10 Reasons Your Climbing Injury Won't Heal
Hooper’s Beta Ep. 73
Intro
I have seen a lot of injuries over the years. I mean, heck, it’s literally my job to assess people’s injuries and help them recover. Say you have pain in your finger, you come to me for an assessment, we figure out that it’s an A2 pulley tear, I give you a recovery plan, and Bam! You’re healed up in a few weeks and climbing again like it never happened. Buuuutttt it doesn’t always happen like that.
In this video, we’re going to count down the top 10 mistakes I constantly see that prevent climbers from recovering from injuries. Luckily, they’re pretty easy to fix.
So let’s jump right into it and remember: you can find all this information and more written out in the show notes on our website.
The top 10
10. Not Trusting “The Plan”
Listen, this is a real one. And I get it!! I totally do! Say you’ve got an eight week recovery plan, but on week four you haven’t noticed any progress, so you get discouraged and give up. I mean no one wants to spend a bunch of time doing rehab exercises that don’t work, right? I gotta tell you, there is a level of “faith” that has to be placed in a rehab process, just like with a training process. The reality is you may not see the results you want after four weeks, BUT you may have been perfectly on track to heal up in eight. Don’t give up! If you have a plan, stick to it. If someone helped you or made the plan for you, communicate with them! Like many issues in life, giving up won’t solve anything. Have faith in the plan and keep the lines of communication open.
9. Ignoring Your Limits
We’ve all done it: you think “don’t go climbing” means “just don’t do anything too stupid. Maybe I’m a V7 climber so I can climb V4 fine.” Now, listen, our bodies are pretty smart. They are able to communicate with us when we aren’t feeling perfect. But, the brain is even more powerful. Hell, you could break your ankle and run on it if you were being chased by a bear. So it’s also very possible you could ignore signs of pain or discomfort because your brain prefers climbing over not climbing. Unfortunately this will likely just lead to a setback in your recovery. So, you need to set personal limits and respect them. If you don’t like that idea, simply remove yourself from the temptation altogether so you can finish your rehab process. For example, if you know that a “light climb” is likely going to turn into a full on session of try-hard limit bouldering, either make sure a buddy knows to tell you to stop, or just don’t go to the gym or crag in the first place.
8. Thinking “Healed” = “Strong”
People naturally tend to think that once they feel fine, they should be able to return to 100% of their prior level of activity. Yes, you should be able to get back there over time, but if you haven’t climbed in 3-4 weeks due to an injury, and now you feel great, that doesn’t mean you should try and go back to climbing for 4 hours in the gym. Just because your tissue is healed does not mean it will immediately be ready for intense climbing. Also, other tissues may have gotten slightly weaker due to not climbing at your limit for a while. It will come back quick, so don’t worry, but you still need to start slow and build your tolerance back up, otherwise you’re likely just to repeat the same cycle and get injured again.
7. Living in the Past
Here’s one I hear all the time… “I was so athletic a few years ago, I could just fall down and get right back up, and I would be faster! I could train from dusk to down 9 days a week and it made me stronger.” OK, sorry, but stop living in the past and re-imaging the glory days. Our bodies change, and the way we move changes. We have to recognize and accept those changes in order to remain performing at an optimal level. That may mean you only train 4x/week rather than 5x/week. That may mean only climbing for 2 hours instead of 3. It’s OK. This may actually make you a stronger climber because you are recognizing the limits of your body and learning how to avoid injury. If you’re not injured, you can keep climbing, and if you keep climbing, you’ll get better at it! Easy enough, right?? Recognize your current level rather than living in the past and make appropriate changes so you can keep training, keep climbing, keep sending, and do it all over again…
6. Thinking “One Day Early” Won’t Matter
You got impatient and rushed the process. This… is probably the hardest one. How many people want to WAIT to get back to climbing?!?! No one!! I get it. And climbers are definitely not the only ones guilty of this. Take a pulley injury, for example: by forcing the tissue to adapt to changes it is not prepare to, you may be INCREASING the risk of re-injuring that tissue. If you, rather, wait an extra day or a week, the tissue may be more healed and more capable of accepting the load, which will allow you to progress with your rehab. It’s so hard when you suffer an injury to be taken away from your sport. I get it. But here’s the reality. Sometimes giving yourself an extra day or two off when you aren’t fully confident in the injury can save you weeks of suffering further injury. It’s simply a matter of delayed gratification. Simply waiting a week could save you a month in the long run! If you rush the process and suffer a setback, you’re just costing yourself more time. So, be patient, listen to your therapist AND your body. Speaking of rushing the process… There’s so much more to talk about near this field
5. Being Too Good at Rehab
You thought you could "speed up" the process by doing your rehab exercises 4x/day instead of 4x/week like you were told, and now you're wondering why everything hurts. This one is almost one I think of as an injury of excellence. I have a love / hate relationship when this happens. I loooove that you’re taking an active role in your rehab and that you want to get better. BUT, and this is an important but. Healing takes time. And if you’re told to only do it 3 or 4 times a week, it’s for a reason. Be patient with your rehab process and if you feel rushed or frustrated, that is normal. But, if you feel this, speak to someone about it. If you’re working with a therapist, they should be equipped with the knowledge to help guide you through this frustration and guide you in whey it’s important to follow the healing plan. Oh and this brings me to my next point.
