Friday, May 29, 2015

Freestanding Campus Board/Hang Board Setup for Climbing Training


We live in a small town home sans garage but wanted a decent campus board and hang board setup. A friend came up with a relatively easy (few cuts) 4'x8', 15-degree campus board setup.  It's indoors (in a bedroom) so I wanted a decent paint job instead of just unpainted plywood. I tinkered with the design a bit and am really pleased with what resulted (especially the zia paint job!) Here's what I ended up with. It's super functional and I'm really proud of the end result. Allison and I (and a friend or two) have had some great training sessions on it so far...
I'm not great with construction, or math, so it ended up at 12 degrees at first and then an easy modification got it to 16 degrees. Still have room for another set of campus rungs on the left side. Metolius wooden "medium rungs" on the right side. 

Initially, the foot board was two feet tall and on the same plane as the upper board. That didn't allow room for my knees (I'm 6'5") and was awkward for foot placements. I trimmed it down to 20" tall and set it vertical and it's way,way better now.

If the hangboard were up all the time, it would severely impact the campus board's usability so I found some "bunk bed brackets" online, mounted them to a 2x8 and that board hangs on two beefy hooks at the top of the campus board. Two wooden stops on the top inside of the frame support the hangboard board and keep it solid. The pulley system connects to eyebolts in the top of the campus board frame so the weight is on the frame, not on the removable board.

Using the excellent plans from this blog post at Rock Climber's Training Manual, we've got an adjustable/removable hangboard setup. It's easy to slide the grips wider or narrower depending on who's doing a workout or take them off completely so make putting up/taking down the hangboard board easier. I found some perfect "bar holder open" brackets from the local Do It Best store that fit perfectly over the 2x8. 

Then the Rock Prodigy Training Center (RPTC) board slides onto the removable board. This allows for adjustability and a lighter setup so it's easier to put up/remove the removable board.


We recently added four hand-made sloper rungs using 4" PVC pipe cut in half, lengthwise, and glueing on 80 grit sandpaper for the surface. A trimmed 2x4 behind the PVC pipe sloper rung adds stability to the rungs. And because summer is upon us, we got two 5" O2 Cool battery operated clip-on fans. The fans clip onto the RPTC holds and add much-appreciated cooling airflow during hangboard workouts:

Hand drawn specs after completion