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Pushing ratings while avoiding finger injury..

Original Post
Ted Pinson · · Chicago, IL · Joined Jul 2014 · Points: 252

...How do you guys go about doing this? I've been climbing for about 2 1/2 years and sailed through .7-.9s during my first year and have been working my way through .10s and .11s since. I find myself at a frustrating point where I'll be trying to push my ratings and project progressively harder climbs, but my fingers are holding me back. I'll often feel soreness in the tendons and joints for a few days after a hard climb, even as the rest of my body bounces back pretty quickly. I've heard that building finger strength takes time and often under paces everything else (technique, other muscle strength, etc), yet I've met climbers who shot through and were leading .11s and .12s within a year, which to me is insane! Any ideas?

Muscrat · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Oct 2011 · Points: 3,625

drugs

Andy Bandos · · CO · Joined Aug 2013 · Points: 760

Genetics, age and diet play a big factor. People that can progress and climb 12s in a year probably have 2 of the 3 going for them. Also, I've seen people climb overhanging jugfest 12s who get spanked on techy vertical face climbing (both indoors and out).

Massage and ice help get some blood flow in the tendons of the fingers. Depending on the type of climbing (small vertical crimps vs large overhanging jugs) I feel soreness the next day. I try and stretch, massage and ice after a hard day of climbing.

Ryan Arnold · · SLC · Joined Jun 2012 · Points: 751

I agree with Andy. Also, tendons and ligaments take up 7 years to catch up to newly hypertrophied muscles in terms of strength. You'll be risking a serious ligament/pulley injury if you ignore what your body is telling you. I speak from experience.

If you just can't contain yourself, I'd buy the Anderson rock prodigy book (or some other training program) and get going on a serious training regimen so your body can adapt to incrimentally increased stresses.

Jay Samuelson · · Colorado · Joined Nov 2006 · Points: 1,896

Ted: I had a similar transition, although I had been climbing for almost 4 years before I started to push into 5.12, so maybe I had more base finger strength. But when I moved into those grades the fingers on both my hands started swelling constantly, and my fingers always seemed to hurt. I couldn't touch the base of my knuckles with the tips of my fingers (think of clenching your fist) for almost a year on each hand. During that time I taped, iced(huge help!), warmed up my fingers before climbing, and listened to my body. When they hurt a lot I stopped climbing, when they just seemed sore and swollen I kept climbing but with focused attention on them and stayed on bigger holds. I also started trying to open grip everything as opposed to crimping everything; this relieved the stress and strain on my fingers while still climbing and building finger strength. It was a long process, took time and energy, but eventually the swelling went away and it felt like my fingers had caught up to the rest of my body.

Or you could probably achieve all of that in 6 months with the rock prodigy training book/fingerboard and not go through time and hassle I did waiting for my fingers to catch up. Your best friend will be patience though - it seems like fingers take forever to get stronger..... until you injure one, then you realize they take forever to heal (if your lucky enough to get back to 100% post injury). A good way to pass the time waiting for finger strength to catch up is improve your footwork, technique and core-strength; you'll probably climb 5.12 faster that way anyway.

Anonymous · · Unknown Hometown · Joined unknown · Points: 0

Are you talking about a gym or real rock? I normally see alot of gyms make "hard routes" by using tiny crimps etc. If you are doing harder routes outside it is different and will not cause injury like trying to climb hard in most gyms.

Maybe you just find a different style of climbing than what you are trying. Go do a 12 slopper route and you should have no finger problems.

Trycycle · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Mar 2014 · Points: 699

Progress slowly.

Ted Pinson · · Chicago, IL · Joined Jul 2014 · Points: 252

Thanks for the replies, guys! Yeah, that's exactly what I'm afraid of Ryan...sometimes I'll feel myself holding back and not quite locking into that crimp because I'm afraid of hurting myself. The hard thing is telling soreness from injury when it comes to fingers...

Jay: that's exactly the symptoms I'm having, especially swelling and difficulty touching the knuckles. I've noticed that ice does help...tape is a good idea as well. I usually only tape when I get skin flappers.

Viper: mostly gym climbing, and yes...ridiculous crimps tend to abound. Unfortunately, in Chicago it is difficult to get outdoors regularly, so most of my climbing is indoors.

