A Moon Board is an excellent way to train; it’s hard and effective. For those of you who have never trained on one, or don’t know what a Moon Board is, listen up!
This is an article from moonclimbing.com about the Moon Board, and training on one…
“In the late 1980’s a generation of young climbers headed by Ben Moon and Jerry Moffatt were increasingly perplexed and frustrated by the inadequacy of the training tools at their disposal and whilst climbing almost constantly is great fun it does not, in itself, guarantee that you will maximise your strength potential. From this frustration the idea of building small training walls was born which were, at their birth, merely plywood boards with pieces of wood screwed onto them (bolt on holds being virtually non existent at that time).” -moonclimbing.com
Essentially a Moon Board is a really well designed straight-angled woody for training power. The idea is that no matter where you are, if you encounter a Moon Board, it should be the same as all the rest of them. They are not a complicated apparatus; what makes them so good for training are the sets of holds you use and their orientation.
When you build a Moon Board it has to be at a specific angle, height, and width with designated t-nut placements. You buy specific sets of holds to use on the Moon Board and their orientation is key.
“All the holds have a separate number and use a compass point system to allow the climber to select the correct hold and then annotate it in the right direction. Putting aside the commercial element the concept of the Moon board is interesting for several reasons; via the internet and the forum provided by Moon Climbing climbers around the world can compare notes on grades, discuss the problems, exchange ideas on training etc.“
One of the cool things about the Moon Board is you look online for boulder problems based on which set of holds you have on your wall. Heads up, the grades of the problems feel hard- good for training!
So if you know of someone who has a Moon Board, or if you’re lucky enough that your local gym includes one, try it out! It’s worth it. Read more about it by clicking below, as well as find out how to build one on the moonclimbing.com site….
Moon Climbing: Moon Board
