The Kilter Board

Kilter Boards have been around for a few years now and have gained popularity all over the world. The Kilter Board Instagram account has over 30,000 followers and reposts content from America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The reason it is so popular is easy to see, as it not only has around 500 holds that you can choose to climb on, but they all light up, and the wall changes angle. So, essentially, what happens is you look at the holds and then make a climb up. You plot your climb into the Kilter app using green lights to mark starting holds, white lights to mark the footholds, blue lights to mark your handholds, and purple lights to mark your finishing holds. You give the climb a name and a grade and input the wall angle you climbed it at. Once created, this climb then ends up on the app so anyone anywhere in the world can jump on and try it. As we speak, there are currently 110,959 climbs to try, so if making climbs up isn’t your bag, then you’ve got access to a lifetime’s supply of blocs to try anyway.

As stated earlier, the wall changes angle from 30 degrees overhanging to 70 degrees overhanging, and climbs feel very different at different steepnesses. Generally, it does increase in difficulty, but it doesn’t always get harder as it gets steeper, which was a bit of a surprise to me as well. The beauty of the moving wall is that you can try a climb at 30 degrees and then try it at 35 and then at 40, etc., and you can physically see yourself getting stronger and stronger as you succeed at steeper and steeper angles.

Even though popularity is high in the rest of the world, access to a Kilter Board is limited in the UK, with only a handful of the adjustable ones existing. Fortunately, we have one at City Bloc, though, so next time you’re in, have a little play on it. Check out Bomber’s video of our Kilter Board here.