Hand and Foot Pain
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I'm a fairly new climber, only 5 weeks, and I can only make it to my nearest gym (2 hour drive) about once or twice a week. I usually climb for about 4 to 6 hours a trip. I usually do a warm up. Then work on some skill, anchor building, or multi-pitch belays. Then I work up in difficulty until failure. Then I do a few easy routs to just cool down. Then for the next 5 days my fingers kill me. Hurts like hell the first few, then decreases. Then I go climb again and it starts all over. I'm guessing this is normal. Any tips on minimizing this, or is this normal until I get my fingers built up? |
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Here is what you don't want to hear: |
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I wish I had somewhere close to climb outdoors. I'm in Paris texas, so the closest place worth the trip is at least 3 hours away that I know of. |
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You do need to take it a little easy until your tendons are conditioned for climbing. If you do end up with a tendon injury it takes no less than a few months to heal fully but can leave some life long complications that will hurt your future climbing. |
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Fajita Dave wrote:You do need to take it a little easy until your tendons are conditioned for climbing. If you do end up with a tendon injury it takes no less than a few months to heal fully but can leave some life long complications that will hurt your future climbing.It sucks to hear, but that's about the gist of it. Tendons are slow to grow and slow to heal. If you damage one, you're going to be seriously boned. You can build your muscles but if you're tendons can't handle the power it's kind of useless and dangerous. You just have to listen to your body. Sore is ok, pain is not. If you're in pain you need to rest more before climbing again and then not go as hard when you do. I get trying to spend as much time as possible during your trip to the gym but it won't end well. |
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Tendon problems are BEE-ATCH!!! Patellar tendinitis Put my ski patrol career to rest over 20 years ago. Now I still can't ski more than a day in a row, lest I flare it up again. |
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Chase, if you do want to accelerate how quickly your tendons will adjust to climbing a good diet is going to be critical. Protein is important for both muscle and tendons but vitamin C is pretty critical for helping tendons heal and toughen up. Also getting your vitamins in pill form really doesn't compare to getting them through actual food. Vitamins are hard for the body to process so you don't absorb much of the vitamins you need compared to getting it through fruits and vegetables (brocolli has tons of vitamin C). |
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You would probably be better off doing shorter sessions... which of course you don't want to do because you had a two-hour drive to get there. Consider buying a hangboard/building a little climbing wall at your home/finding some place to boulder. Then you could do shorter workouts that don't stress your tendons so severely, and not feel that it's necessary to climb for 6 hours at a stretch. |
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+1 for the hangboard advice after you learn the technique. I started last year and took a movements class that gave me the basic techniques that I needed in order to start strength conditioning. |
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Everything here is The Truth. Welcome to the wonderfully addictive world of climbing! |
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Ice |