Interesting that a lot of people are endorsing the fingerboards...Are they effective at strengthening without causing injury?

Mathias · · Loveland, CO · Joined Jun 2014 · Points: 306

Ted, I've been climbing just about 7 months. I've had a lot of joint soreness in my fingers, ocassionally some soreness in the pulleys, and almost constant soreness in my forearms (though) it moves around.

Now perhaps I'm genetically lucky, or maybe it's the almost decade of manual labor, or maybe the years of constant guitar playing as a kid, but I've not had any issues reaching into the 5.10 range indoors. I've been "on" for the past 3 days and climbing pretty hard. As I type, I know that I need a day or two for rest and that more climbing tomorrow would be a bad idea. I guess what I'm saying is, listen to your body. Pain is a part of strenuous physical work, but too much is bad. Sharp pain is always bad in my experience, but a dull ache (to me) is a sign my body is going to heal up stronger.

I boulder in the gym frequently, to increase contact strength. And wherever possible I try and use open-hand grips to avoid putting too much strain on my pulleys. I realized early on that my hands would hurt after climbing, but they often hurt after a long day with a grinder in my hands too. So I guess I just pay attention and deal with the discomfort.

marty funkhouser · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Dec 2007 · Points: 20

You're playing with fire if you continue to push it with swollen fingers. It's particularly foolish to do so indoors.

mountainproject.com/v/swole…

Ted Pinson · · Chicago, IL · Joined Jul 2014 · Points: 252

Yikes! Thanks for the link. I don't have it nearly as bad as some of the posters there - just a little stiffness - but perhaps I should take a break and/or get a training board.

Eliot Augusto · · Lafayette, CO · Joined Dec 2013 · Points: 60

I think that if you want to climb hard that badly, you should move to a climbing town. Climbing hard in a gym doesn't translate well to climbing hard outside. Ive been looking for almost a year to find an easy overhanging jug route on real rock around where I live. I'd say about 25% of the routes at my gym are that style and "grade". Also, most gyms try to keep their ratings as close to their interpretation as possible. This is why some folks say they haven't ever climbed harder than "real" 5.9+ in a gym. At least to me there is very little correlation with a 3 finger "crimp/jug" pull on a 45deg wall that is a 5.12 and a 5.12 that is 2 miles away in the canyon.

Having said that, when I go to the gym and climb around the grade of real rock except a lot more of it. 10 pitches of 5.9 - 5.11 in a gym will do you much better than 2-3 5.12 runs in the gym. You'll avoid soreness in your tendons because you're not stretching them to the extreme, but you still have to be more conservative in your climbing because you already have the beginning of a finger injury. You'll also build up a better core strength because you're getting your heart rate up slower, you're able to keep it up longer allowing you stay in the optimum "climber zone" of 130-150 bpm. Higher heart rate(hopping on a 5.12 first thing) is more like what a weight trainer wants in terms of heart rate. As an all around bonus, you can still do that 5.9 when you're plumb tired. Work on your desperate foot control, as well as moving and grasping with pumped muscles.

Also, improve your diet. 3 meals a day, 5000+ calories, a practiced and steady workout. Thrashing around on two or three routes doesn't provide the same gains as a long term goal. Besides, if you can't climb that much would you want to spend more time on rock at the crag by having more endurance?

Jon Clark · · Planet Earth · Joined Apr 2009 · Points: 1,153
Eliot Augusto wrote: Also, improve your diet. 3 meals a day, 5000+ calories, a practiced and steady workout.
Unless you are a hyperactive teenager, this is excellent advice for becoming obese.
Eliot Augusto · · Lafayette, CO · Joined Dec 2013 · Points: 60
Jon Clark wrote: Unless you are a hyperactive teenager, this is excellent advice for becoming obese.
Nonsense. That's what I eat. Except I'm also a carpenter moving hundreds of pounds a day. That's down from I used to eat in the Marines, which was about 6,000ish. Most .12+ climbers I've met can pack away lot of food.

