PIP (collateral ligament?) tweak, what to do?

[Sander]

I've been climbing consistently for about 4 years now, operate in the higher 5.12 and lower 5.13 range at best and have bouldered several V8's. The past year I included some regular hangboarding in my training, but I've always done maximum hangs with an added weight (typically 12 hangs aiming at failure after 8 seconds with good rests in between, resulting in a low TUT of about 1m36s). Last week, after getting the RCTM book, I started doing the repeater workouts (intermediary level style) suggested by the book. They kicked my but big time and after 5 grip positions I was out of juice both times. I intend to build up to more progressively.

But here's the problem: the day after the second workout, I felt a mild pain in the PIP joint of my (left) index finger on the upper side (is that the collateral ligament?). Weirdly it did hurt upon simply bending the finger, but not (even a bit) when putting strain on it in any fixed position. Today is the second day and I feel significantly less pain, but it's still vaguely there. I'm very afraid to make things worse, but wouldn't want to skip lots of training unnecessarily and miss my planned performance peak... Two questions:

* What would be a good approach with respect to resting/picking up training again? Should I take some time off completely or should I start training with a reduced load again?
* Could this type of injury come from a specific grip position? I can imagine that either the front 3 hang (index finger fully extended, putting strain on the ligament) or the 4 finger half crimp has caused this tweak, but I'm not really sure which to suspect. If I could pinpoint that, maybe I could continue training and leave that specific position out for a while. Any thoughts on this?

Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks a lot!

[MarkAnderson]

It sounds like an inflamed collateral ligament due to training in a non-ergonomic grip position. I would go through all the grip positions you are training and try to figure out (gently) which grip(s) is causing the problem. Once you figure out the problem grip(s), try to correct your form, and if you can't, eliminate or replace the offending grip(s). After that you can probably keep right on hangboarding. Make sure you warm up thoroughly, listen to the affected area during training, take it easy on rest days, and reduce your resistance (which you should do anyway if you're "running out of juice").

[Sander]

Thanks a lot for the reply Mark, much appreciated! I followed your advice and had another hangboard session after identifying the problem grip and so far everything feels good. Maybe it's interesting to share what seems to be the problem. I have a Metolius Wood Grips Deluxe board and performed a front 3 hang on the 18 mm edge. This hold happens to be very close to the centre of the board, causing a tilt in my forearms (elbows are much wider than wrists), which in turn seems to put quite a bit of strain on the collateral ligament of the PIP joint of the index fingers. Poor design I'd say... Today I did the front 3 hang on a much wider set of holds and it felt much better.

Thanks again for the advice!