A new (and free!) magazine is about to come to a gym near you.

I’m psyched to announce that we are starting a brand new magazine, Gym Climber, to be distributed in gyms across the country within a month or so. And it will be free.

Yes, absolutely free.

Training, comps, the Olympics, feature stories, fine art photography, athlete profiles and more in the first issue. And all with that same Rock and Ice quality.

For our first issue, we have an all-star cast of contributors. New faces and old faces. Young tuggers, veteran crushers and fine-art photographers:

—Ben Moon on the origins of the MoonBoard.

—Michaela Kiersch tells her story.

—John Long tells of his gym accident.

—Delany Miller on the good, bad and ugly of recovery strategies.

—Fine art photos by Boone Speed.

—Olympic hopefuls by Andrew Bisharat.

—Tom Randall on smart training.

—Eddie Fowke on the World Cup circuit.

—Jan Novak with the cover photo, among more inside.

—Cameron Maier with some great portraits.

—Neil Gresham on one-hour training.

—Kevin Takashi Smith on the fabled Fontainebleau

—Jeff Jackson on Team Texas

—Michael Levy on why the Japanese are better than us

—…among others.

Why have we done such a thing? Increasingly we have found there are incredible stories coming from the gyms. Non-profit gyms such as Memphis Rox are rethinking how climbing fits into under-privileged neighborhoods, and they might be the only gym in the country that allows community service as payment for a membership.

With the Olympics around the corner, our sport is changing fast (not all of it good), and we want to make sure those stories are told. We want the ability to cover this vast and growing sector of climbing, and we want do it right.

A question: What do Adam Ondra, Chris Sharma and Alex Honnold have in common? They have their origin stories in the gym. Many of us, even grizzled trad climbers, still train on plastic to get stronger. Tommy Caldwell even trained a lot on plastic to get stronger for the Dawn Wall. Alpinists train in the gym and even mixed climbers are finding themselves welcome (tools included) in our gyms. Plastic pulling is part of climbing at all levels, and Gym Climber is our answer.

—— Francis Sanzaro, Editor of Rock and Ice, Ascent and Gym Climber

**If you’re a gym or club that wants to stock Gym Climber, please contact Mandi Carrera: mcarrera@bigstonepub.com

To stay up to date on everything Gym Climber, and news about the Olympics, the World Cup circuit, training ideas and other interesting stories of people pulling plastic, follow the new mag on Instagram at @GymClimberMag

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