How I Climbed V10 on the Boards at Age 53

If you had told me as I pulled onto a MoonBoard for the first time at age 47 that six years later, I’d do my first double-digit problem on a board, I’d have smacked you upside the head with a stick brush.

That’s because, during that first session, on the 2017 MoonBoard at the Boulder Rock Club, I could barely do the easiest problems: the V3 benchmarks. With an arrogance rooted in outdoor bouldering and commercial gym sets—but zero boarding!—I was certain that V3 would feel “easy.” The savage wall quickly stomped that illusion out of me.

The board felt impossibly steep. The holds—even the jugs—seemed miles apart. And my feet kept skittering off, leaving me swinging out without the tension needed to get my feet back on before I Superman’ed onto the mats. There was an experienced boarder up there, watching my gong show with quiet amusement. I asked him if MoonBoarding got any easier. “Yeah, you just need to stick with it,” he said, before he floated up the wall. And so, I did.

For the past six years, I’ve been grinding away on the boards, mainly to hold on to—and even gain—power into my fifties for cruxy sport projects. But I also board because I’ve grown to love it and to see it as the best training modality, be it for bouldering or routes. Boarding makes you beast-strong, and being a beast gets you up shit. 

Along the way, I’ve also moved up through the grades. I chalk up my progression to both stubbornness and diligent training. This winter, at age 53, I did my first V10 on a board: Knights of Cydonia @45 degrees on the Tension Board 2. In the weeks that followed, I ticked off two V10s on the Kilter Board (Hard proj 4 @45 degrees and Small hands or big balls @40 degrees), proving, I suppose, that this wasn’t just a hat trick.

Watch the author send two V10s, filmed at The Campus gym in Boulder

Anyway, here are the 10 boarding tips, tricks, and learnings* that helped me on my journey from V3 to V10, and that can help you, too, at any level on the boards.

1. Brush thy board

Most board holds are flat or incut, meaning they accumulate more chalk, boot rubber, and dead skin in the back—where they meet the wall—than your average, often-rounded gym hold. Therefore, they need to be brushed more thoroughly, so get a big, soft-bristled brush like Black Diamond’s Medium Bouldering Brush.

Brushing is also a great way to learn the grid. I’ll brush the board—including foot jibs—before I start the session, and clean the holds I’m using and maybe others nearby between burns.

Bonus tip: If your wall adjusts, drop it down to 60 degrees so you can dust off the often-neglected top half, in particular those key finishing holds. If your wall is at a fixed angle, grab a chair or stepladder.

2. Preview moves instead of always blindly trying to flash

While trying to flash a new problem is a great test of skill, it can also drain power and burn through skin. If a problem is near my limit grade-wise and has moves that look reachy, taxing, or complex, I’ll sometimes pull on in the “problem spots.” By previewing potential cruxes, I can see if the moves go or if I’m better off just picking another problem.

3. Work up through the grades (but grades aren’t everything!)

Start with the benchmarks/classics/most-repeated problems roughly four or five V-grades beneath your limit as you learn a new board. This helps you grasp the holds, movement patterns, and rating scale, letting your fingers, shoulders, and back muscles adjust to that board’s specific demands, while minimizing the risk of injury.

By the same token, don’t get stuck doing “X number of problems at Y grade” before you progress to the next grade. I can get my ass kicked on a Ravioli Biceps V4 MoonBoard benchie, for instance, then go on to flash another setter’s V8 in the same session. Many problems are morpho—height, finger-size, and limb-length dependent. So you may find a higher-graded problem more agreeable than an “easier” one. Many problems are also super sandbagged, so take any grade with a grain of salt.

4. Don’t attempt to send a problem more than five times per session, especially if it’s fingery

Flinging yourself at the same problem over and over is a recipe for injury, especially if the holds are small, pockety, or demand full crimping. Working out beta is one thing, and can be done relatively safely (see tips #6 and #7). But giving full-effort ground rips is best limited to no more than five goes per session, to avoid an overuse injury. Plus, you just get more powered-down with each burn. As another option, on mirrored walls like Grasshopper, TB2, Decoy Board, and the 2017 MoonBoard’s wood holds, you might try switching to the other side if the first one isn’t happening.

