Shoulder/ Arm Injury and Not Catching yourself

So this is a two part post. First, about an injury and second on how to prevent re-injuring myself this way.

For nearly 4 months now, I have had persistent forearm aches and pains. For a while, I had a serious case of climbers elbow, complete with a glorious burning in my index finger when aggravated. So I definitely have some nerves caught up in this mess. All of this is going on in my left arm, which I have broken three times, the mid radius, the lower part of my medial epicondyle, and the head of my humerus. I did years of physical therapy under the close supervision of an orthopedic surgeon. Anyway, after over a month off, my arm was feeling pretty good. I climbed for about a month and then last weekend, I slipped on the capitalist crag and caught myself with my left arm. I now have a radiating ache through my biceps brachi and it seems to be following the median nerve. At the time of catching myself, the pain was pretty intense (but I'm apparently nuts as I finished the climb). I'm over a week out, and while not debilitating, I'm still in a fair amount of pain. Obviously, I need to check with an orthopod, but I'm still interested if anyone else has had a similar injury.

On the second topic, my new, bigger pain, is because I caught myself when I slipped/almost fell. Does anyone have any mental or physical tips on how to keep myself from doing that again? I don't love falling, but it's a heck of a lot better than having to wear a brace and eat advil all the time.

We, as climbers, often protract and elevate our scapula in order to maximize our reach. However, I've personally found that as long as I keep the muscles surrounding the scapula engaged (rhomboids, middle and lower traps, etc.) that I avoid injury. The few times that I've sprained or impinged my shoulder while climbing were when I failed to properly engage these muscles, usually when doing something like sticking a difficult dyno when fatigued. Catching oneself on an outstretched arm while falling would definitely be a challenging situation to engage these muscles, however it is possible to improve your timing and strength of contraction by doing an exercise called scapular sets. You can YouTube 'scapular sets' or have a PT show you how to do them. I'm not trying to speculate on what you actually injured but rather sharing what I've found to be a common mechanism for injury for me.

Thanks Jon! Someone posted (and then deleted) something about scapular depressions previously, but this makes more sense. I don't expect anyone to diagnose me, but I'm curious that no one seems to have a similar injury.

Any mental tips on how to not stretch my arm out to catch myself? I almost always climb on top rope as my awesome boyfriend loves to lead so falling really is not an issue except in my head.

On TR not sure about mentally, but physically you could just say "take" and wait for tension on the rope before letting go. That would probably be a step backward for your mental game though.

The practice fall option, which you could do even on TR by adding slack: I just finished reading Macleod's book, and he basically says that if you're gonna go the practice fall route, you have to do it repetitively and consistently in large quantities, day in, day out; not just take one or two on those days you're feeling bold.

In a lead fall, trying to catch yourself is a good way to end up in a crappy,spinning,hit-your-head-on-the-rock fall anyway.