Morning Finger Wood

I have stiff fingers in the morning. Pretty much every morning, I wake up and it hurts like hell to bend my fingers. With each subsequent bend of the fingers, the pain lessens and lessens until about mid morning where they feel fine. Has anyone else experienced this?

I generally climb at the gym until about 10-10:30 then go to bed about an hour later. Should I be doing some kind of warm-down stretches for my fingers? Is this some other type of tendonitis that seems to affect every climber? It doesn't affect my climbing at all as I feel fine by the time I hit the rock or plastic, but it is irritating.

Any help is appreciated and I apologize in advance if this is a redundant post. I looked for the other finger related posts and didn't see this specific problem.
THANKS!
Greg

I'll be very interested in the replies to this. I have the same symptoms. I find that aspirin really helps.

Morning Finger Wood

I've got a chronic disposition here with bouts of acute inflammation; I need help as well.

Of course there are multiple different stretching and warm downs you can do. Aside from that, make sure you do not sleep with a clenched fist. Its really hard to break the habit, but focus on having your fingers fanned out when you go to bed. A professional piano player gave me this tip and it has worked well.

I started doing these stretches because of a joint injury, but I noticed that they helped for what you talking about also.

youtube.com/watch?v=IMO__Or…

Crimpy indoor routes give me lots of grief.
I've found a solution that works very well for me: Stretching/flexing the opposite muscle groups.

• Curl the distal interphalangeal joints as tightly as possible while the proximal joints stay neutral.
• Use your other hand to curl them tighter stretching those extensor tendons.
• Flex the finger extensor muscles to try to extend the fingers against the pressure of the opposite hand.
• Slowly relax the grip of the opposite hand.

It seems that this helps re-center the joints, because it has mostly cured the morning creaky fingers I used to have.

Luke Wakefield wrote:make sure you do not sleep with a clenched fist.

Really good advice! Poor sleep positions can aggrivate elbows, knees & backs as well (IME).

Also, you're probably climbing too much. How many days/week, hours/day do you spend at the gym?

This happened to me a lot when I was first climbing, and pushing my limit bouldering on crimps. I also found my fingers swelled to the point that I couldn't get my ring on/off. I also used to climb until 10 or 11 at night (and more often than I should--often four days in a row without a rest day). I worried for a long time that it might be something more than a climbing problem--early onset arthritis, circulation problems--but it DID start to go away after a few months.

Hope this doesn't sound patronizing. Sorry in advance if it does... And perhaps someone with more physiological/medical background can weigh in on this, and clarify/correct any errors...

How long have you been climbing/climbing hard? My theory was that my fingers were having to work overtime to develop stronger tendons early on in my climbing career. I know that climbers' tendons are greatly more developed than most folks', and I guessed that my fingers were having to adjust to the larger mass and to the strained and micro-torn tendons. I'd climb hard, and late, and sleep soon afterward. Since my fingers are usually flexed at night, the repairs done to the tendon by my body were done largely in the flexed, rather than extended position, causing the tendons to favor the flexed state. I also guessed that some amount of fluid had to accumulate in the fingers as the repair was going on, and that this caused additional discomfort.

This went away after a few months and I guessed that my tendons had developed a critical mass, and strength, in my fingers. This meant that the micro-ripping occurred less frequently, and less severely, so that my fingers started swelling and hurting less the next morning. I think it also helped to learn that rest days (I generally climb T/Th/Sat/Sun each week now) really improved my climbing, and prevented tendon fatigue/overuse/pain. I do occasionally get this problem after long crimp-fests and hard training days, or if I take some time off.

Again, I'm no physical therapist or doctor, and I've only been climbing for about two years myself. But my problems with this have gone away for the most part with time. Thought that might be of some comfort.

Thanks for the help everyone...I climb MWF at night and Sunday afternoons..Usually for about 2 hours. I've been climbing for about a year and a half.
Jonathan..You mention circulation problems. I find that I wake up with my hands asleep a lot more since this started happenning.
Obviously, this is an internet forum and I can't get medical advice, but I will definitely try these stretching exercises before I go to bed and I'll definitely try to not sleep with a clenched fist..
It's so hard though when I can't get that 11! I get so angry and I just want to punch everything!!!!

You can get medical advice if you ask the right person... like has been stated, sleep with your fingers spread out, at least try to go to sleep that way. Living in Portland will make your joint issues a lot worse due to the constant soggyness of everything (I was there last weekend, I know) but there are a few things you can do to help move things around in there. First off, don't take NSAIDS (asprin, advil, etc) the are useful for cases of acute inflammation but act by inhibiting prostaglandin production which causes terrible side effects when used long term. I would use burdock root (in a tea or tincture) to drain excess fluid and dead cells in the the extracellular spaces and possibly meadowsweet (again, in tea or tincture) as a pain killer and anti-inflammatory agent. There is a solid community of medical herbalists (no, not the kind you find in Humbolt County) in Portland and you should have no problem finding either of those two things. Also, twisting your fingers is a fantastic and highly under utilized stretch, you'd be surprised just how far a knuckle can twist safely.

If you are waking up with numb hands you really need to evaluate your quality of sleep. Try falling asleep on your back, and get those hands out from underneath you.

Yeah, I second the above comment. I had/have similar issues, and found they were considerably aggravated by me sleeping on my arm/hands. If I sleep on my back, my hands are fine in the morning. Makes some sense.

Are you working your oposing muscles? Not working oposing muscle groups leads to frequent climber injuries. Good luck.

I've had the same problem... Due to lack of blood flow, i think. So I've started wrapping my fingers around a heat pad after workouts to improve circulation. I think this may also help to recover faster from workouts.

Hi,

I got a (slight) trigger finger since 2 weeks. Have been waking up with a sore middle finger that snaps once or twice in the morning.
The rest of the day it's fine which makes it that I didn't pay too much attention at first but apparently it's quite important to treat it and take rest before it gets worse.

I did some research and found this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0FfMzemLnU
These guys always seem to have good treaments and explain the issue very well even though the video looks a bit outdated ;)

Going to try this and will report back if I see imporvements etc.

Take care!
Niels

You need to fellatiate your fingers throughout the day, works wonders!

Yoga.