Choosing climbing holds for a commercial gym.

Start with your setting programme

The most common mistake when buying holds for a new facility is buying on aesthetics rather than on setting utility. Commercially available holds range from competition-focused blank features to highly sculpted shapes that reward artistic vision but resist practical resetting. For a commercial gym, the setter's toolkit is what matters: holds that work across a wide range of body types, can be positioned in multiple orientations, and produce legible grades without relying on unusually specific foot placements or body positions.

Before buying anything, spend time with your setting team asking what they currently lack. A common answer is not more shapes — it is more variety within categories they already use: more medium slopers, more crimps in a specific size range, more juggy pinches for beginner routes. Filling gaps in an existing inventory is usually higher value than expanding into new territory.

Hold categories and their roles

Commercial hold inventories typically span five categories: jugs, edges and crimps, slopers, pinches, and pockets. Each serves a different purpose in the setting toolkit, and a balanced inventory needs reasonable depth across all five.

Jugs are the primary hold type for beginner and intermediate routes. A commercial gym will use more jugs than any other category by volume, because most customers are below V4/6b and need comfortable, secure footholds and handholds. Buying a large quantity of jugs in a range of sizes and orientations is rarely a mistake for a new or growing facility.

Edges and crimps are the hold type most associated with technical sport climbing and higher-grade bouldering. A standard commercial edge set should include a range from comfortable three-finger edges (12–16 mm depth) down to small crimps (5–8 mm) for advanced problems. Single-finger and two-finger variants round out the upper end of the difficulty range.

Slopers are the hold category most influenced by body position and angle. They are essential for creating intermediate to advanced movement and for setting compression and balance problems. Slopers that work across multiple orientations — rounded blobs, angled balls, slab-friendly features — give setters more options per hold than directional shapes.

Pinches cover a wide range in practice, from wide, comfortable two-hand pinches used in beginner coordination routes to narrow, aggressive pinches for advanced finger strength work. A commercial set should include pinches in at least three width categories.

Pockets are a specialist category. Most commercial gyms use pockets selectively rather than as a primary hold type, both because of the injury risk associated with single-finger loading for less experienced climbers, and because pockets are highly angle-dependent. Buying a smaller number of high-quality two-finger and three-finger pockets is more practical than buying a large pocket set.

Macros and volumes as terrain tools

VTF-ABS macros and plywood volumes are not holds in the traditional sense — they are terrain modifiers. Their purpose is to change the shape, angle and feature density of the wall itself, giving setters the ability to create movement that the underlying wall structure cannot support on its own.

A macro used as a foothold can create a specific weight-shifting moment that forces a particular hand position, without the setter needing to remove a hold and remount it. A volume placed on a slab section can create an arete, a compression feature, or a mantling position that would otherwise require changing the wall panel. This flexibility makes macros and volumes cost-effective over time — each piece does more setting work than a standard hold of equivalent cost.

For a new commercial facility, a modest investment in volumes and medium-format macros — even before the full hold inventory is in place — gives the setting team significantly more flexibility than the same budget spent entirely on small PU holds. The common recommendation is to allocate 15–20% of the initial hold budget to volumes and macros, and to increase this proportion over time as the facility's setting identity matures.

Colour and texture selection

Commercial gyms route by colour for a reason — colour is the primary way members identify which holds belong to their route. This creates a practical constraint on hold purchasing: you need enough holds in each colour to set a complete route without running out, but not so many that colours become ambiguous across routes set simultaneously on the same wall section.

The Rockcity competition colour palette covers around 20 colours from light neutrals through strong primaries and contrasting brights. When selecting an initial palette, choose colours that are visually distinct at a distance of 3–5 metres — the distance from which most climbers read a problem. Pure colours (red, blue, green, yellow) work well at distance. Subtler colours (stone, off-white, mid-grey) work better as accent or supporting colours than as primary route colours.

Dual-texture holds — where contact zones carry a coarser grit than the surrounding surface — are now the standard in commercial gyms that run setting programmes at intermediate difficulty and above. They help climbers identify intended holds quickly and allow setters to control the reading of a problem more precisely. For beginner circuits, single-texture holds remain appropriate; the contrast offered by dual texture is less valuable when the route is designed for comfort rather than precision.

Lead times and how to order

For in-stock product, Rockcity's standard trade lead time is 2–4 weeks from order confirmation. For custom colours, large macro orders or items that are not in stock at time of order, production lead times apply and should be discussed with the team before the order is finalised.

New facility projects — where a complete hold inventory is needed for an opening date — should contact Rockcity sales at least 8–12 weeks before the required delivery date. This allows production capacity to be checked, colour availability to be confirmed, and any factory-direct elements to be scheduled without affecting other orders. Leaving less time than this creates pressure on production that can result in substitutions or partial fulfilment.

Trade customers can use the B2B catalog to browse current availability by product family and build a provisional order. Orders are confirmed by Rockcity before fulfilment, which means the catalog is a starting point for discussion rather than a live stock system. For anything larger than a straightforward restock, speaking to the team before placing the order is the most efficient approach.