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Wooden dome footholds (Read 5660 times)

DWS

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Wooden dome footholds
December 28, 2018, 08:22:11 pm
Anybody have any experience training on wooden dome footholds on a training board over 40°? Like these; https://www.beastmaker.co.uk/collections/chrome-domes/products/dome-footholds

After have worn out another pair of nice (and all too expensive) downturned shoes after seemingly no time, I've realised that the culprit is the resin foot jibs on my woody.  Its really incredible how a small tear in the rubbber can make a problem involving tiny foot jibs so much harder.  I've heard that wooden dome footholds are good to train on by developing core tension and don't require expensive downturned aggressive shoes due the the uniform surface and slick texture of the wood. 

I've climbed around 7B+ at the locals walls' training board.  My home board is set at 40°, so I think that at the start my feet will cut alot until I learn how to propely activate my core on the wooden dome footholds. 

Finally, any shoe recommendations for training on these footholds? soft vs stiff?  And could a flat pair of beginner/ intermediate shoes do the job?  I wonder would a cheap second hand pair off ebay be alright?  I really can't justify buying another pair of expensive performance shoes so soon again. 

Cheers.

Doylo

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#1 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 28, 2018, 08:36:49 pm
I’ve got some similar on mine but it’s a lot steeper. Pretty much have to use the better holds and most moves involve leaping/ cutting loose. Feels more strenuous. Can you not keep the resin and add some domes so you’ve got the best of both worlds and more variety? The domes can get frustrating as your feet skid off a lot more even if you place them perfectly. Soft shoes best for them.

highrepute

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#2 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 28, 2018, 08:59:54 pm
There's some discussion of those wooden dome footholds here. I've got them on my 40 and really rate them but you'd want to keep the jibs for all the reasons doylo says.

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#3 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 28, 2018, 09:21:22 pm
The Moonboard screw on set, are reasonably gentle on shoes; whilst quite positive on a 40*.
I make my own domes from saw post toppers. Soft wood, but I have some in use on a Commercial board, that are five years old and still going.

neilslim

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#4 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 28, 2018, 09:40:02 pm
If you own a drill and countersink you could try something like these? Miles cheaper than beatmaker

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F401356077092

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#5 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 29, 2018, 10:12:23 pm
I use the wooden domes but on a 15 degree board so much less tension is required. They're still dead slippy and pop without warning if you relax slightly! I tried wooden discs (10mm thick) initially but they trashed my shoes, swapped to 30mm domes, (a fair bit smaller than the 50mm BM ones) they're very shoe friendly:
https://www.hardwoodholds.co.uk/store/c7/Footholds.html

DWS

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#6 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 30, 2018, 01:24:45 pm
If you own a drill and countersink you could try something like these? Miles cheaper than beatmaker

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F401356077092

Good find on the ebay wooden domes.  Thanks.  I do have a drill and countersunk bit so could put up a fair few on my board, certainly cheaper than BM domes.

Yeh I've seen the 30mm domes that HWH do, 50mm domes are hard enough so I'd imagine the 30mm ones would be fierce on a board of 40degrees or more.  Probably cut loose on every move. Often find it easier to jump to the next hold rather than try and keep the foot on. Makes the board seem like a hybrid steepboard/ campus board.

UnkArl

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#7 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 30, 2018, 06:13:10 pm
I was extremely disappointed with the quality/consistency of the Beastmaker footholds. The “center” holes are all over the place, I messaged them about it but never got a response... Definitely go with those “blanks” and drill your own.

Danny

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#8 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 30, 2018, 11:12:56 pm
Useful thread for me. I'm building a small systems board at the mo and just ordered a bunch of these BM domes. I had considered the ebay craft domes and drill option, but it looked as if the BMs were slightly more than hemispheric in size, and I reckoned this might be critical in getting at least some traction from them. (Incidentally, the HWH ones look like perfect hemispheres, so I avoided.) From reading this thread it looks like my guesstimates might be wrong. I'll find out soon enough!

On a related point, the BM aluminium ones look well nice, but £28 for 4 was too much for my wallet. Has anyone climbed on these?

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#9 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 30, 2018, 11:46:50 pm
On a related point, the BM aluminium ones look well nice, but £28 for 4 was too much for my wallet. Has anyone climbed on these?

