Here at Push we’ve always believed in shooting for the stars so when some of our Pushpeeps started to ask if we could have a MoonBoard we felt there was no choice but to suit up and boldly go.
“The MoonBoard was created by Ben Moon, one of the great British climbers and the man who set the two hardest routes in the UK”, explains our own Ben, Ben Grey who is probably the man you can blame when you’re feeling the burn on the Board. “He created the MoonBoard which was based on a replica of the board he trained on in his basement in Sheffield. I first saw one in a gym and started to research the info on it – what’s brilliant is each one is set up identically and you can upload tens of thousands of routes. Oh yes, and it is brutal.”
Brutal it most certainly is since the board is on a 40 degree incline and deliberately uses small pinch holds and a design that doesn’t let your feet take the weight off. You don’t warm up on the MoonBoard. What you do however is take on any of tens of thousands of uploadable routes. They’re uploaded via the MoonBoard app and displayed on the board by LEDs which light up to indicate which of the numbered holds form your route. Every MoonBoard is the same so you can compare notes on problems with any other MoonBoard user on the planet. The great part of that is that you can always plug in your favourite/most fiercely hated routes and get stuck in while the next user switches to something completely different at the touch of an app button. The App works on iOS (8.1 and above) and Android (4.4 and above).
You can get an idea how the app works from these how-to videos.