It has been 25 years since I started climbing. As one could imagine, a lot of learning happens in that amount of time, even if you don’t try to learn and get better, simply spending that long doing something will lead to learning. Take fly fishing for example. My father was a terrible fly fisherman, in a technical sense. He couldn’t roll cast, couldn’t mend, didn’t have the ability to cast with both hands depending on what side of the river he was on…yet after enough time, he learned to adapt his skillset to what he was doing to attain the results that he was after. Catching a shitload of fish. One can do this in virtually anything. Yes there are limitations. No matter how long I play basketball, I’ll never be good enough to play in the NBA. Or the NFL, because there are certain limits that I have to deal with.

Over this many years in the climbing industry I’ve done virtually every job there is. I’ve been a gym manager, team coach, maintenance person, routesetter, janitor, routesetting director and gym member. In that time there have been so many things that have come and gone as trends, fads and popular things in the gym, routesetting etc. At this point, there is very little left that is “new”, or “revolutionary” in the industry of indoor climbing. Light up walls, interactive climbing and lots of these new things seem like gimmicks that will be something that’s popular for birthday parties, entertaining 7 year olds with holds that light up at the base and a wall that moves while climbing on it.

There are however, many gyms that are starting to do one thing that could be construed as “new” and that is inserting language taken from 30+ years of corporate america and using it to describe what they are planning on doing with their gym, setting, customer experience etc. None of this is new. We are now at the point that climbing gyms are now using corporate buzzwords to sell memberships to people who are new to climbing, don’t know anything, or are easily influenced (thanks social media for ruining the world as we knew it) into making a decision based on passion in the moment of seeing an advertisement (Don Draper was right all along).

These things are “passion, obsession, ingenuity, creativity” and other words, that without context are meaningless. With this comes a free pass for accountability. There is no more focus on creating a great product and letting the members steer the ship with feedback. We have entered the era where people building gyms like to “educate the membership” “, instead of using feedback from their customers and altering the course of the routesetting to respond to what the customers want. Yes, in certain circumstances one can open a facility where there are zero gyms, and come up with a different approach, “teach” the community through routesetting, gym policies and such, and other methods of providing information for them to use in their growth as climbers. These are very rare in the US at this point, and most gyms are opening in areas where there are already established gyms, and some are still trying to do crazy things to set themselves apart, instead of focusing on the core of the facility.

I was just in a gym that did what I want to see more of so well. The design, layout, small details in the lighting, colors of walls (not the climbing walls but the walls in the facility), amount of natural light and so many other small details were done so well that I was blown away. The product (when I say this in general I’m speaking of the routesetting) was high quality, had just the right amount of density, difference in holds, brands, materials and a feel to the setting that was a nice middle ground of thought provoking complexity and basic pulling on holds. So many places try to do so much that they lose sight of what is important. Listening to the members, and using that feedback to make decisions regarding the direction of their companies.

In short, climbing gyms need to stop trying to re-invent the wheel. Have quality routesetters, pay them well enough to stay. Hire desk staff that are friendly and knowledgeable and do the same for them. So many people join climbing gyms because of the amenities that they have, saunas, yoga, classes, etc and never use them, and then still complain about the quality of the routesetting (a post on this is to come…) all the while forgetting that they joined for all the stuff they don’t use, while the smaller, simple gym down the road is just waiting for them. Hopefully they find it soon.