Kilter Board

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Wellsy

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Mar 30, 2021
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Been loving the Kilter Board of late. It's so fun! Chucking myself around and pulling hard. The one at the Hanger is set at 50° and that feels great for a raw power and strength session (@Fiend take note)

Anyone recommend any problems in particular? Anyone got any opinions to share on the Kilter Board generally?
 
Bit of kilter chat here: https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,30287.0.html
 
While my house was being extended and I lost my old board, I spent a few months on the kilter and found my crimp strength went down. There are a few crimps on the board, but it's harder to find problems that have sustained crimping. I can't remember the names of many, but 'Han 1' rings a bell as a crimp problem I had in my circuit.
 
Interesting thoughts Liam. I'll say I tend to have a Kilter Session and a non-Kilter wooden board (classic cellar type) session each week, plus two indoor circuit sessions, and with that plus fingerboarding at the moment my fingers feel v strong, both on the fingerboard and on the wall. I can see what you mean, a lot of the holds are not limiting in terms of finger strength. That said my fingers seem stronger than ever, albeit with other training stimulus

I feel like the Kilter is good for tension, power, body strength and raw pulling in the arms and upper back, maybe less good for fingers, but then those other things are good too.
 
The Beacon one is fun, I look forward to sessions on that. Not tried any others. Good solid thuggery, can’t beat it.
 
Don't like it too much. I find the relevance of climbing only on semi jugs limited. When climbing very jumpy and cutting loose everything feels 2 grades overgraded ut when trying to keep the tension a lot of the medium hard ones already start feeling impossible. And unfortunately i don't find many boulders outside where it's only semi jugs and space to cut loose.
Because of the gamification i struggle to go for form over will te send and tick the boulder.
Ones the boulders become hard and the use the feet for crimps I don't really like the holds either because I don't like crimping with 2 fingers only.
 
I found the Kilter Board OK at 45-50 degrees. Almost every hold is a jug, and at 40 degrees, almost every move even at pretty low grades is a jump cutting loose. At 50 degrees some problems required me to keep at least one foot on. OTOH my better half who is even worse at bouldering then I am and found the Kilter board a fun way to train for steep routes.

At my pretty intermediate level of bouldering I found it all a bit samey and for some reason it was not very tempting to work stuff I could not flash/do within three goes.

The holds are of good quality though, and the lighting system is very convenient. If they replaced about half of the holds to other hold type than a rounded jug it could be a good system.

Re OP, I don't remember any particular problems, but the problems set by Jimmy Webb where among the better. Shocking, I know.
 
Wellsy said:
Been loving the Kilter Board of late. It's so fun! Chucking myself around and pulling hard. The one at the Hanger is set at 50° and that feels great for a raw power and strength session (@Fiend take note)
I've been back on the Depot 30° woodie already, thanks! Clawing my way back to 2022's levels of weakness.
 
They discuss Kilterboard at 21mins in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rth-P5Zh9vU ;D
 
jwi said:
Re OP, I don't remember any particular problems, but the problems set by Jimmy Webb where among the better. Shocking, I know.
At my lowly 7A/+ grade, I though these problems were very typical of the Kilter board, fairly unimaginative grab and jump type problems. Maybe that's what it's all about though?
I do enjoy it, and it seems hard to set anything totally shit (unlike the nearest competitor with pages of dreadful problems on minging holds..) but I feel like I'd be getting much more benefit from struggling up the crimpy 6B+ problems with shit feet on the woody next door!
 
I don't like it at all... I find the holds all too big, not a nice texture for my skin (seems to just slip and never feel solid) and in order to make it hard enough it needs to be super steep which doesn't translate to anything I want to do outside at all... Much prefer the Moonboard (I'll add the caveat that I'm also fucking weak so that probably doesn't help...).

I think it looks cool when strong boys and girls are jumping around on it but feel it's a bit like modern, comp style, gym climbing; not really translatable to real rock (or maybe just not translatable ratty limestone or mountain trad??? - That said the modern comp climbers do seem quite handy on those :-\). It could be totally translatable to Rocklands or Albaracin but I'd not know about that.... :-[
 
Interesting to me that the original thread that was linked was quite positive by and large, and this thread is largely rather negative. I do wonder if Kilter should try and include more crap holds?
 
mark20 said:
(unlike the nearest competitor with pages of dreadful problems on minging holds..)

I'd imagine you mean the Moonboard here. It's worth remembering that for its flaws that it was the original board of this type and was well ahead of Kilter.
 
Anyone tried a tension board? Looks like a good middle ground of some shitty holds and some more kilter esque.
 
I much prefer boards with bad, preferably slippery, holds. Climbing is about desperately clinging to and making moves between small holds. But I like the grades on the Kilter.

Fultonius said:
Anyone tried a tension board? Looks like a good middle ground of some shitty holds and some more kilter esque.

The Tension-board holds look prohibitively expensive in Europe. I looked into getting them and there wasn't even a distributor in EU, but now there is one: https://artrock.at/product/tension-board-holds-komplett-set-kopie/

I also detest setting problems on symmetric boards and if I never have to climb on a symmetric board again it is not too soon.
 
jwi said:
I much prefer boards with bad, preferably slippery, holds. Climbing is about desperately clinging to and making moves between small.

I think you've just described the type of board that translates to climbing well (in the UK these would typically be Beastmaker boards). I don't find them particularly fun to climb on though, and the lower angled, domed foothold BUK board always made me fear for my elbows/fingers.
 
jwi said:
I also detest setting problems on symmetric boards and if I never have to climb on a symmetric board again it is not too soon.

This is interesting to me because I love symmetric boards. Both for setting and training on. Nothing highlights weaknesses like flashing one side and struggling with its mirror.
 
mark20 said:
I do enjoy it, and it seems hard to set anything totally shit (unlike the nearest competitor with pages of dreadful problems on minging holds..) but I feel like I'd be getting much more benefit from struggling up the crimpy 6B+ problems with shit feet on the woody next door!

I’ve actually grown to love the moonboard hold selection, I always used to think they would be uncomfortable and skin wrecking, but haven’t found this with a lot of use now. I think the benefit over woodies with fixed feet is being able to climb problems with big moves on small handholds and big feet, and also having to generate tension with your feet off to the side etc., rather than just stepping up onto the next row of small feet.
 
I find periods of climbing on screw on feet boards just lead to me climbing awfully compared to feet follow boards. I get stronger but terrible at moving through awkward positions which is what most hard boulders feel like to me (maybe I'm avoiding the particularly ratty boulders?) .

The kilter board somehow avoids these awkward position moves despite being feet follow, but I feel the kilter board unsurprisingly is great training for places which involve lots of distance moves of bigger holds but less good at creating awkward movement like lets say a moonboard. Places like magic woods for example the KB is surely a great tool for (though I'm sure there are some v crimpy exceptions to this) as generally the holds are pretty good but a bit sloped and the feet are massive.

The old set on boulder UK 55 was my favourite at a climbing wall, but personally I think over 40 (maybe 45) too steep for me as a board really as I can only drag everything I'm going to be able to hold at that angle and as a result much preferred my old home setup where I felt I could utilise alot more hold and grip type variety (but this is just I'm too weak for such a steep angle I guess!)
 


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