Nagging injuries/pains

I’ve had my fair share of small injuries… nothing that has stopped me from climbing for like over a week or two, but there are some that have never seemed to go away. Does anyone ever climb like they’re truly injury free or at some point, are we all carrying some sort of thing we have to be mindful of when climbing?

I'm constantly sore, especially if I do 3+ hours in the gym.  Occasionally I flirt with something I'd term an "injury" and end up at the physio to get some ideas on rehabbing.  The physio is actually located in the climbing gym. That should tell you how often people are going to see him with their nits and pains.

Most climbers I know have some kind of persistent problem they work around... sometimes for years.

How old are you?

I would say that for years I mostly climbed injury-free. Oh, I would get injured, but I would always go to a trusted PT right away, take time off (if instructed), and religiously follow the rehab protocols. So when I healed, I healed fully, and then climbed without any nagging party-healed problems. Until the next injury, that is.

But eventually you get injured in such a way that “full recovery” isn’t possible. Your broken ankle will always be just a touch stiffer or less mobile than the unbroken one, your one shoulder a touch wonky, your finger slightly crooked, the knuckle slightly swollen, etc.etc.

And then you learn to live and climb with those. I now have my share of them.  

IMO this is fundamentally no different than getting old in general. Nobody who dies of old age dies with all their body parts in perfect working order. 

I dealt with nagging hip pain for years. Fast forward to a relationship that pulled me away from climbing, then a pandemic and a new obsession with backcountry bow hunting. I took a long time away from climbing (like didn't climb much for about a year). I'm back to it, stronger than ever: I now climb injury free, and it's amazing. I didn't even realize how the pain and favoring the injured area had been affecting my movement. Climbing is sweet, but not worth a life of chronic pain. Taking time off to actually heal properly is the norm in other sports. Climbers tend to be obsessive though.