A treadwall is great for ARCing. With a hangboard and rings you could probably complete all the rock climbing training plan workouts that don’t involve touching rock, if you make the speed really slow and make the angle steep you pretty much have a systems wall type of board on which you could set hard moves.

I find plastic subpar to rock for broad skill building, the footholds are just so big and the sequences obvious. You can make gains and drill specific movement patterns (

The boredom factor is real, get some good music playing and use your imagination, you’re not in a cold shed anymore, you’re free soloing 300 meters above the bergschrund, you better hold on when you’re tired, try a stupid move and start barn dooring.

Treadwalls are expensive. If I could afford one I’d probably have room for a really nice home gym and would get steep cracks in challenging sizes (cupped hands, off fingers, offwidth) and a dedicated steep board for building power intensive moves, my friend’s gym which I train in during winter also has those and they’re really nice to have.

Treadwalls are a fantastic tool that have many different applications. While they are not as complex as the movement on volumes you will often find in a climbing gym, nor as what you would find necessary on rock, they are great for developing and maintaining the basics of climbing movement. From these basics, specific skills can more easily be developed.

In particular, drilling specific movement patterns and interval work are where it shines. Specific movement patterns lie at the core of all skill development.

From my personal experience, a Treadwall is probably the single best piece of training equipment one could have for climbing. The versatility is really only limited by your imagination.