Today I was out sport climbing and took a short, but harsh fall and spiked into the wall pretty hard. When my foot impacted the wall, it hyper-dorsiflexed (the top of my foot and toes came closer to my shin than they should have).

At the time, it was barely painful and I continued to climb for a good half hour afterwards with only very minor discomfort, but within one hour of injury, it was quite tender. Now I can't weight my foot at all. There is no discomfort whatsoever unless I'm weighting my foot and I have pretty much 100% range of motion in all directions. No deformity and no swelling or discoloration either.

Any ideas?

I've been hitting the RICE routine pretty heavily. Going to get X rays in the morning, I'm just curious to hear perspective from climbers because this strikes me as a fairly uncommon injury. It wouldn't be the first time I had a climbing-specific injury misdiagnosed.

I had a similar thing happen almost 2 months ago except add that i inverted my foot as well as dorsiflexed it. I couldn't climb on it immediately afterwards but i did retrieve my gear and hike out on it. Had very minimal swelling with no bruising of any nature. I braced it up and could barely walk for the next week or so. Had X-rays with no broken bones after a few days to get some piece of mind. Seven weeks out, i still have instability and some discomfort in the ankle but am back climbing and biking, with running and mtn biking starting in a week or so.

Take it slow, lots of ligaments down there...most of the time from what i've read, just takes time to heal. Probably stretched or partially tore one of them..most common in ankle sprains is the Talofib but there are plenty of other ones to tweak.

Keep on RICEing it and do your best to stay off it. Try writing the alphabet with your foot to maintain that range of motion.

T