Indoor climbing becoming ‘mainstream’ sport

Indoor climbing has become a “mainstream” sport, according to a climbing gym in Shropshire which has seen memberships “grow massively”.

Oliver Elphick, centre manager at Climbing Hut Shrewsbury, said Alex Honnold’s recent fete of climbing the Taipei 101 in Taiwan and the Olympics were just some factors that had given the sport “a lot of publicity”.

His centre alone has seen memberships increase by about 20% in the last 12 months, with data from the the Association of British Climbing Walls supporting this trend nationwide.

Statistics taken from 2025 found the average amount of visits to a climbing gym in a year had jumped from nearly 23,000 to almost 68,000.

It also found that 26% of all indoor climbing walls in the country had opened within the last five years.

Elphick said: “A lot of the boost will come from the Olympics and with climbing being more popularised, I think more people are seeing the sport, which gets a lot of people into it.

“I think some people get sick of going to gyms and not because it’s in a toxic environment by any means, but I think some people don’t feel like they belong.

“It can feel more like an individualistic activity, whereas climbing gyms are more social.”

Elphick said it was a “weird climate” for climbing gyms where independent centres were at risk of being swallowed up by larger chains, but that had not been the case for the Climbing Hut.

“Our numbers from last year to this year have grown more than we expected.

“A lot of independent climbing gyms, which I’d classify us as, typically get swallowed up if they move into the area.

“But for us to be doing well where we are is a very good sign.”

He added: “I think [climbing] is more mainstream these days. I just think it’s one of those sports that’s just kind of been picked up.”

‘Climbing is for everyone’

Aimee O’Doherty, an indoor climbing instructor at Wyre Forest Leisure Centre, said “climbing is for everyone”.

After starting the sport eight years ago, she said climbing had kept her “sane”.

“I love it so much and I’ve never really gotten on with team sports and I think that’s something a lot of people have found,” she explained.

“Obviously, there’s a community here, the climbing community is so wonderful, but it is yourself on the wall and you’re choosing to challenge yourself.

“It’s also a mental aspect to it, the problem solving.”

O’Doherty added: “I’m just really glad that more people are getting into climbing, to me that’s just amazing as we want as many people in the sport as possible.”

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