Climbing Gym

[dustonian]

clif, I've got the Jesus H thread covered with all the pertinent info..we'll let odub handle the easy ones..you know, climbing related crap.

Ha ha, yeah...as if climbing wasn't one-dimensional enough without utterly obsessing over grades, training and "improvement"'!!

[512OW]

if their is anything you don't know, could you post it to the Jesus H thread?

That's my point Clif. I don't know a damn thing about running or yoga... because I don't need to. Why spend all the time trying to do all the other bullshit you've read will help (weights, running, p90x, yoga, cross training, etc...), when climbing is what makes you better at climbing?

[pkananen]

if their is anything you don't know, could you post it to the Jesus H thread?

That's my point Clif. I don't know a damn thing about running or yoga... because I don't need to. Why spend all the time trying to do all the other bullshit you've read will help (weights, running, p90x, yoga, cross training, etc...), when climbing is what makes you better at climbing?

For an overweight man who can't get up 5.8, some of those things certainly will help, if only by taking off the 30 pounds he shouldn't be carrying. For a 5.12 (5.11? 5.10?) climber, those things won't help.

[toad857]

and don't forget about the following training exercises:

getting drunk around a campfire
throwing water balloons at your buddy on the wall
jumping for big dynos that never work
climbing blindfolded for shits

Those will make you a better climber.

[BluegrassBouldering]

I am suprised by the overall support for the bluegrass bouldering gym on this thread. While I love the walls and I am no local, I have yet to run into many locals who do not have some major issues with the place. Maybe I am just talking to the wrong locals but from the ones I talk to it sounds like a gym would win their business if it had...

1. A lot of good holds (like enough that you could strip and set the gym walls in stages without being forced to place the same holds on the same angles, you know variety)
2. Padding that allowed for climbing past the 8 ft or so mark.
3. Seating in a safe, fall free zone.
4. Setting being done fairly often and by quality setters.

Of course there are some other major bonuses such as a fitness gym, a bigger facility with routes. Those are not the major complaints I keep hearing about though.

Bluegrass Bouldering was started on a very small budget and would not be here if it wasn't for the financial and physical help of many locals. It was started and is run almost like a co-op with members having the ability to come when they want and set problems. BB is here because I was tired of waiting for someone else to open a gym in Lexington. Every couple of months was a story of someone else interested in opening a gym in Lexington and then nothing happened. On such a small budget many concessions had to be made and many improvements are constantly being made.

1. With the last purchases from Vision and SoiLL, the gym now has more than enough holds to reset one wall at a time. More holds will be added monthly from now on.
2. New padding from Asana has already been ordered and will be delivered mid march. It will be 12" thick and seamless. BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has renewed their memberships to help offset the cost of the padding!! If anyone else is interested in getting 14 months for the cost of 10, let me know.
3. Seating will be on a custom foam bench that will extend the length of the middle of the room. This will allow plenty of seating and prevent anyone who isn't being spotted from plowing into something hard.
4. From the complaints I have heard about many gyms, we are doing well on this one. The longest any route has been up is 9 weeks. The last route set was exactly 8 weeks after the first. There are a lot of incredibly talented people setting in the gym with most of the best problems in the V3-V7 range. The last route set was admittedly weak in the V1-V3 range and that is being corrected this time around. As mentioned above, route setting will now occur on a rotating basis by wall, not the entire gym.

So, could BB be bigger so you can avoid the creepy people? Of course. Could BB have been started as a bigger gym? No. Bluegrass Bouldering will continue to evolve and will have a bigger, better Version 2.0 that will allow for more people, allow for beginners to be a little more shy, and allow people to do some more cross training without feeling like they are at Gold's Gym. As always, if you have an idea, a complaint, want to invest, or just want to ramble on mindlessly, you are free to email me, message me here, message me on the gym's Faceplant page, or just stop by my office when I am in.

To everyone who put in countless hours of work and paid year memberships in advance with no guarantee of a place to climb, THANK YOU! BB truly is a climber's gym because you helped make it a reality. It can only grow and improve through your continued generosity and love of climbing and the community.
BB

[dustonian]

BB has been great over the first year and a tremendous improvement over the vacuum Lexington was before! Bram and everyone else involved have done a great job in there in getting things up and running... I personally can't wait for the new pads and the possibility of expansion!!

[trog]

A big, new gym would certainly work if all the factors already mentioned (good route/problem setting, long routes, additional health/fitness attractions) and don't forget the auto-belay devices...I would use RQ more if they had them since I can never find a belay partner, especially if I just want to run laps. Maybe it's me?

[kafish2]

Bram,

Sounds like you all are doing some great things for the gym. Glad to hear it! My thinking was that everyone was anti a big-gym in Lexington. I was just throwing ideas that might help a gym succeed based on what feedback I was hearing from the lex crew. Glad to hear those issues are not falling on deaf ears as is often the case with climbing gym management.

To the original posters question, is there a large enough market in Lex to support a bigger gym? Maybe. The biggest barrier would be finding cheap real estate in a centrally located area. You also need to have a gym that offers enough value to get people out of their home walls (and away from the red in less than prime conditions) which would be the real difficult task to do cheaply.

[toad857]

2. New padding from Asana has already been ordered and will be delivered mid march. It will be 12" thick and seamless. BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has renewed their memberships to help offset the cost of the padding!! If anyone else is interested in getting 14 months for the cost of 10, let me know.
3. Seating will be on a custom foam bench that will extend the length of the middle of the room. This will allow plenty of seating and prevent anyone who isn't being spotted from plowing into something hard.

AWESOME! those will be fun... so....

....problems on the ceiling?

[OZ]

He said "...plowing into something hard."