Looking for a Tension Board app alternative?
Boulder Blitz is an independent Android app for Tension Board sessions. It picks your climb, lights it on the board over Bluetooth, times the round and scores your sends — and if you already have a Tension account, it can pull your whole logbook across so your history isn't split in two. Free, works with no signal at the wall, and not a Tension Board or Aurora Climbing product.
Your existing Tension logbook can come with you
The usual problem with moving to a second app is that your climbing history stays behind. Linking your Tension account — optional, from your profile — backfills your entire Tension logbook into Boulder Blitz: sends and logged attempts both, badged as imported, sitting in the same History and Stats as the sessions the app ran itself. Your grade progression chart covers the climbing you did before you found this app, not just after.
If you'd rather not link anything, don't — picking climbs, lighting the board, timing and scoring all work from a Google sign-in alone. When you do link, your Tension username and password are sent once over an encrypted connection to obtain a session with Tension's own service on your behalf, are encrypted at rest, and are never stored in plain text. The import is one-way: nothing Boulder Blitz records is pushed back into your Tension logbook.
The catalogue stays current, and still works offline
Tension's climb catalogue syncs incrementally from Aurora's own service on a schedule, so climbs set since you installed the app turn up in the pool. Your phone then keeps a cached copy of the whole thing, which is what makes a session survive the dead zone every board seems to sit in: it can start, pick climbs, and search the catalogue by name with no connection at all. Only signing in and the first download need the network.
Three ways to use a session
Solo — a structured interval timer
Pick Rapid (60s a climb), Blitz (30s) or Bullet (20s), set your rounds, and climb. Each round it picks and lights a climb at your grade, times the attempt, then gives you a matching rest to log your sends in. Good for 4×4-style power endurance work — there's a full write-up on that protocol.
Duel — head-to-head with a friend
Two climbers alternate attempts on the same randomly picked problem while the app keeps a live score. Handicap Mode lets each player set their own target grade and normalizes the scoring, so a 5C and a 6B climber can still race properly.
Project — no clock at all
Work one problem for as long as you want. Shuffle for a new climb when you're ready, filter the pool by grade, sends and favourites as you warm up, search the catalogue by name to jump to a specific climb, and take a timed rest only if you want one. Attempts are still scored into History and Stats.
What it doesn't do
Boulder Blitz is a session runner, not a replacement for Tension's own app — the honest limits: