Are you thinking about trying bouldering? Great! It’s such a good sport with a great mix of physical exercise and mental concentration. And it’s surprisingly easy to get started! So, what should you expect your first time bouldering?
Induction/beginner session
The first step is to book yourself onto a beginner or induction session at your local climbing centre. You *can* just turn up and start climbing if you want to, but I recommend an induction to learn the basics.
You should aim to arrive at the centre 10-15 mins early to get changed, grab a locker, rent some climbing shoes, and meet your instructor.
Induction sessions normally cost around £20 including shoe hire. Just google ‘bouldering near me‘.
Bouldering shoes
If it’s your first time bouldering you probably haven’t yet invested in your own climbing shoes. If you have, take them with you. But if not, you’ll need to rent some from the climbing centre.
Climbing shoes are specially designed to help you to climb but, particularly the rental shoes, aren’t necessarily designed for comfort.
Your Bouldering shoes will be quite pointy around the toes. This is to help you to safely stand on small holds. You should also expect them to fit quite tightly – your toes could feel quite curled. This is so that you can feel the holds through the shoe. Professional climbers sometimes even wear their shoes a few sizes to small!
What to wear for your first time bouldering
I recommend wearing gym-wear, because you’ll want to be able to move as freely as possible. There’s some other things to consider too, so I’ve written a separate post about what to wear your first time bouldering.
What you’ll learn your first time bouldering
You’ll start off your first time bouldering by traversing (climbing along, not up) a low wall. This will give you a chance to get used to the holds whilst you’re only about 1ft off the ground.
You’ll be asked to climb along the wall concentrating on different things, like placing your feet silently on the holds, and making sure your feet are stable before you move your hands.
You might be asked to place small objects on some of the foot holds and then climb using those holds, but not knocking the objects off the wall. Or you may try climbing whilst holding a tennis ball in each hand. Sounds tricky? Yes… but once you’ve climbed with tennis balls in your hands, climbing without seems a whole lot easier!
These exercises are all designed to help you learn the basic techniques and to feel confident, so that when you try climbing higher it won’t feel like such a big deal.
Once you’ve mastered climbing along the low wall, you’ll try climbing up some easy routes. One your first easy climbs you’ll learn how to climb down or jump down safely.
You’ll also learn how the bouldering routes work. Each centre is different, so the instructor will tell you which colour holds are easy routes and which are harder. They’ll also explain how to start and finish a climb – starting with your hands on the holds marked with tags and ending with both hands on the highest hold.
What is the next step?
Most bouldering centres offer beginner and improver courses or sessions in which you can improve your skills with an instructor on hand. Sometimes you will need to book these and sometimes they are more like a drop-in social session, which can also be a great way to meet new people!
In these sessions you’ll learn new techniques, how to conserve your energy, and how to climb more difficult routes such as overhangs.
You can also choose to climb by yourself any time your centre is open to practice what you learn. Be warned though, bouldering can be addictive!