Climbing Injuries: What to Do in The First 10 Minutes, 10 Hours, 10 Days, and 10 Weeks

Hooper’s Beta Ep. 17

Intro:

In this video we lay a basic foundation for how to respond to an injury while climbing. Hopefully, after watching this you will say to yourself "duh, that makes sense", but realize that a lot of us don't know some of the basic steps to take to fully understand our injury.

In the video I mentioned testing your mobility, strength, and function. What does that mean?

Mobility:

This is as it would seem: it is your range of motion. Testing your mobility is simple, you just want to see if you can take your joint through the full normal range of motion without pain. If you cannot do this relatively simple task, then you need to rest, your body is dealing with an issue. If you don't have pain with mobility, test the strength with light resistance training.

Strength:

Initially, this may just be using your own body, example: if you hurt yourself in a pocket, use your other hand to test your individual finger resistance to see if there is pain. Or, it may be introducing a light external resistance if your own body weight is not enough. Before you test your injury in function, you need to make sure it can handle some light resistance. Pain with light resistance would be an indicator you need to rest.

Function:

This is what it sounds like, you need to test your strength and mobility in a task related to what you want to perform... ie climbing. If you hurt your hand crimping, place your hand in a crimp position and start to lightly load it, if this is painful, stop. If you hurt your shoulder while you were fully extended, try and replicate that position but in a controlled setting (use a counter weight or use a stool by a pull up bar so you can slowly load your shoulder while extended). The amount of force is obviously very important. If you had a significant injury and are 6 weeks out, you want to slowly load your tissue.

Return to sport training:

Once you can go through pain free range of motion and light resistance does not cause significant pain, one thing that can help is light resistance to the tissue (if it is not a huge injury :) ) to stimulate healing. You should not have sharp, searing pain with this, but rather just the sensation that you are stimulating the tissue.

Knowing what pain is good / bad:

If you are in the acute inflammatory period, no pain is good pain. You are irritating the tissue. I use the analogy of "drying glue". Have you ever glued two objects together, got impatient and checked only to discover you just ruined your gluing because it wasn't dry yet? Be patient, let the tissue heal before you apply too much pain. If you are out of the acute inflammatory period (say you're more than 3 weeks and not having any pain or signs of inflammation) then some discomfort is "OK". If you are at a 0/10 at rest, then a 1-2 point increase that goes away immediately after the task is OK. If you do something that causes a jump to a 4/10 and that discomfort lasts more than 30 seconds, you have done too much. If you don't know if you are in the acute inflammatory period and are nervous to return to training, seek out professional assistance.

Return to sport:

So, say you had a minor injury and decided to take just a full week off. The best bet is never to go back full on into what caused you pain. If you hurt yourself crimping, don't go back to working on your hardest crimp project. You may be feeling great after that week of rest, but don't realize your tissue is still weakened by the injury, it simply is no longer going through acute inflammation so it is not producing a pain signal.

Conclusion:

If you are ever skeptical about how you are doing, but don't want to seek professional help, give yourself more time. Be patient! Don't allow yourself to return too quickly and come back too hard simply to re-injure the tissue but at a greater level where you now need to take 2+ months off. It's not worth it!

Disclaimer:

As always, exercises are to be performed assuming your own risk and should not be done if you feel you are at risk for injury. See a medical professional if you have concerns before starting new exercises.

Written and Presented by Jason Hooper, PT, DPT, OCS, CAFS

IG: @hoopersbetaofficial

Filming and Editing by Emile Modesitt

www.emilemodesitt.com

IG: @emile166

Special thanks to The Wall for letting us film!

IG: @thewallclimbinggym