Pop Quiz: How many pad placement and spotting errors can you count, towards the end of this video?

We have talked about the importance of crash pads, pad positioning, and pad leveling. Now let’s take a deeper look at proper pad placement and spotting during a climb.

Placement - Once the gro...

Let us take a closer look at leveling pads while bouldering.

We touched on this in a previous video, but we wish to reiterate how important it is to make sure there are never gaps between pads. Falling and landing between pads leads to serious injury.

Always be sure to line pads alongside o...

Crash Pads are an important tool, and useful in risk assessment.

A few factors to consider when using crash pads:

1. Which landing areas need padding?

2. Will the pad’s location disturb plants or animals around the boulder?

3. Is one crash pad enough protection, or will you need to “s...

Bouldering, while not as high in the air as other types of climbing, is no less dangerous.

Most common outdoor climbing injuries stem from boulder falls. Give extra consideration to your surroundings when bouldering.

Below are a few things to consider when assessing the risks of each boulde...

Whether climbing outdoors or indoors, brushing excessive chalk off the holds is typically a smart idea. The more chalk on a hold, the less friction you have with the stone or the plastic.

Below are a few things to consider when brushing holds:

1. Plastic bristles can wear down the natur...

A “high ball” refers to boulder problems generally above 15 or 16 feet, or with a top-out approximately 5 meters high (or higher). Another way to think of “high balls”, is an un-roped climb that is 3x your height, or taller.

Below are a few things to consider when climbing high balls:

1....

Like in most sports, warming up is crucial to bouldering success and injury prevention. Below are a few things to consider when warming up for bouldering:

1. Be sure to spend a good 10 minutes stretching your tendons and muscles in your legs, back, and forearms. For more on this, see our video...

Some climbers believe that sanding your fingers is important when climbing sharp or rough rock surfaces (i.e. granite, sandstone), where your fingers might develop burrs from climbing.

Tip: Use a file, to sand off the burrs until the skin is smooth again. This helps increase positive traction ...

In this video we review taping to compensate for climbing injury, or to prevent climbing injuries.

First, it’s important to consider forearm anatomy. The tendons that flex our fingers start from the tips of our fingers and extend all the way to the inside of our elbow. They are held down along...

Boulder problems are relatively short, but they are intense, with powerful moves. They require a lot of energy per attempt.

Resting between attempts when bouldering is important, in order to prevent overuse injury. If you keep firing to the same crimp, and almost hitting the move, your tendons...

This video features CTT athlete Steph Gibson bouldering an ultra classic V3 route called The Gunsmoke Traverse in California’s Joshua Tree National Park. See if you can spot the techniques covered in our “Climbing Movement” videos which helps Steph flow through this long and classic traverse.

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