Beginner’s Guide to the Moon Board

The MoonBoard, a tool within commercial gyms that you either love or hate. Boards are a hot topic right now within climbing training. If you follow any bit of climbing within social media then you are guaranteed to come across someone yarding up the powerful board. Personally, I HAD a disgust towards the board and all it offered but, over the past several months I have warmed up to the unique style. Today, I’ll be breaking down the lore surrounding the Moon Board and giving some actionable tips for beginners! I’m not a V8 bone crusher on the board so I’ll share the tips and tricks that I have found for someone looking to enter the realm of moon boarding.

Way of the Galaxy – Moon Board Rules

To start things off, I’ll quickly go over the board for someone who has never seen or used the training tool. The Moon Board is a steep 40 degree overhanging wall that has various configurations of holds sprinkled throughout the board. A kicker plate is at the bottom of the board and is systematically littered with slopey footholds. Typically at commercial gyms, the board will be lit up with LED lights that illuminate the problem. Thousands of boulder problems from V3/V4 – VHARD can all be found on the Moon Board App. A user just needs to enter in the boards characteristics (hold type and year), connect to bluetooth, and let it rip!

The Moon Board has rules. I’m a fan of using the tool as you see fit for your session but I feel obligated to list the basic rules for the die hard Moon Boarders out there. These can be found on the Moon Board website but are summarized below:

• All problems start two handed.
• All kickboard footholds are allowed
• Matching and heel hooking is fair game
• You are allowed to use any part of the illuminated hold
• Problems end at the designated finish holds while maintaining control for 2 seconds.
• Feet are tracking – feet follow your hands

Shoot for the Moon – How to Use It

First off, the board is HARD! I just want to make that abundantly clear for someone getting on the board for the first time with big expectations. It’s a great tool for training powerful overhung crimpy climbing where you have to toe down, focus on hip turnout, lock off, and latch the next hold. Big dynamic movements or long tenuous reaches on overhanging terrain is the name of the game here. If this is your anti-style, put your ego aside and embrace the struggle that is learning the minutia of something new.

The scope of benefits of the board is limited but I’ll break that down within the next section. For now, here are my top 10 quick tips for the board:

1. Warm Up – Movement on the board can be dynamic and has an affinity towards latching tweaky holds. Remember, the #1 goal of training is to not get injured. Don’t let the Moon Board ruin your season.
2. Identify the targeted training stimulus prior to the session – What’s your goal for climbing on the Moon Board? Strength, power, or capacity session? This stimulus will depend on your strength/skill levels – consult a coach for proper programming.
3. Tension, Tension, Tension – Focus on trying to rip the footholds off with your feet. This is a great mental cue to create body tension within the posterior chain as you paddle your hands up the board.
4. Choose the appropriate difficulty for your session – The Moon Board will most likely be significantly harder than that V6 set by your local gym. Ego is not welcome at this session.
5. Contact Strength – The ability to grasp a hold with maximum force (strength) upon contact with the hold. The time required for athletes to achieve this maximum force upon contact can vary. The Moon Board is a great tool for developing contact strength on overhanging crimps (see a theme here?)
6. When to latch and when not to latch – To avoid injury, if you’re feeling fatigued at the end of the session, best to wrap it up rather than injury a pulley while trying to reel in that next crimp. If feeling fatigued or powered down, you’ve left the targeted energy system that your training.
7. Record video of yourself – A critical aspect of deliberate practice that not enough climbers utilize. The video can provide the valuable feedback needed for reflection and improvement upon movement, technique, etc.
8. Benchmark Climbing – The Moon Board can be a great tool to use for checking in with your levels of fitness throughout the months or years of training. Since holds are never reset, keep 4 – 5 benchmarks for yourself that you revisit to gauge whether your training is paying off or needs improvement.
9. Precision Practice – Hand holds on the board are smaller in nature, interestingly shaped, and may require piano matches. Welcome to the world of precision practice. A piano match isn’t going to work if you latch the center of that pinch with your first hand.
10. Try Hard – Counter to what most people believe, trying hard is a skill we cultivate. The ability to grit your teeth and breakthrough the limiting beliefs is a powerful one. Professional athletes can turn the “try hard” on/off on command, this is a large reason for what separates them from the average mortal.

Put simply, power is what defines most cruxes within climbing. If your project/goals involves dynamic movement or steep climbing on crimps then the Moon Board is your ticket. As a personal example, I’ve found immense benefit from training on the board when sport climbing on hard cruxes that I can’t finesse or trick my way through.

Fallen Star – Limitations of the Moon Board

As within any training, specificity is key. To reiterate, the Moon Board specializes in powerful climbing on crimpy holds in overhanging terrain. Lock-offs and dynamic movements are king in the domain of the Moon Board.

This is not the swiss army knife of climbing training tools. The nature of the board lends itself to 4 – 6 piss hard moves on a low variety of holds. Once you’ve done a dozen or so problems on the Moon Board, you’ve encountered the entire quiver of movement techniques required to send. This training tool doesn’t address refining skill-based movements on a variety of terrain. Here are a couple of considerations before adding the board into your sessions:

1. Goals around vertical and/or slab climbing? Better off addressing subtleties associated with these climbing styles through different means.
2. Hold types are lacking – Missing underclings, slopers, etc. For example, body positioning while using slopers or gaining practice on how to work feet up to better utilize underclings are lost on the board.
3. Technical footwork – The board lacks small feet to work on precision within foot placements and playing around with weight distribution using a variety of foot jib sizes.
4. Power training may be limited – pending your strength levels, training power on the Moon Board may be limited by hold size. For most beginners, this will be you. If looking to develop power, instead look for alternative methods for developing global/specific power (Kettlebell swings, box jumps, assisted campus, etc)
5. Lack of variety within movement – This is a double edge sword in my opinion. If this is your anti-style, then it’s a benefit of the board because you can’t “cheat” your way through the movement. If this is in your wheelhouse, then a variety of movement is lacking. To increase difficulty on the board, the moves will be further apart, to smaller holds, higher feet, etc. You get the idea.
6. Access to beta videos– Although the movement on the board is relatively straightforward, access to the beta videos within the app doesn’t allow for that hard fought learning struggle associated with deliberate practice.
7. Shear volume of problems – There are an insane amount of problems on the Moon Board app. Once again, a double edge sword. One could spend a lifetime trying to climb out the board but volume can be tempting. A trap I’ve fallen prey to is skipping problems that are particularly hard for myself at the grade and moving onto another problem that better suits my style.

Lessons Learned

Personally, I’ve identified the style associated with the Moon Board as a major weakness or low-hanging fruit within my climbing. Over the past several months, I’ve aimed to learn the secrets of the MoonBoard and unlock the subtilties within this style of climbing. It’s powerful climbing that is a great tool for any sport climber or boulderer who gravitates to banging out pitches/problems left and right within their training session. As previously mentioned, this board is try-hard tool. It takes practice to be able to grit the teeth, activate the kinetic chain of tension, and pull the move. Practicing this try hard, I’ve definitely felt myself press harder and further than I would have originally gone on limit level sport climbs.

As with anything in life, it’s all about balance. I hope you find a nugget or two of wisdom within this post to help aid your next or first session on the board! After all, trying hard and having fun is really all that matters. Till next time.

Much Love,

Kyle