around 5x more problems on the same area than in modern gyms..
Good article. I think the hold size is (also) related to the overal popularity of climbing. (not only) Entering the world of Olympic games makes climbing more visible and there is also the vibe of coolness of the sport. The competitions get more attention and there is the need to attract the crowd also by how the problems look. It might be hidden also behind “everyone can crimp hard, we need to set new style of problems”. Climbing gyms can profit massively from the masses, not from a few dedicated hard-core climbers, thus following the trends that can be seen on world cups and other comps, making the gyms and problems look fancy. Holds became a serious induistry already few years ago, so there must be a strong lobby from that side, either.
As for me… I train on a small local spray wall with the smallest, most polished fucks you´ve ever seen. Somtimes I go to a fancy big gym to try out some modern style problems, but that´s really just for fun. Well. that´s pretty much it. (sorry for my English, I am not a native speaker)
Peter
This is definitely an entertaining article, but is missing the reason for the change.
1) Injury: In shifting away from crimping strength to say body tension, the risk of finger tendon injury has diminished. This is especially important to youth climbers who are at higher risk from hang board training. It’s also important for new / occasional climbers who rarely have finger tendons of steel.
2) Accessibility: By deemphasizing finger strength, to overall body strength, the accessibility and appeal to a broader community increases. You can get a great workout without needing fingers of steel.
3) Engagement: It’s much more entertaining to watch a competitive climber moving fast with risky moves than moving slowly across a set of crimps. (risk here is risk of failing to complete the problem, not risk of injury).
The combination broadens the appeal with more climbers, more indoor climbers, more gyms, more money, more sponsors. Of course we will get the “back when *I* was ……”
Now indoor and outdoor sports are becoming different sports. This trend will continue. We will see some gyms focus on traditional climbing styles, others will become more parkour, and I expect new business models will emerge.
Is it all that different from golf? Back in the day, one played golf on open fields mowed by the sheep. Today we have carefully manicured courses that are anything but natural, to mini golf, to Topgolf style driving ranges which are almost amusement parks. It ain’t all bad. But they sure aren’t traditional.
The discussion in my opinion isn’t about crimps vs macro holds. It’s more about why most of the holds are getting bigger no matter if their size is related with their usability. Plywood volumes, macros and so on provide a different experience and movement and in many cases this can only be achieved by larger size holds and volumes.
What it used to be a normal jug has now been increased twice its size and this might not add something to the usability of the hold. As far as injuries are concerned I guess shoulder and other upper body issues could be a problem for people who aren’t strong or fit enough.
First Evening Sends post, coming over from the Run Out. This was such a fun critique piece, I throughly enjoyed it. The critique might be unsubstantiated? Look at how many just Board climbing gyms exist now, how many people have boards in garage’s and most of these gyms have boards hidden in dark corners away from the colorful outbreak of warts. I would say LEDs on boards is making people less competent compared to deciphering Comp problems.