Training. noun – The systematic act of applying a stimulus to get better results somewhere, either directly (bench pressing to get better at bench pressing) or indirectly (bench press to get better at shotput).

I love the Moonboard, it’s my favorite of the boards, followed by Tension. It’s a rare day that I’ll voluntarily use the others – Kilter just doesn’t suit me (Ian Powell wants to know your location)

That said, I use the Moonboard for what I believe the original intent was. For training. For getting stronk. To that end, I eschew ‘malarkey’ (subject of its whole own article some other time, promise). I climb the way Malc Smith recommends you climb if you wanna get strong – open, square. It’ll be a rare day you see me match. You won’t see me throwing drop knees, or twisting way in. You won’t ever catch me heel hooking on the systems boards. I know, I know, Moon has come out to explicitly say heelhooks are not verboten, but I’m playing by C.A.T.S. rules.

All these so-call ‘techniques’ would surely make the moves easier. Surely I would send more user submitted climbs, more Living-Legend-Ben Moon-Approved Benchmarks. But that’s not what I’m here for. Two decades in, I don’t feel the need to suss out the micro-nuances of technique on this board. It’s not a yoga mat on which I am learning a pose. It’s a squat rack. Pull hard, do hard moves, get a proper physical workout. This is about training, not sending.

Will I still be cranky if I don’t hit that top row? Sure. But holding to my anti-malarkey stance. I don’t want to get to the top of the board, I want to move in a way that is stressful and generates adaptations that I can use to send Real Boulders. And Board Problems are not Real Boulders.

But they’re also the closest things to Real Boulders in any and every gym.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I meet a new climber, a game begins. We start talking about the parts of the country we’ve climbed in. What states. What individual crags. And then the real game is afoot – trying to find out what boulders occupy that center portion of the Venn Diagram of our ticklists. And that’s because shared boulders build shared experience. That is the part of climbing culture I love most. Those of us who have sent, or even just tried, something like BumBoy are suddenly members of a smaller collective tribe. We’ve touched the same square inch of stone, potential thousands of miles and several years away from where we are conversing. I’ve squeezed the same pinch John Gill once squeezed, reached arduously for the same rail John Bachar levitated to, pressed out the same mantle as John “Largo” Long, and been absolutely crushed by a move John Sherman pulled off in hightop EBs over a tea towel for a “pad”. The persistence of the apparatus we perform on allows us to enjoy this, the same way skaters made pilgrimages to the “El Toro Stairs” (RIP).

Every time I do manage to grab that last row on the Moonboard, on my terms, I text my climbing partner. He’s half a dozen states away, so “bruh I just sent this sick V-gnar orange Teknik-pinch thing Skrillex-the-Setter put up on the Wave” means jack. He’s not here. He can’t share in it. Even if he came to town, it’d be gone. But his gym has a Moonboard, and my gym has a Moonboard, so when I text him that “Malibu Stacy can stick it”, he knows exactly what that means. He can pull the same moves between those same holds, 800 miles away. We can speak a common language, compare notes, and share that experience again. And not only that, I can share it with any of you with a Moonboard, whether they be pulling on my local board the day after I was there, or the next timezone over, or an ocean away.

I’m still not going to like\upvote\whatever videos of board climbs. I’m not going to train so I can do more board climbs – I’m going to do board climbs to train. But I am also going to recognize that when I finally hit the “jug” on Malibu Stacy, I’ll have a send in common with several thousand people across the globe.

But I’m doing it without a heel hook damn it.

Justin Meserve was frequently found parked under the 2017 Moonboard at his local. They’ve since switched to the 2016 Moonboard, devoid of the comfortable red jugs, so he’s going to have to start over on his ticklist, and try a whole lot harder this time.