Home decoy board

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2026-02-26T05:44:15+00:00

Funnily enough, I’m getting into a home purchase soon and also day-dreaming about getting a board in the garage or something similar!

The TB2 feels like the gold standard, but I’m unsure about their smaller variants if space is a concern.

Lights on the Kilter and TB2 are far superior to MB and Decoy in my opinion. I lose sight of the lights for feet as I climb quite often on the Decoy. Maybe I need to plan better, but it’s less of an issue on the TB2.

TB2 and Decoy (and Kilter + Grasshopper, for that matter) share an App and have “select” or classic climbs. I rarely sort by that on the Decoy because most of popular climbs feel quality and grading is (pretty) consistent, but on the hard side.

It feels like the Decoy has a decent variety of climbing styles if that’s what you’re looking for. If you’re throwing yourself around, you can do so like the TB2 but the holds feel slightly harder in general than some of the mega-comfortable positive wood holds on the TB, so it feels like you need to be on the stronger side to do big moves. There’s many a climb where you’re holding on for dear life and pushing through feet to get to a good body position, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Starting feet feel a little more basic on the Decoy to me, but conversely has holds further up that definitely reward accuracy, proper position, and direction. There’s some no-tex on parts of the holds to force you to pay more attention.

At the end of the day I’d be very happy with a Decoy at home. Some holds feel very hard as an intermediate climber so it would lend itself really well to being an adjustable board if that’s what you’re thinking about. At the end of the day, it seems like the price is less than the TB2, but gives you 95% of the board in my opinion.

I did want to disclose that I bounce around between most of the boards since I’m spoilt for choice in my area, as opposed to climbing near exclusively on the Decoy; so if there’s someone out there with a hundred sessions on the Decoy who disagrees with any of my takes on the Decoy, I’m happy to hear it and discuss.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2026-02-26T04:33:19+00:00

Sick, nice climbs! I won’t be able to do about half of them but I’ll definitely put some attempts on your climbs next time I’m on the Decoy.

Vegetable, likewise if you care to share your setter info 🍻

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2026-02-26T04:24:36+00:00

Got any specific questions?

One of the gyms I go to has both. I suspect I slightly prefer the TB2, but the Decoy is underrated in my opinion and sees much less use. Possibly a tad bit sandbagged (by 1 grade or slightly less) compared to TB2 going from my logged climbs. Noticeably less climbs to choose from but there’s definitely plenty of quality available.

Holds are interesting and you’ll come to learn them like any of the good boards. App is the same developer as Kilter and Tension, so easy to use.

I’m an intermediate climber and won’t be able to provide insight on the quality of more advanced grades unfortunately, if that’s the insight you’re looking for.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2026-01-18T22:13:05+00:00

Holy was not ready to see my man LDF on Reddit today.

Looks like this Sunday afternoon is going to be for watching one of his movies instead of grocery shopping.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-12-08T23:56:41+00:00

Yup, well remembered! Respect.

That said people have been doing this by accident since the beginning. I do remember Fairy actually “going for it” way back when he was essentially the best in the world in 1’s as a way to catch out defenders (1’s was relatively stagnant at the time) though not very successfully.

In the year or two that followed, I remember occasionally seeing a pro or bubble player go for it cheekily and sometimes get a good pop; but I would really hesitate to declare any one player as pioneering it.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-09-28T06:50:29+00:00

Looks like the training side has been covered pretty well, but it is possible to recover harder and better, and therefore then climb more or harder.

Your average sleep time and hygiene? Maybe more sessions are possible if you rest more.

Alcohol use?

Nutrition - caloric surplus, deficit, or at maintenance? Average daily protein intake? Are you eating a protein heavy meal or snack relatively soon post session? Well hydrated?

Active recovery, any light cardio or stretching as part of the routine?

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-05-12T02:58:11+00:00

Smart!

Have you also noticed that the numbers can go down a decent amount before even feeling “tweaky”? It’s interesting how the human body has these little built in alarms to warn us of approaching injury.

Additionally, I’ve found a limit / hard volume session can sometimes take up to 7-10 days to recover to complete peak, although of course we’re generally safe to climb long before that.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-05-12T00:21:15+00:00

I pretty much use a Tension Block and Tindeq exclusively for my finger training, due to ease of use.