Granted I don't sit at a desk and I burn a LOT of energy. So the internet advice should be taken with a grain of salt...
Muscrat · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Oct 2011 · Points: 3,625

+1 drugs

frankstoneline · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Apr 2009 · Points: 30
Eliot Augusto wrote: Nonsense. That's what I eat. Except I'm also a carpenter moving hundreds of pounds a day. That's down from I used to eat in the Marines, which was about 6,000ish. Most .12+ climbers I've met can pack away lot of food. Granted I don't sit at a desk and I burn a LOT of energy. So the internet advice should be taken with a grain of salt...
Diet will certainly help but what you eat is critical not just 'more calories'. Realistically you're likely to be well served by more core work and some fingerboarding in a controlled fashion. Most people have plenty of finger strength to climb 5.12 pretty quickly but lack in the core realm it seems.
reboot · · . · Joined Jul 2006 · Points: 125
Eliot Augusto wrote: Most .12+ climbers I've met can pack away lot of food.
You might as well add taking big dumps as a factor. It'll be just as relevant.
Eliot Augusto · · Lafayette, CO · Joined Dec 2013 · Points: 60
reboot wrote: You might as well add taking big dumps as a factor. It'll be just as relevant.
Why is the shortest part of my long winded point talked about the most? Climbing hard in the gym isn't the same as climbing hard at the crag. Working out your core strength and maximize it with a diet.
frankstoneline · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Apr 2009 · Points: 30
Eliot Augusto wrote: Why is the shortest part of my long winded point talked about the most? Climbing hard in the gym isn't the same as climbing hard at the crag. Working out your core strength and maximize it with a diet.
Because the rest of the post offered nothing but a large helping of misinformation.
Moving to a climbing town is absurd, tell Ben Moon, Jerry Moffat and any number of other legendary crushers that the time they spent on indoor boards wasn't what helped them climb incredibly hard (spoiler alert, it is). If what the dude wants to do is climb 5.12, he has to climb 5.12. Climbing a bunch of 5.10 is all well and good, but will do little if he is limited by other factors (i.e. how hard he can pull on the small grips). Additionally, advising him to keep climbing when tired is poor advice, training to exhaustion will do more damage than good. Also core strength has nothing to do with how quickly you raise your heart rate. These among other reasons are presumably why people focused on your "eet moar fudz" suggestion rather than the rest of it.
20 kN · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Feb 2009 · Points: 1,346
Jon Clark wrote: Unless you are a hyperactive teenager, this is excellent advice for becoming obese.
x2. No one needs those many calories a day unless they are are doing a deca-Ironman, RAAM Solo world record, bodybuilder, or maybe if they are Honnold climbing three walls in a day.

For reference, at 160 lbs running at 5 MPH, to burn 6,000C you need to run about 51 miles across 620 minutes. That is about 1.4 miles short of a double-marathon. If you can pack in those many calories a day and you are not working out like your life depends on it, you must have an extremely high metabolism. That might work now, but once your metabolism slows down due to age, the scale will start to go up.

Also, you cant just eat any form of crap food and expect it to work. To build muscle, you need protein. So if you are working out like a bodybuilder, you need to eat a lot of meat or use protein supplements.

As far as endurance goes, if you start to feel faded you need to increase sodium intake (you loose sodium through sweat) and calories. Sugar helps for quick bursts of energy, although some people crash later in the day so you have to test it. During triathlons, I eat energy gels, which are typically just a gel form sugar, sodium and a few other things that increase calorie density. I think I am going to start using these on hard multipitch routes as well because they are very light, pack small, and very dense on energy and calorie content.
shotwell · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Feb 2011 · Points: 0
ViperScale wrote:Are you talking about a gym or real rock? I normally see alot of gyms make "hard routes" by using tiny crimps etc. If you are doing harder routes outside it is different and will not cause injury like trying to climb hard in most gyms. Maybe you just find a different style of climbing than what you are trying. Go do a 12 slopper route and you should have no finger problems.
I'm not saying that I fully disagree with you, but you can certainly get finger injuries on slopers and pinches. Joint capsule and collateral ligament injuries are worth watching out for with those hold types.

The bigger problem in most climbing gyms is that the setting is poor. Setters can get away with setting crimps and pinches without proper body positions; the effective incut allows climbers to just yard through. Because they are effectively unusable without proper setting, poor slopers tend to be the least injurious hold type in the gym. If pinches and crimps get set with as much forethought as slopers the climbs will be both better and safer.
Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

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