Leann Manriquez
wrote:
Six months ago, I developed a pain in my upper chest after a few weeks of weight training and bouldering (I rarely weight train and usually trad climb). I woke up one morning and noticed the pain, but there was no single 'event.' It is usually dull, but will radiate with certain motions. I didn't climb for a few weeks and it gradually improved but never completely went away, I would still feel it during certain motions (removing my shirt, certain stretches). Then, last week, after working a dynamic, limit boulder problem in the gym, the pain returned as bad as ever. It has never prevented me from climbing, only certain limit moves, but I'm planning to take 6 weeks off and see if that helps.
Has anyone else experienced a similar injury? Of note, I am living in South Korea for the next 8 months and haven't found a doctor that speaks much English, much less is familiar with climbing, hence the appeal to the internet.
I'm not a doctor but I've had lots of muscle and tendon strains and I've just kept climbing to maxinize blood flow and stress new/repair tissue so it knows how to heal correctly, making sure to modify the type of climbing, adding extra rest days, massaging the injury site, hot baths, to keep the pain level below a 3 ideally. Some pain is good, it means you're breaking up scar tissue. This is all for non-acute overuse kind of injuries that have fully progressed into the healing/scar tissue phase which I feel can take from days to months to get through depending on how bad it is. Basically if you can get to where you've had several sessions where the pain either, goes away after you warm up, doesn't hurt more the day after a workout, pain is gradually decreasing over several sessions, etc. then you should keep climbing I feel. Keep experimenting, sometimes that means you'll tweak it, juat be careful. Worst thing at this phase is to keep resting, icing, taking ibuprofen, etc. I never do that stuff.