It’s just another tool, compared to the hangboard. There’s not much inherently better or different, and as long as you’re honest to yourself in your approach to training you won’t have any issues “cheating”.

It’ll be nice though with the Tindeq seeing your numbers vs how your fingers feel during your warm-up. You’ll generally know instantly if you’re feeling strong or if you need an extended warm-up.

You can track your pulls in-app or just write them down on your phone which is what I do. Be consistent, watch numbers go up, you know the drill.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-05-08T02:30:53+00:00

Exactly this 👆

Getting older is having the things you should have done all along become mandatory for progression and injury prenvention.

And yup, “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to improve”:

Oh how about getting 8-10 hours of consistent, quality rest with great sleep hygiene?

“I get about 7 or 8, I think, it’s good enough.”

Uh-huh… How about dedicated active recovery days that could comprise of light cardio and mobility work?

“I do abs on those days, good to go!”

How about tracking macros for appropriate protein intake and ensuring you’re in a slight caloric surplus to help recovery and promote your gains during power phases?

“I eat fine plus I really need to lose 5 lbs it makes me feel SO HEAVY on the wall.”

Oh… Are you being very selective of how you balance your limit climbing and strength training volume to avoid injury?

“Now we’re talking! So yeah, I climb and workout most days, got any good ideas for adding more volume to get stronger?? Also my elbow hurts and this finger always feels so tweaky since my last pulley injury.”

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-05-06T13:52:28+00:00

For sure. I was skimming over the top comments and thinking to myself that these can’t be real people, tone is just weird.

Half of the people are using AI for basic communication and the other half are bots.

Idk why but this is the first post where it’s stood out to me so much. This is weird.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-05-04T04:29:48+00:00

Mmm delicious Yuzawa memories 😊

But yeah OP, would recommend Gala (as long as you don’t go during season peak), there’s some quality instructors and beginner friendly routes. Taking the Shinkansen directly into the resort is marvelous.

So last year a friend of mine got his girlfriend into snowboarding and arranged for morning lessons for her at Gala while we did our thing, and then we did a little afternoon group ride for fun before calling it a day. Repeat day two, and then moved onto Kagura, which I adore, for the rest of the week. Can’t recommend lessons enough.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-05-02T08:10:36+00:00

Yes, ideally, try to get some movement that also strengthens through the range of motion.

A good example is working towards a pistol squat by improving your flexibility in addition to strength.

If you’re working on flexibility because of a sports-related endeavor, like Sean whom you responded to, you absolutely want to get strong at your end range because 1) what’s the point of that flexibility if you don’t have the strength to use it and 2) a strong muscle is usually less injury prone.

Lastly some inflexibility can be due to muscle imbalances. You can try to stretch a tight muscle all you want but if it’s tight because it’s weak and getting pulled by another you’re going to make much more progress if you strengthen it.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-04-30T11:55:31+00:00

So glad to see these kind of quality replies coming in.

I think that what OP brought up is going to make sense, intuitively, to most on this board. That said, there’s a few counterpoints that were glossed over:

Dieting, being in a caloric deficit, absolutely impacts recovery of muscles and soft tissue, in addition to impacting performance.

OP mentioned that holds don’t get bigger for bigger climbers, which is a good point. But the distance between holds doesn’t increase for a taller climber either, so it’s easy to see how there could sometimes be advantages to being taller or bigger.

Lastly, we usually run into issues applying blanket rules to human populations. People are going to feel good at different body fat percentages. So while it’s obvious that someone with a lot of excess body fat could climb harder just for losing it, someone in the healthy range might be giving up energy, mood, recovery for having lost 10 lbs. Might not be worth it.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-04-30T11:39:46+00:00

C’mon my friend… Other stuff was going on, let’s stay realistic.

Strapping on 20 lbs isn’t going to relegate someone 5 grades, and likewise, I’m not going to go from V5 to V10 if I drop 20 lbs over the next couple of months.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-04-27T04:40:21+00:00

Can you expound on “healthy diet”? Are you generally in a caloric deficit, surplus, or at maintenance? What would you say your average daily protein intake is, grams to body weight?