They have a couple of them on the Motherboard (literally just two, I think?), I haven't climbed much on the board but in my experience they are way more grippy than the wooden domes - switching to them from the wooden holds feels like cheating

Moo

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#10 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 31, 2018, 09:25:10 am
On a related point, the BM aluminium ones look well nice, but £28 for 4 was too much for my wallet. Has anyone climbed on these?

They have a couple of them on the Motherboard (literally just two, I think?), I haven't climbed much on the board but in my experience they are way more grippy than the wooden domes - switching to them from the wooden holds feels like cheating

I think that's the point.

Doylo

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#11 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 31, 2018, 09:35:13 am
Climbing on just slippy domes all the time would do my tits in even if they are good for you. Good to have a mixture. I’d probably try a few aluminium ones if I had the space.

gme

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#12 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 31, 2018, 09:58:26 am
I am not a fan of domes even if they are supposedly good for training.
Using them just seems to take all the enjoyment out of a board session with feet popping every move. The motherboard just feels like some campus/ finger boarding hybrid rather than bouldering to me.

r-man

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#13 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 31, 2018, 03:54:10 pm
I like the domes. They train a certain style, as others have mentioned. I find that style great fun - paste a foot, launch and grab, paste another foot. Good for coordination, fluidity and contact strength. And probably also core to some extent - holding the swing and bringing feet back on for each move.

Perhaps fighting the temptation to jump around might make for another sort of training (and much harder/more frustrating to master), but most people jump and snatch as its the easiest solution. I use comfy shoes (ie. slightly too big and not at all down-turned), and they are fine for this sort of thing.

You'd probably want to mix it up with other stuff though. If the footholds are tearing your shoes, how about wooden edges? At my local wall they added some of these to the 45 which already had the domes. Looks like they've just chopped the very top off some domes, to leave a small edge. It works well.


Danny

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#14 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 31, 2018, 08:28:53 pm
Useful comments. I might splash out on some of those Al ones then.

moose

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#15 Re: Wooden dome footholds
December 31, 2018, 09:35:22 pm
If the footholds are tearing your shoes, how about wooden edges? At my local wall they added some of these to the 45 which already had the domes. Looks like they've just chopped the very top off some domes, to leave a small edge. It works well.

Sound a bit like these Crusher footholds:

http://crusherholds.co.uk/crusher-wood-footholds

I use the "large" size as the "small" foothold option on my 40deg board; although, I am a weakling, so you could want the small / medium variants.  The texture is slippery and I find that the curve makes them hard to use from the side - which has encouraged me to leave my comfort zone and climb more front-on.  The website says they are out of stock at the moment but hopefully that is temporary (maybe try dropping an email / PM to Probes).

r-man

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#16 Re: Wooden dome footholds
January 12, 2019, 12:07:48 am
Those look good, but I meant something different by "the top" of a dome. Took a pic the other day:



The dome is the same size as the others, so this edge isn't big. But it's good enough to toe down on and give problems of a very different style.

Danny

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#17 Re: Wooden dome footholds
January 12, 2019, 11:02:27 pm
Just threw the BM domes and chrome domes on my newly constructed mini systems board. Verdict: domes are brutal, chrome domes are pretty much the perfect combo of sticky and core-y for 50 degrees. I think they're probably well worth the money on a small board where you don't need many. To be fair, because I don't have much space I'm splashing out on nice holds all round. I've paired domes and chrome domes up to give me the option of simply bumping the difficulty up and down in the same style.

sdm

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#18 Re: Wooden dome footholds
January 14, 2019, 11:27:05 pm
If you own a drill and countersink you could try something like these? Miles cheaper than beatmaker

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F401356077092

Another option is to get them from here:
https://wooden-balls.co.uk/index.php/cPath/241

Lots of sizes available. Observant people may recognise the 50mm ones... You can get other shapes too including cones, rectangular blocks and triangular wedges that may be worth considering. They are much cheaper as long as you make a big order. Shipping is a bit pricey on small orders. I suspect he might be open to custom orders if there are other shapes people are interested but I didn't try.

I put some on my 42° board yesterday to go with the tiny jibs and a handful of moon feet that I had already. I'm finding them my very hard so far, my warm ups have become projects. If I had my time again, I would consider paying the extra to buy them with screw holes. Drilling all those holes with a normal drill is slower and more tiring than I anticipated.

 

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