Finger Pain Without Injury? Help!

I have right middle finger pain. It's achey but also a weird sensitive feeling from my base knuckle to my middle knuckle on the extensor (top) side mainly. The pain comes and goes but has been fairly consistent for about 4 years. 

I have seen great doctors at the Steadman Clinic, but my MRI and xrays came back clean. No arthritis, no tears, no bone spurs, no cysts.

I'm on my second physical therapist for this now too, so I'm seeking professional help, but I'm still at a loss. It doesn't seem to be improving.

Does anyone have experience with finger pain but with no acute injury visible? Maybe something like nerve pain or tendonitis? Tell me about your mysterious finger pain please!

Arthritis?

Beth Y wrote:

I have right middle finger pain. It's achey but also a weird sensitive feeling from my base knuckle to my middle knuckle on the extensor (top) side mainly. The pain comes and goes but has been fairly consistent for about 4 years. 

I have seen great doctors at the Steadman Clinic, but my MRI and xrays came back clean. No arthritis, no tears, no bone spurs, no cysts.

I'm on my second physical therapist for this now too, so I'm seeking professional help, but I'm still at a loss. It doesn't seem to be improving.

Does anyone have experience with finger pain but with no acute injury visible? Maybe something like nerve pain or tendonitis? Tell me about your mysterious finger pain please!

That’s a “tweak”. Pretty normal feeling for lots of climbers. It may get better, it may not. Lots of different things you can do to help but I like constant massage and finger sucking.

Pip synovitis? Do you feel pain when you open hand drag your right hand? Or only when you crimp? Or all the time?
https://stevenlow.org/beating-climbing-injuries-pip-synovitis/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10266264/

Try Emil’s No Hang Protocol at least one session a day. Cleared this issue up for me in just a few days (10ish for me at 30 yr old) and keeps it at bay if I do it as a warm up

I'm dealing with this now. Upped my board climbing frequency and now I have persistent pain on the top of my ring pip and middle finger dip joints. 

Gonna back off and do some frequent low intensity (sub body weight) hang boarding for a few weeks to see if that resolves it.

John Clark wrote:

Try Emil’s No Hang Protocol at least one session a day. Cleared this issue up for me in just a few days (10ish for me at 30 yr old) and keeps it at bay if I do it as a warm up

+1 for the Emil hangboard method. As someone who has had 2 full A2 pulley ruptures daily submaximal hangboarding has saved my fingers I highly encourage you to look into it.

My knuckle pain seems to be 90% resolved, probably due to two changes.

A) My warmup is much more finger focused. Instead of doing a lot of easy jug climbs, I work sub-maximal crimps on the hangboard. 10s on, 1m off for like 10 minutes until I feel like I can hang with no soreness. I also do a lot of manual manipulation of my finger joints to gently stretch their end ranges and hyperextend my dip joints.

B) I've been doing a daily routine of 40% max 7-3 repeaters in full crimp on 10mm edges and this really helps. In a recent Hoopers Beta YouTube vid, he speculates that no-hang has a moderating effect on pain response, which is kinda what we're going for here as long as our range of motion and swelling is OK. 

Anyways, thanks for all the advice above which helped me get to this solution.