Walk into Redpoint Bristol on any given day, and you’ll notice two very different types of climbers. On one side, someone’s tied into a harness via a rope, scaling a high wall with a partner calling out encouragement below, holding onto the other end of their rope, feeding it safely through a belay device. On the other hand, climbers are struggling around low walls, often steeper or with smaller holds, massive dynamic movements and coordination acrobatics. Both are trying their hardest, training and consider themselves “climbers”, but often would struggle with each other’s discipline.
If you’re new to climbing, it can be tricky to know where to start – is bouldering is climbing, but not all climbing is bouldering, and vice versa when it comes to roped climbs. This guide breaks down the key differences between roped climbing and bouldering.
Rope climbing is what most people picture when they think of traditional climbing. It involves climbing tall walls using a rope, harness, and a belay device, usually with a partner on the ground managing the rope – unless you’re outside on a multi pitch, and your partner may in fact be above you after having just lead the first part of the route, with you following up after (we don’t do it like that indoors).
At Redpoint Bristol, we offer both top-rope climbing (great for beginners) and lead climbing (more advanced and closer to outdoor sport climbing), as well as auto-belay climbing, which is the same as top-rope, except in place of a friend holding your rope, a machine not unline a large seatbelt keeps you safe by slowly taking in the slack as you climb up and then lowering you safely back to terra firma cone you fall or get to the top.
Rope climbing was the first style of climbing, with large rock faces, mountains and sea cliffs begging to be climbed long before we looked to lower boulders and small outcrops to send. Rope climbing up longer climbs builds endurance and trains your aerobic capacity: using oxygen to generate energy for sustained, lower-intensity activities. Climbing is a personal sport, but roped climbing is more of a shared experience; trust and teamwork play a big role, and it is an excellent way to focus on communication, tactics and route reading.
We’ve seen plenty of climbing partnerships form on our walls. We’ve had regulars tell us they met their best friends during a belay lesson, now they train together every week and have even started tackling outdoor routes, through to belay partners getting married…*insert a tie the knot joke*.
Bouldering takes a different approach. Climbs are lower, typically around 3-6 metres high outside, but never more than 4.5 metres inside. You don’t use ropes or harnesses; instead, thick crash mats cushion your falls, but falling well is imperative to reduce the risk of sprains or breaks. Bouldering came about as a way to train for roped climbing, focusing on short, powerful sections of climbing, often in themselves harder than moves on the bigger walls, so when it came time to tie in and give the longer routes a try, moves in isolation started to feel easier and easier. It wasn’t long before this in itself became a sport, with boulder fields in the Peak District (UK) and the forests south of Paris (France) being some of the most popular and earliest places to attract climbers to the allure of bouldering only. Unlike endurance training with rope climbing, bouldering develops anaerobic capacity, allowing for short bursts of high-intensity activity without relying on oxygen. Being shorter and often more intense, people often injure themselves more on bouldering than on roped climbing, with shoulders, knees, fingers and back issues being common – we’d recommend you make sure to warm up well and don’t push yourself too hard until you’ve built a strong foundation set of skills.
Why it’s popular:
The honest answer? It depends on what you’re looking for and if you have someone ready to give you a belay!
Try rope climbing if:
Try bouldering if:
Many of our climbers do both styles – it adds variety and helps round out your climbing skills. A common approach in training and sports science is periodised training: focus on bouldering for around 6 weeks to build strength and power, then switch to rope climbing for 6 weeks to develop endurance and stamina. Alternating between the two can help you make steady progress in both areas.
That said, it’s not all about training or improvement. If you enjoy one style more than the other, brilliant! Stick with what you love and just have fun.
We offer both roped climbing and bouldering under one roof, all set in a colourful, converted cinema filled with creativity and good vibes. Whether you’re completely new or have years of climbing behind you, our team is here to help you get on the walls and have fun.
One of the perks of being a member? You also get access to all Flashpoint sites at no extra cost — that’s a lot of bouldering to explore!
If you’ve never tried rope climbing before, we recommend starting with a taster session. It’s a chance to ask questions, try both styles, and see what clicks. You might love the problem-solving of bouldering or prefer the rhythm of scaling tall walls with a belay partner.
Either way, you’ll leave with chalk on your hands and the urge to come back, just like we all did.
Curious? Pop in to Redpoint Bristol and find the climbing style that matches you. Or discover that the best choice… is both.
