How to mount your climbing hangboard
Looking to mount your hangboard or want to make sure your plasterboard wall can withstand your future training programme? Here is an article summarising the different solutions I know from my own experience and those shared with me. If you can’t find what you need from the information I’ve compiled here, there are always hangboards that can be suspended to enjoy a training tool at home.
Where to install a hangboard in a flat or house?
The first thing to determine when you want to mount a hangboard at home is finding the right location. You’ll need to find a spot with enough clearance for your body. Mounting a hangboard in the middle of a wall doesn’t work. You need space below and behind the hangboard so you can lift your feet off the ground without your body rubbing against a wall.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, here are the different solutions I recommend:
The (real) wooden beam, the structural one
It needs to be high enough to hang from but not so high that you can’t reach it with outstretched arms. And it must be in good enough condition for the wood screws supplied with Woodrock hangboards to hold firmly.
- First step: screw in the central screw at the right height so that the bottom of the Woodrock hangboard is flush with the bottom of the structural beam
- Once this first screw is in place, simply level it before screwing in the other four screws.
Mounting your hangboard above a door
In this case, you’ll first need to determine what material your wall is made of.
On a concrete wall
You’ll need five concrete wall plugs and the appropriate screws. Then you can drill the holes in the right places in your wall to mount your climbing hangboard.
You can find wall plugs in most DIY shops and hardware stores near you. Check the load ratings given for the plugs and ask for the appropriate screws.
Wood-based panel supports
If you live in a timber-frame house, the area above your doorways may be made of OSB or another wood-based panel. Your panel will need to be thick enough for the screws to grip sufficiently to withstand your training sessions.
If that’s not the case, scroll down further in this article to discover alternative solutions for mounting your hangboard.
Plasterboard and hollow or weak supports
Many of you (myself included) have only a plasterboard or hollow brick wall available for mounting a hangboard. In this case, it’s not possible to fix the hangboard directly with the supplied screws, and even with wall plugs, it may not be strong enough.
But don’t panic, there are plenty of solutions:
In a flat, renting or on plasterboard: the right questions to ask
I get this question every week: “I’m in a flat, my walls are plasterboard, my landlord doesn’t want me drilling holes, can I still set up a hangboard?”. The answer is almost always yes, but the solution depends on three factors to clarify first:
- What is your wall made of? Single plasterboard (1 sheet of 13 mm on rails), double plasterboard, hollow brick, solid brick, poured concrete: each case calls for a different answer. Give it a sharp knock: a hollow sound means a light support that won’t hold without load spreading.
- Are you renting or do you own? Renting = no holes, or holes that are easy to fill. Owning = almost total freedom, as long as you respect the structure.
- How much height is available? Ideally you need a clearance of 30 cm or more between the top of the hangboard and the ceiling to do full pull-ups. Below the hangboard, for a person of 1.80m, you need at least 2 metres under the lowest hold so you don’t scrape the floor. (= the distance between your fingertips and your knees when your arms are stretched upwards)
Calculate mounting height
Enter your height, ceiling height and the model. We tell you exactly where to screw the top of the beam.
Mount the top of the beam at
cm
measured from the finished floor.
Case 1: Plasterboard with a door frame: the Deltabase solution
Most modern flats have a solid wood door frame (jamb) in a plasterboard wall. The plasterboard itself won’t hold a hangboard; the jamb, however, is sturdy. The solution: a door-frame support that wedges onto the frame without drilling the wall at all. That’s exactly what our Deltabase does, a removable support that turns any standard doorway (60 to 90 cm) into a training zone.
- Installation: 5 minutes, no tools, no holes.
- Removable: take it down when you have friends over or when you move house.
- Compatible with all our standard fixed hangboards.
Case 2: Renting with no holes allowed: suspended hangboards
If you have neither a usable doorway nor permission to drill, the simplest solution is a hangboard designed to hang without permanent fixing. Three models cover this need:
- Nomade: the most versatile, designed to hang on a crag, from a tree, or from a temporarily installed pull-up bar.
- Le Bloc: compact, ideal for small flats, hangs from a wrist loop or a bar.
- A fingerboard or standard hangboard suspended from a pressure-mounted pull-up bar (telescopic bar type between two door uprights): effective but to be chosen carefully: check the maximum load supported, which must be well above your body weight multiplied by 1.5 (the dynamic factor when hanging).
Case 3: Owning but only plasterboard: the sandwich or the freestanding frame
You can drill holes, but your wall won’t take a direct fixing? Two options already detailed higher up in this article apply: the freestanding frame (self-standing, doesn’t touch the wall), or the sandwich with threaded rods that spreads the load across the whole wall surface. The sandwich is unbeatable for strength; the freestanding frame is unbeatable for flexibility.
And the noise for the neighbours?
Hangboard training is almost silent: no impact, no falls. The only potential noise comes from hangs that are dropped abruptly and pull-ups on a door frame that can creak. Two precautions:
- Release your hangs gently (last 3 centimetres with feet down or controlled by hand), especially in the evening.
- If your support creaks, put a thick felt pad between the hangboard and the support: it absorbs the micro-vibrations.
To go further, two essential steps once the hangboard is in place: a specific warm-up before each session, then the home training programmes suited to your level.
The freestanding frame
For me, this is THE solution — not that complicated to set up (as long as you have access to a drill/driver and a saw). And on top of that, it can be:
- budget-friendly if you use reclaimed materials
- time-efficient if you’re well organised.
The advantage of this setup is that you can take it with you if you move your training spot or if you move house.
If you’d like to know more about building a simple freestanding frame, I’ll try to write a new article on the subject as soon as possible.
The sandwich with threaded rods through the wall
Here, the solution involves spreading the load over a larger surface area. To do this, you sandwich the wall between two wooden boards larger than the hangboard. To clamp these boards around the wall, you pass threaded rods through the four corners and tighten the nuts. However, if you’re renting, that means 4 decent-sized holes to fill to get your deposit back.
The sandwich without holes in the walls
This solution is described on a great collaborative forum for woodworking enthusiasts. Here’s the link: mount your climbing hangboard without drilling holes in the walls.
And as a bonus, the author explains how he made his own hangboard!
Mounting via a pull-up bar
Some adventurous types have even found a way to attach a fixed climbing hangboard to a pull-up bar. Having not tried this system myself, I won’t presume to explain how to do it here. But I’m sure you can find the information online. Personally, I would only opt for this solution as a last resort. This method doesn’t look easy to set up and requires purchasing a pull-up bar on top of everything else.
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A propos de l’auteur
Woodrock c’est le mariage de 2 passions : la menuiserie et l’escalade. Concevoir, fabriquer, usiner et vous envoyer des poutres d’escalade de qualité est une partie de mon quotidien. Le reste du temps, j’aime grimper sur les falaises des contreforts du Vercors.
