VHard: An XR UI for Kinesthetic Rehearsal of Rock Climbing Moves

Rock climbers frequently struggle to complete climbs due to the difficulty of practicing precise movements without actually attempting them. A standard strategy is to kinesthetically rehearse the hand and body positions required while on the ground. However, the lack of live feedback severely hampers this method because climbers can only roughly estimate the distances and positions involved. We introduce VHard, an extended reality (XR) application that visualizes the precision and accuracy of hand placements on a metric digital twin of a MoonBoard™ climbing wall. VHard augments kinesthetic rehearsal with XR feedback in order to assist climbers in completing difficult boulder problems.