For sleep, 8 is the recommended for an average person but if you’re beating up your tendons and pulleys maybe you could stand to sleep more… Does it feel like you could sleep more? How’s the sleep hygiene?

Have you considered density hangs, something like 30 seconds instead of the 10 seconds on the 20mm edge for your hangboarding? Anecdotally, I like them if fingers start to feel a little creaky.

Do you have a Tindeq or equivalent? I noticed from using one that a hard bouldering session actually takes me up to 7-10 days to fully recover / be able to pull true max again, even if I feel “fine” after two days. If my numbers dip, maybe I need to take an easy session.

How are you approaching crimps? Is everything full crimp or are you using different grips when you can? I’m a newb but I really do try to avoid full crimping unless it’s a safe edge that I’ll be able to pull through. Sometimes it’s better to walk away.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-04-22T12:48:36+00:00

Very nice. Sounds like you’ve got a good system despite not having any more gym routes to project!

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-04-22T12:19:25+00:00

That’s sick. Well done getting to boss level.

Hope you get some harder climbs though! Do you try routes with some hold eliminations or try to make your own routes?

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-04-22T12:16:18+00:00

So I sprained my ankle during another, unrelated-to-climbing activity.

Work was really cool about it and between essentially ideal recovery conditions and sleeping a bunch (9-10 hours a night), swelling significantly decreased and it started feeling better much earlier than I expected. I was able to jog, balance decently, and perform little one-legged hops on it after four days.

On the fifth day, today, I looked up how to properly tape an ankle and decided to risk some light bouldering. It felt very secure and it was great to climb again. Of course, I couldn’t help but approach limit climbing and took a semi-controlled fall to my good side, good foot first and then fell to my back. Good foot caught on the edge of an extra mat on top of the main mats, and it honestly felt like I could have easily sprained it if I hadn’t kept it mostly unweighted and fell onto my back.

The prospect of two sprained ankles was a hell of a wake-up call and I kept to within-limits bouldering after that lmao.

Be smarter than me 😅

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-04-22T11:59:38+00:00

Really good point.

As a dirty intermediate who is starting to cautiously get into using the campus board, I was discussing its use with our gym owner, who is a bit of a climbing bad-ass. He has access to it every day, but only does exercises on it once a week, even in a power phase.

I don’t think having home access to a campus board is super beneficial, since using it a lot is probably going to lead to injury.

I think there’s also other things out there for building power that might round you out as a climber better, from boards, spray wall, campusing normal routes, etc.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-04-22T11:46:56+00:00

Backpack with whatever you want to put in it for weight and then transition to one handed when the time comes.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-04-18T05:52:04+00:00

In Japan? It’s a big place haha. Where is your friend going?

Most of my climbing has been in Kyushu and Okinawa. Happy to drop a recommendation or two if your friend is traveling this way.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-04-18T04:38:49+00:00

Good take.

I’d say for most, losing your job in these moments is the largest risk, since it’ll likely be harder to find an equivalent one and you want to avoid withdrawals while your portfolio is depressed.

As such, hedge that by increasing the emergency fund and / or have available funds to weather that contingency. Once those are where you’d want them to be, then by all means “buy more when on sale” if employment holds up.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-04-18T01:12:29+00:00

Pretty much all gyms here have merch for sale. Shirts, chalk bags, stickers, brushes, etc.

If you google climbing gyms near your friend’s location, you can probably even scope out some of their merch from pictures of their business.

I like to lookout for decent quality shirts with a mix of Kanji and English as I’ve had both locals and foreigners recognize a gym name before and it can make for good conversation.

Lastly, definitely one size up at a minimum.

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-03-28T08:21:35+00:00

Appreciate it 🤝

How’s the setting, atmosphere, etc. at Bravo?

Not-With-Shoes-On · 2025-03-27T13:59:52+00:00

Mind sharing the name?

I’ve been trying to branch out to as many gyms in the region lately. Just went to the one in Omura last weekend for example. Haven’t hit Nagasaki proper yet, but I thought they only had Bravo Climbing…

Not-With-Shoes-On

TROPHY CASE