Layne Staley might have said it best: “I tried to love you, thought I could. I tried to own you, thought I would.”

If you think that you are going to step up to the MoonBoard and start sending right away, I only pray you don’t start on the Benchmarks list. Seriously, there are some V7/8 Southeastern sandbaggers in my gym that haven’t finished the V4 Benchmarks. But, if you want to get strong at crimps, pinches, and pockets, then this is the systems board/spray wall for you.

History

We did our reviews on the lack of density as most gyms head down the monochromatic setting road and how hard it can be to difficult rehearse hard moves and improve. And we have discussed the merits of hold/route density on a spray wall when it comes to maximizing value in a limited space. Now we are moving to realm of pre-order systems boards.

When it comes to hard training, Ben Moon and the School Room in Sheffield, United Kingdom had the solution, making the MoonBoard the O.G. systems board. In a narrow little warehouse with only 40 and 50 degree walls, Ben put up the worst holds he could find on a steep back corner wall and left it untouched by the setters so he could practice moves of the “hard-hard” variety. As his contemporaries made some visits they added their own hard, low percentage moves as a way to challenge each other and soon, a log started being kept as the problem count grew. Todd Skinner had the “Skinner Box.” John Bachar had his Bachar Ladder. Wolfgang Gullich invented campus boards and fingerboards. And now Ben Moon had his Moonboard, and soon, everyone wanted a piece.

Modern Day

In 2005 the MoonBoard was made available for purchase with instructions on how to layout the holds and a binder of benchmark problems. Local gyms would set it up in some training corner and the crushers of the day would add their own problems to it. Some gyms took notice and set up their own systems board areas, but little could compare to the standardized board. It lasted this was for another ten years with people sharing their problems through internet forums and videos before the next innovation; the app.

With the release of the 2016 version of the MoonBoard so came the app and a way to catalog all of the problems. The hold quality got better and the orientations were tweaked, but largely it remained the same board, but now with a massive community following and contributing to the problem count. The 2016 set, for all of its sandbaggery, remains the most popular and highest rated version amoung climbers today.

The Masters 2017 set saw another innovation, the LED display to follow the trend by Kilter, and yes, the 2016 could be retro-fitted with LEDs as well. This allowed you to light up the holds from the app as if it were the gaffer’s tape of yester-year. Some people say it takes away from the fun challenge of having to remember the holds while others agree that it was necessary to both stay competitive the systems board business and to help lower the barrier to entry. This particular set also saw brand new holds, including actual jugs, and drop to V3 as the lowest grade, yet the orientation of the holds might make it the most challenging as most moves feel off balance or awkward. But then again, when does the actual rock ever cooperate?

Most recently was the introduction of the Masters 2019 set and it has widely been applauded as the most comfortable in both hold quality and orientation, especially with a large segment being finely milled wood holds following the popularity and longevity of Tension’s board. Although still very young, especially lacking major gym distribution by virtue of being introduced right before the Covid pandemic (it has less total problems than all of the V4’s on the 2016 set), this version might soon be the best one yet.

Pros:

1. It Is Hard! – If you want to climb hard, then you need to try hard, and if truly gets no harder than the sandbagged MoonBoard. Limit bouldering, where you work one or two moves at the extreme end of your possibility, is often mentioned as the ideal training mode when it comes to breaking through a plateau, and the MoonBoard has it, both because of its 40 degree overhang and hard as nails holds and orientations. Failure is part of the game of low percentage moves, but it will get you strong and ready for the hard stuff this season.
2. Universality – If you are on the road and still looking to train, then you can be assured that any gym with a MoonBoard is ready to keep you at your peak. There have been some complaints that there is a little bit of quality control, particularly with respect to the depth of holds from different years (example – a 2016 board purchased in 2016 seems to have shallower holds than ones f the same family purchased years later). But it still means that you can climb something that a person set from halfway around the world and share in the experience.
3. The Community – Maybe because they were first or because they are the biggest, but the online community surrounding MoonBoard training, setting, and ascents is huge. Entire forums and YouTube channels are dedicated to beta for the most popular problems, especially the Benchmarks. There is no shortage of psych from any corner of the world, whether in a basement or luxury gym.
4. Benchmarks – While benchmarks themselves are not a new thought category, see our editorial on that HERE, the idea to include them in the app along with the ability to suggest whether or not a problem should be a benchmark is pretty revolutionary. It’s like a secret club where, for example, only 66 of the over 17,000 V4’s get to join, and if you can send it, you get to be in that club too. Many MoonBoard-ers spend their time exclusively chasing the benchmarks (and clout).
5. Saves Time – Perhaps the best part of a pre-laid out systems board is that once you have it up, you can be done with the work and get right to the climbing. If just have your own spray wall you still have to “set” the problems and catalog it and likely get bored and strip holds to reset again. For some, this is half the fun, but for others, they just want to look up a problem and start pulling. New problems are always being added to keep it fresh and if you are of the setting and sharing mind, you can do the same at the simple click of a few buttons.

Cons

1. It. Is. Hard. – I know I said this was also a positive, but it is a limiting factor as a point of entry. V4 for the 2016 and V3 for the follow up 2017 and 2019 are the absolute floors, and thanks to the fact I can assign as low of a grade as I want to any problem I create and to the community style sorting of “Easy –> Hard,” plenty of climbers agree that most of these problems are sandbagged. For me, with a long history of finger injuries, I was scared to start pulling on this thing, and even then I’m one it once a week at most.
2. Specificity – If you are on the 2016 board you have one setting, 40 degrees overhung. The 2017 and 2019 sets and MoonBoard Minis allow for the option of 25 degrees, but that is still very limiting. There is no slab, no slopers, and obviously no top-outs. We have talked about seeing strong folks lose it at the top before after making the meat of a problem look as smooth as a marbled prime rib with a side of 30-year scotch. Top-out skills are ever fading as the gym becomes the place to be. As a southern sloper aficionado, training sharp crimps on a steep overhang may not be the best use of my time, but it does help for those trips to NC.
3. Repetitive – While there are literally tens of thousands of problems on each board set, you start to see a great amount of repetition in the hold selection and movement choices of each grade. There are over 17,000 V4 problems, but the issue is that many are simply variations by one hold or another, or worse, repeats set by someone that hasn’t viewed all that was available. It would be an incredible effort of Moon Climbing to parse through these and delete repeats, but this also would kill the creativity of the community. Perhaps something in the app that tracked hold selection and alerted users to a repeat set?
4. The Sanbagging – Because the setter gets to name the grade and the community only gets to agree or disagree, the grade stays but it just gets sorted as “Hard.” But even “Easy” problems with only one ascent can get misplaced in their difficulty dispersion because of a sandbagger, and there are plenty of problems that are identical, or nearly so, with different grades.
5. The Complaining – Yes, I am part of the problem, but that’s also part of the fun, and this is the “Hate” part of the episode. The jokes may be accurate, but they are tired. Although, I’m pretty sure climbers haven’t written a new joke since 2004 and we just keep repeating the same ones with new characters.

Conclusion

Verdict: USE IT!!! and learn to love, hate, love yourself instead.

There are jokes aplenty about how tough the MoonBoard is to use, but it comes from one of the toughest regions and was created by one of the toughest old sods of the 80s and 90s to prepare for the hardest climbs British Gritstone had to offer, not to mention the rest of the world. Once you are ready, this tool, used properly for limit boulder training, will definitely be invaluable for both your physical and mental capability. Look, I get it, training is hard and training our weaknesses is even harder. The beauty of the MoonBoard is that it exposes those weaknesses and forces you either adapt and overcome. Or you can pick a new type of torture. Probably off-widths.