4. Not Making Rehab Convenient
OK so this is actually a super important one to me, and one that I try my best to do with everyone I work with. If things are not convenient, they don’t get done. Rehabbing an injury can be exhausting. Finding time is not always easy. Doing the 1800 things your rehab plan entails can feel impossible. I absolutely understand. So… make it convenient! Are you doing a piriformis / glut stretch laying on your back? Why not do it sitting instead? You can’t always lay down at work, it’s kind of awkward, but you can eeaasssiilllyyy do a sitting stretch! What about at your lunch break? Do you have 10-15 minutes that you can do a few stretches? Do it! The truth is if you don’t find a convenient manner or routine to do your rehab, it won’t get done. And if you don’t do your rehab, your injury won’t improve or it will just take much longer to do so. So, instead of coming up with an excuse, take 10 minutes right now to lay out a convenient rehab plan for yourself, or better yet talk to your PT so they can help.
3. Not Being the Protagonist in Your Rehab Journey
You know the one defining feature that makes a movie’s protagonist either captivating or a total bore? Active decision-making. If a character in a movie just sits back and lets things happen, only reacting to things rather than acting on their own accord, the movie is bound for failure. Take a cue from Hollywood here, and be the Protagonist. Your body wants to heal, but you have to do something about it! How many people have had ankle sprains or injuries?? How many just rested and let it “heal up on it’s own?” I hear this alllll the time. And here’s the truth: anytime you injure connective tissue, without proper retraining, it likely will not heal to it’s original strength. To actually get back to 100%, you have to retrain the tissue! We also discussed this on our Why your FINGER INJURY WON'T HEAL and HOW TO FIX IT video. Dr. James Lee pointed out that many people used the initial lockdown from the pandemic as a time to “rest” their injuries, only to return to climbing to discover it is still there. If you don’t become the protagonist in your rehab journey, you are doing yourself a major disservice.
2. Rehabbing the Wrong Injury
This is a huge one and is going to lead us into our number one reason pretty soon here. Take for example our neural tension video. We point out that sometimes median nerve compression can be misdiagnosed as climber’s elbow. If you’re treating the wrong injury, the rehab process isn’t going to move forward. Here’s the thing: climbing is such a complex sport and the research on injuries and training for climbing is still relatively new. As a result, proper diagnosis can be challenging. Think about it this way: have you ever just had like a runny nose or twitch in your eye, and you try to figure out what the cause is by searching online? You usually end up crying in a corner because WebMD told you you have brain cancer or something. Climbing is the same way; there are so many factors that go into it that you need to be very careful when self-diagnosing. Make sure you get your information from a quality, science-backed source, and don’t try anything that makes you nervous or causes you pain. Proper diagnosis is essential to safe recovery.
Okay, we made it to number one. Yeehaw! I’m actually a little nervous though. I think this one is going to make some people mad. But screw it, in the name of healing, I’m just going to come right out and say it
1. Seeking Help from the Community
This is actually the exact reason Emile and I started this YouTube channel: Climbers often don't seek professional help, but rather go to the community "expert.” And I get it! It’s a natural response. The climbing community is such a great part of climbing. It’s one of the main reasons I got into climbing in the first place. The people are great, and we tend to look up to those who are better climbers than ourselves. We see skilled climbers as being experts in all things related to climbing just because they can climb hard and they “get it.” You go to your regular doctor, and they “don’t get it.” They don’t know what a Gaston is or what a rose move is. They don’t understand the impact climbing has on your life, and so you don’t trust them. On the other hand, you do trust your fellow climbers, so why not ask them for help? Unfortunately, when it comes to climbing injuries, that is often not a great idea. In fact it’s a common fallacy to believe that someone’s expertise in one field automatically translates to other fields. This has caused a lot of people to waste their time on incorrect rehab techniques and sometimes make their injuries worse. There's nothing wrong with asking people for advice, but you have to be able to differentiate the value of rehab advice from another climber vs a rehab program from a professional physical therapist. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should never ask other climbers for advice. That would be horrible! But I am saying that asking climbers with no comprehensive training in anatomy and physical therapy is usually not the right move. And this is not a sales pitch from me. If you want to see a physical therapist, by all means use whomever you want! I don’t care who it is as long as they’re properly qualified to help you. :)
And that’s it! 10 reasons why your injury didn’t heal. Thanks for listening and always, hit that like button and subscribe! But for real, if you’re at this point. Please consider it. It helps the channel and helps us continue to make content.
Until next time. Finish your rehab, take an active role in your training, that way you can get back to climbing, sending, and hopefully you won’t have to repeat the rehab part if you learned something from this video *wink*
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 Produced by Jason Hooper (PT, DPT, OCS, SCS, CAFS) and Emile Modesitt
IG: @hoopersbetaofficial
