Bouldering is one of the biggest fitness crazes, and after trying it out at The Bouldering Hive, we get the hype.
As more and more people in Manila are beginning to prioritize active lifestyles thanks to the many fitness spaces all over the Metro, bouldering has recently become the obsession of a fast-growing number of Filipinos. In fact, you’ve probably either already tried bouldering yourself at least once, or have at least seen someone you know post about it on social media.
If by some chance you fall outside both categories and have never heard of this popular pastime, bouldering is basically rock climbing — just using the bare minimum.
This means that you climb short walls (up to 15 feet at most) without a rope or harness. Sounds freaky, I know. But unlike other forms of climbing, the goal here is not necessarily to reach the highest point possible, hence the short walls. Rather, bouldering walls are designed with challenging routes that climbers often refer to as “problems,” and to complete a route, a climber would need to find the most effective way to reach the final point on the route.
Thus, the goal of bouldering is to complete or “solve” a route on the wall, and to do so, you would need to use a mix of balance, strength, and analysis.
Bouldering has become very popular among Filipinos over the last several years. More and more climbing gyms have been rising up around the Metro, including one of the most popular ones called The Bouldering Hive (also known as bhive).
The Bouldering Hive opened its first indoor climbing gym in Makati back in 2019, and it quickly spread the gospel of climbing to many Filipinos. Now, with a growing and close-knit community filled with passionate climbers, they are now marking their fifth-year anniversary with a big celebration. In addition, they have also recently expanded with a new branch in Greenhills, and much like their first one, the gym often gets filled with climbers on weeknights and weekends.
The hype over bouldering has certainly been felt, and so naturally, we just had to try it.
Here are some of the things we learned from our first-ever bouldering session!
It’s okay to fall
Upon arriving at the Greenhills branch of The Bouldering Hive, we were greeted by their friendly and accommodating staff who helped us get geared up with climbing shoes and showed us into the main area of the climbing gym.
Once we got inside the gym, we spotted the many different colored rocks planted across the 15-foot wall. It looked intimidating to us first-timers, but we got a crash course on the basic fundamentals of bouldering, which every newbie has to undergo.
But before we could climb, we needed to learn how to fall.
Yes, there is a proper way to jump and fall from the wall. As part of ensuring the safety of every climber, our instructor for the day, long-time climber Jolo Marcelo, first demonstrated how to jump off from the wall properly, a safe way to absorb the impact of jumping down from a height. He emphasized that climbing down using the rocks is the safest way to get down from a wall, but falling is part of the process, so this was a key portion of the introduction, which is why after he demonstrated it himself, he had every first-timer try it out too.
Once everyone got the fall right and landed safely, we were given the freedom to finally try climbing ourselves!
I’m not going to lie, even climbing up a short wall can be scary for some, especially for those who might be afraid of heights. But because we all learned how to jump or fall in the safest way possible (not to mention the soft mats that surround the walls for safety) it makes the idea of falling more digestible, even for first-timers.
A handful of us had to jump off the wall in the middle of solving a route, and some even made some mistakes while climbing that caused them to slip and fall. We even noticed some of the more experienced climbers falling here and there, too. But, we never felt unsafe. Though there were definitely some nerves to shake off, simply knowing that The Bouldering Hive has many safety measures in place gives you the freedom to get creative and experimental with how you approach a certain route.
As Jolo emphasized, “It’s safe as long as you know how to properly fall and we’ve made a lot of safeguards in place so that you can fall properly and so it will be a safe experience.”
It’s a full-body workout
One impression that I had about bouldering before I tried it was that it mostly requires upper body strength.
This, however, was an incomplete impression on my end. While it is true that climbing does require upper body strength, I found that while I was climbing, I needed to use my entire body equally. I was pushing myself upwards with my lower body, using my core to balance and stay coordinated, and pulling myself using my upper body.
When you’re bouldering, the entire body is put to work.
While this might make it sound even more intimidating, The Bouldering Hive has many routes that cater to climbers of all levels! As first-timers, our group mostly stuck to the green-labeled routes, as these represented the ones best suited for beginners. But, some of us got to finish a couple of harder routes on our first session.
It’s all about being open to testing out your limits, because there’s no shame in not completing a route. In fact, it will probably just make you eager to come back and try it again.
As the team at the bhive says themselves, bouldering is for everyone, regardless of your fitness level.
“[One misconception] would be that you need more experience or a fit body to start out in bouldering, but you can learn along the way. We have lots of coaches here with lots of experience who can teach you,” Jolo explained to us.
It’s a mental game
Bouldering is truly a very physically demanding activity. While in the middle of climbing some routes, I found myself getting tired and needing a break, and the day after our first session, we even found ourselves waking up feeling sore.
But what I realized about bouldering is that it is actually more mental than it is physical.
As mentioned to us in our pre-session briefing at The Bouldering Hive, it is all about completing routes — but the path is hardly ever direct. Some routes require executing harder moves, and many of them demand multiple tries before completion. There were definitely walls that I needed to try out two or three times over just to reach the final point, and each time, I had to try out a different way up.
“A lot of people think it’s such a physical activity, but just solving each problem — we actually call these routes problems because you have to solve it,” Jolo explained.
“There are different types of moves you have to use to complete a problem. So, a lot of people actually just sit down and look at the walls because they’re thinking on how to solve it, and that’s one of the most fun parts about it. You’re thinking, physically active, and if you’re able to solve a problem, it’s the best feeling.”
By the time our first session was up, I was already feeling an eagerness to come back to solve some more complex routes or finish the ones I wasn’t able to figure out right away — and so I instantly came to an understanding of why this sport has been growing like wildfire.
If you’re looking for a physical and mental challenge to fill up your weekends, you should definitely give bouldering a try at bhive.
Images by Kieran Punay.