5. Crowdsource the beta

Boarding with friends—ideally close to you in height and ability—is a great way to figure out beta. Other sources I’ll turn to are Instagram videos, usually linkable from within the app, and logbook comments. For instance, just today, as I write this, someone commented on a KilterBoard V6: “Shorties, ignore the pinch out left and jump to the next hold.” Standing at a wee 5’6”, I 100 percent did this on my next burn, after having gotten to the pinch only to be too starfished out to continue.

6. On an adjustable-angle wall, do the problem at easier angles first

Pretty much as it sounds—try the easier, lower-angle versions to master a problem’s holds and imprint muscle memory. Then slowly crank the angle up. (The Tension, Kilter, Woods, Grasshopper, and Decoy boards list their problem in five-degree increments.) You might even do this over multiple sessions, on different days, to let your body acclimate and to micro-refine the beta.

7. While working beta, use “helper” holds and open feet to learn the body positions

It can be tempting to be a purist and say, “If I can’t do this problem exactly as it was set, then I have no business on it.” But this rigorous mindset will only hold you back. Hell, even the world’s best boulderers use tactics like this, including having spotters push them into the wall to take weight off.

So, if you’re not quite sticking a move, “break” the rules: Use open feet or a more positive foothold. Use a better, more in-cut hold next to the indicated grip. On a long or dynamic move, go for a target hold one or two rows down. And with challenging one-armed lockoffs or moves—like Rose moves and crossovers—that isolate you on a single grip, add an intermediate en route to the next hold. Once you have the movement down, eliminate the “helpers.”

8. Seek out the softies

No matter how hard a problem feels to you, there will always be some Red Bull’ed up board-bro who flashes it and comments “soft” or “trash” and gives it the app’s easiest possible rating. Ignore all that! Instead, what I mean is that, when you’re breaking into a new grade, seek out the softest problems within that grade range, since there really is a wide gap between the easiest and the hardest problems. This typically means filtering for “most repeats” or looking at the problem’s repeat tally on the master list—the farther down the list, the more difficult and/or bizarre a bloc will usually be. Trust me!

9. Look for problems that suit you

Because I’m short and not especially jumpy, I gravitate toward problems that rely on body tension to control small holds close together, though on a good day I will push myself to get springy. This bucks the boarding trend of footless acrobatics and big, spectacular, jumpy moves, but I don’t much care because my goal is outdoor climbing anyway. So, when shopping for board projects, pick ones that suit your morphology and how you like to climb first, because you will—as a result of actually enjoying the problem—be more motivated  to put the work in. Then, as you solidify your efforts at a new grade, begin trying blocs in your anti-style.

10. Do core work at least 3x per week

It doesn’t really matter what you do, IMO, as long as you do something to strengthen your core—after your boarding or climbing session. I’ll either follow ~10-minute YouTube core videos or, using my nine-pound Gravity Ball, do three rounds of crunches, sit-ups, Russian twists, and leg lifts. The goal is to develop a strong core that helps you drive down through your toes and keep your hips in, as well as, when jumping, to bring your feet back into the wall precisely and quickly.

*11. Bonus tip—reuse and recycle holds!

A final hack I’ve learned to use both on the boards and off is to reuse/recycle holds. For example, you might make a big jump off two crimps to a good hold up and left. Then, as you bring your feet back in, you move your right hand to the left crimp, closer to your body. Or on a diagonalling problem, you might take a big pinch with the right hand to get up to another set of holds, then return to the pinch with your left as part of the next sequence. Just today, I did a Kilter Board problem on which I used the same hold as a right-hand pinch that I then rolled into a gaston, before coming to it later as a left-hand pinch.