Should Beginners Climb on Overhangs? What the Evidence Actually Says

There isn't one place a beginner should or shouldn't go. Some wall angles will be more intuitive than others for beginners, but at Shift, we encourage climbers of all skill levels to try out all types of terrain, including the overhang.

The case against steep walls is really a case against bad setting

The "slab first" argument goes: on steep terrain, new climbers over-grip, pump out, and learn to hang instead of move. And that's true, when the only climbs on the steep wall are hard.

A beginner on an overhang with tiny holds isn't learning, they're surviving.

But notice the assumption: that steep walls only have hard climbs. At some gyms, that's the reality. A narrow overhang fits a few climbs, so gyms set them for their strongest climbers.

What steep terrain teaches when there are beginner-friendly climbs

Put friendlier, juggy holds on an overhang and something great happens. The leaning wall forces the habits coaches spend years trying to teach:

• Your feet start mattering immediately. On steep ground, if your feet cut loose you feel it: you either muscle through with your arms, or you learn to place them. You keep tension through your whole body, from your very first sessions. This is movement some coaches build entire frameworks around (Power Company Climbing's, for instance).
• You learn to hang on straight arms, because your muscles won't carry you the inefficient way for long.
• Falling is friendlier than it looks. On an overhang you fall away from the wall onto open padding. A 2025 study of 301 bouldering injuries found the classic injury is a feet-first landing from a vertical wall; roof and steep-wall falls made up a small fraction of incidents. (No wall angle makes falling risk-free. That's what 12 to 14 inches of engineered flooring and good landing habits are for.)

So the honest checklist isn't "steep or not." It's this

If you're choosing a gym as a new climber, don't ask whether they have an overhang or how big it is. Ask:

1. Are there beginner climbs on the steep wall? Not one token easy climb. Several, refreshed regularly.
2. How many climbs can I do on day one, anywhere in the gym? If the answer isn't "plenty," the angle debate is irrelevant.
3. Is the padding real? Thick, continuous, engineered flooring under everything, even the seam leading right up to the wall?

At Shift, we can answer with numbers, because we planned for this question: we set all of our circuits, including the beginner-friendly ones, on our 61-foot overhang, with 12 to 14 inches of flooring underneath. The steep wall isn't the advanced corner of our gym. It's everyone's wall, at every level, which is exactly what a steep wall should be.

The bottom line

Beginners don't need to avoid overhangs. They need to avoid overhangs with nothing set for them. Find a gym where the steep terrain has easy climbs, and it will quietly become the best teacher in the building.

Want to test the theory? Your first visit here comes with a tour, free rentals, and a yellow circuit that runs straight through the steep stuff. See you there!