Indoor climbing

Indoor climbing in the roped sense means climbing walls that are too high to fall off safely, using a rope managed by a second person or by a machine. The wall provides the routes, the anchors and the ropes; you provide shoes, a harness, a belay device and — the part that takes longest — the competence to operate them.

The difference from bouldering is not merely height. Bouldering is a short, hard, repeated effort over a mat, done alone or in a group, with no equipment beyond shoes and chalk. Roped climbing is longer, generally less intense move by move, and it is a two-person activity in which one person’s attention is directly responsible for the other person’s safety. That changes the sport socially as well as physically: you cannot drop in for twenty minutes on your own unless the wall has auto-belays, and you acquire climbing partners rather than merely fellow climbers.

There are three ways up an indoor wall and they are worth distinguishing before you arrive. On top rope, the rope already runs from you, up through an anchor at the top, and back down to your belayer — so a fall is a few centimetres of stretch. On lead, you carry the rope up and clip it into fixed points as you pass them, which means a fall drops you to below your last clip and then some, and which requires a separate assessment. Auto-belay replaces the belayer with a self-retracting device, letting you climb alone; walls limit which routes have them and they are inspected as equipment rather than trusted as furniture.

What you need for a first visit

Nothing — the wall hires everything

What gates the roped disciplines

A competency assessment, not fitnessWalls will not let you belay unassessed, and rightly.

Climbing alone

Possible, on auto-belay routes only

The genuine difficulty

Trusting the system, then trusting the partner

1. 1

   Step 1: Movement before strength

   Footwork, weight over feet, straight arms. Beginners pull; climbers stand.

   You will know it worked when: You can climb an easy route without your forearms burning.

2. 2

   Step 2: Reading a route

   Seeing the sequence from the ground and recognising rests. This is what makes harder grades possible without more strength.

   You will know it worked when: You can plan a route and have the plan survive contact with it.

3. 3

   Step 3: Belaying and lead climbing

   Formal instruction, assessment and the responsibility that comes with holding somebody's rope.

   You will know it worked when: You are signed off to lead and belay at your wall.

4. 4

   Step 4: The plateau

   Almost everybody stalls where finger strength becomes the limit, and almost everybody responds by training fingers too early. Technique returns more at this stage and injures less.

5. 5

   Step 5: Where it branches

   Bouldering, sport climbing outdoors, trad, or competition. Moving outside is a change of activity rather than a change of venue.

6. 6

   Step 6: When training helps

   After a year or two of climbing volume. Structured finger training before that is the commonest route to a pulley injury.

What the sequence usually looks like:

1. 1

   Step 1: Go and boulder, or take a taster session

   A first visit needs no equipment and no partner. Bouldering or an instructed taster tells you cheaply whether you enjoy being on a wall at all, which is a different question from whether you like the idea.

   You will know it worked when: You know if there is a second visit.

2. 2

   Step 2: Book the wall’s introductory course

   Almost every wall runs one. It covers knots, harnesses, belaying and lowering, and it ends with the assessment that lets you climb without an instructor. It is the single best value purchase in the sport.

   You will know it worked when: You can use the wall independently, with a partner.

3. 3

   Step 3: Find a partner, or use the auto-belays

   Walls run partner-finding boards and social sessions, and most have a handful of auto-belay routes for exactly this problem. Not having a partner is the most common reason people stop, and it is the most solvable.

   You will know it worked when: You can actually get to the wall on a Tuesday.

4. 4

   Step 4: Climb a lot of easy routes

   The temptation is to try hard things immediately. Volume on easy ground is what builds footwork, and footwork is what makes hard things possible later. Nobody has ever regretted the easy mileage.

   You will know it worked when: Movement starts to feel like movement rather than hanging on.

5. 5

   Step 5: Learn to fall, on purpose, with a coach

   Coming later and only when you move toward lead climbing. Controlled practice falls are a taught skill with its own assessment, and the fear of falling — not the difficulty of the routes — is what limits most climbers at this stage.

   You will know it worked when: You can commit to a move you might not finish.

• Shoes — The first purchase and the one that changes the climbing most. A flat, comfortable, moderately stiff pair for a beginner — aggressive downturned shoes solve problems you do not have and hurt considerably. They should be snug, not agonising; the folklore about sizing down several sizes has ruined a lot of feet.
• Harness — Any current harness from a reputable maker is safe. What differs is comfort while hanging, and the number of gear loops, which matters outdoors and not indoors. Adjustable leg loops are worth having if you climb in winter clothing.
• Belay device and locking karabiner — Bought together and matched to each other. Walls often specify which types they permit, and assisted-braking devices are increasingly required rather than merely recommended. Ask before you buy.
• Chalk and a bag — Cheap, and some walls restrict loose chalk to liquid or a ball for air-quality reasons. Worth checking rather than arriving with the wrong kind.
• A rope — Not needed indoors, where the wall supplies them, and a substantial purchase when you start climbing outside. Indoor-specific ropes exist and are a false economy if you have any intention of going outdoors.
• Helmet — Not usual indoors — there is nothing above you to fall off — and essential outdoors. Worth knowing that this is a venue difference rather than a discipline one.

The reason the roped disciplines have a formal gate and bouldering does not is that the failure modes are different in kind. A bouldering mistake usually injures the person who made it. A belaying mistake injures somebody else, from height, and it is generally a procedural slip rather than a lack of strength or nerve — the wrong device threading, an unfinished knot, a hand leaving the rope. Procedures are what defend against that, which is why they are checked out loud and every time rather than assumed.

The partner check is the mechanism, and it is worth understanding as a system rather than as a ritual. Two people check both sets of knots, harnesses and devices before anybody leaves the ground, out loud, every single climb, including the hundredth climb of the year with somebody you trust completely. It exists precisely because familiarity is the risk factor: the mistakes happen to experienced climbers on routine days, not to nervous beginners on their first.

The non-negotiables, which every wall enforces:

• Register and be assessed before belaying — Walls require registration and a demonstration of competence before you belay unsupervised. A different wall may re-assess you and is entitled to.
• Partner check, out loud, every climb — Knot, harness, device, karabiner, rope end. Both people check both people.
• A knot in the far end of the rope — Lowering somebody off the end of the rope is a recurring and entirely preventable accident.
• Inspect the auto-belay before you clip in — They are mechanical devices with service intervals. The BMC publishes instruction on checking them, and walls display the procedure at the route.
• Do not walk under a climber — Dropped equipment and swinging falls both land in the same place.
• Tell your belayer before you do anything unusual — Resting, lowering, taking, falling deliberately. Surprises are what belayers are bad at.

Beginners climb with their arms and are surprised to be exhausted after two routes. Experienced climbers stand on their feet and use their hands mainly for balance, which is why a sixty-year-old can float up something a strong twenty-five-year-old is fighting. Almost all early improvement comes from moving weight onto the feet and keeping it there.

The habits worth building deliberately:

• Look at your feet before you move them — And keep looking until the foot is placed. Most bad footwork is a foot placed by feel while the eyes were already looking up.
• Straight arms whenever you are not moving — Hanging on skeleton rather than muscle. Bent arms are how a forearm pumps out.
• Hips to the wall — Weight over the feet rather than hanging out from the hands. Turning a hip in reaches further and costs less.
• Move continuously through the hard bit — Hesitating in the middle of a hard sequence costs more energy than the sequence does.
• Rest properly, not vaguely — Find the position where you can hang straight-armed and shake out one hand at a time. Learning to spot those is worth a grade on its own.
• Downclimb sometimes — Deliberately climbing back down builds footwork and body awareness faster than anything else, and it is what the BMC recommends acquiring early for the same reason it matters in bouldering.

Routes are set rather than found, by professional setters, and they are stripped and replaced every few weeks. That rotation is a large part of why walls keep people: the wall you climbed in March is a different wall in May. A route is marked by hold colour or by tape, and the rule is that you use only those holds, with everything else — including the wall’s own structural features, unless the setter says otherwise — off limits.

Grading indoors is a genuine muddle and it is worth knowing that before you take it personally. Roped routes in Britain are usually given French sport grades, which run 4, 5, 6a, 6b and upwards with letters and plus signs subdividing them; boulder problems use the Font scale or the American V scale; and some walls overlay a colour-coded circuit of their own on top of either. None of these are standardised between venues, they drift as setters change, and comparing your grade at one wall to your grade at another tells you very little. Use them as a rough sequence within one venue at one point in time and no further.

Competition climbing exists as a structure above all this, with lead, speed and boulder disciplines and a route to national and international level. Almost nobody arrives intending to do it, and the club and youth award schemes are the usual route in. The relevant point for a beginner is that walls run these schemes, so the coaching pathway exists whether or not you ever compete.

• Top-roping — The rope already runs through an anchor above you, so a fall is a few centimetres. The standard introduction, the format almost every centre’s taster session uses, and the one where the belaying is learnt.
• Lead climbing — Clipping the rope into the wall as you go, so a fall is twice the distance to the last clip. A separate assessment at every centre, a genuine step in commitment, and the discipline that most changes how climbing feels.
• Auto-belay — A self-retracting device instead of a partner. The reason it is possible to climb alone at lunchtime, and the format with the sharpest failure mode — the pre-climb check is not a formality, and the safety section says why.
• Bouldering — Ropeless climbing at low height over matting. Its own page here, its own culture, and the discipline most centres are now built around.
• Speed climbing — A standardised route, identical worldwide, raced against a clock. Rare in Britain outside a handful of walls, and included because it is an Olympic discipline that looks nothing like the rest of the sport.
• Competition and youth climbing — Structured coaching and a competition ladder run through the national federation. Where most strong British climbers under twenty come from, and a route into the sport that adults tend not to know exists for their children.
• Training on boards and walls — Systems boards, campus rungs and fingerboards. Training rather than climbing, effective, and disproportionately responsible for the finger injuries described in the safety section.

• Do not offer beta unasked — Working out the sequence is most of the pleasure, and telling somebody the answer takes it. "Do you want beta?" is the correct form.
• Do not hog a route — Working a route repeatedly is normal; occupying it for an hour while others wait is not. Let people through between attempts.
• Keep the landing and the base clear — Bags, shoes and people belong away from the foot of the wall. Somebody is going to come down there faster than expected.
• Belay attentively and visibly — Phones away. It is also how you get asked to climb again by people who noticed.
• Say something if you see something unsafe — The norm at a wall is that anybody may point out an unfinished knot or a mis-threaded device to anybody, and that it is received as help rather than as criticism. It is one of the better things about the culture.
• Chalk sparingly — Great clouds of it annoy everybody and coat the holds. Some walls restrict loose chalk entirely.