Pain in palm

[Lundy]

Anyone ever had any pain in the base of their palm from a HB session? I was having a dreadful session on Friday morning, really struggling, and on one of my last reps of my last grip (MR deep), I felt some pain through my palm.  I called it quits immediately and had basically forgotten about it as there had been no further signs of an issue. Then, tonight, while trying to open the fridge with just my middle finger, I was rudely reminded of it. Both times I've experienced it (during HB and opening fridge) it hurt quite a bit, but subsided very quickly, and was quickly forgotten. My next HB session was scheduled for tomorrow, but I've decided to do a mellow day at the gym tomorrow instead just to be careful, and try to get back into my HB program for my programmed Thursday session.  Any thoughts on what this is, what I need to be aware of, and if there are any exercises I can do to address?

Thanks, everyone, as always, for your awesome input. 

[Chris W]

Can you be more specific about where the pain is? Have you considered 'testing' the grip by taking a lot of weight off on the hangboard as opposed to a gym session?

[russ]

I've had one injury that hurt in my palm, which may or may not be relevant to yours.
There is some info about lumbrical injuries here.
I'll give my injury story quickly, in case some one else gets a similar injury:
A couple years ago, I was bouldering in the gym, and pinged off a climb cause something went wrong with my hand during the semi-dynamic movement with crimps and pockets. I felt a pain in the palm of my hand, in the middle of the flesh about halfway between my wrist and the base of my fingers, between my pinkie and ring fingers. Took me a while to diagnosis it, but it turned out to be a strain of my 4th lumbrical in my hand. I was able to figure it out by the pattern of the pain-- when pulling hard on all 4 fingers I felt fine, but felt intense pain whenever I pulled on my middle and ring fingers with my pinkie curled, as in a 2finger MR pocket. I think I just strained the lumbrical, as opposed to tearing it (I didn't hear a "pop" and seemed milder than some of the examples I've seen in the literature). Similarly, damaging the 3rd lumbrical would cause pain when using the middle ringer with the ring curled. I took time off climbing and resting off and on for 6months, and it never got better. I don't think it ever would have healed without active physical therapy. Around this time, the RCTM came out, and I started a structured hangboard season, which was ultimately the key to finally getting fully healthy. I trained the 2finger MR pocket, initially taking off boatloads of weight. It was always a dicey balance, trying to decide if I was helping or hurting, because the reps were quite painful. I was always worried whether I was feeling good pain or bad pain, and it kind of felt like my tissue was getting ripped apart when I did my hangs. The next day, however, the fingers would feel better, and I could hang more and more weight on my MR from workout to workout. After the hangboard season, I no longer felt any pain when climbing, even when using 2finger pockets.
The next training cycle, I was surprised when I still felt some pain in the same spot in the palm, but that went away totally by the third workout and I made very consistent progress throughout the HB phase. In my third hangboard cycle, I felt no pain whatsoever, and think it was finally and truly healthy. I progressed extremely well that cycle and managed to gain 30 pounds (!!!) over my previous peak PR on the MR grip (from 30 to 60 pounds on the deeper MR of the RPTC on the second set of the intermediate protocol).

So thanks to the Andersons for their training system and their injury anecdotes, which helped me figure out how to finally get healthy myself.

[MarkAnderson]

It could be a flexor unit strain of the middle finger. I've experienced pain in that area from over-doing it on monos (though in my case the pain was closer to the wrist). If so, I would say it's not a huge disaster, but it would be a good idea to back-off the resistance on the offending grip(s) (sounds like MR pockets at least, plus any other grips that isolate the middle finger in an open position?). And be careful around the fridge!

These types of injuries can vary in severity from mildly annoying to debilitating. I would say you're more on the "mildly annoying" end of the spectrum. If your goals are such that pocket strength is not necessary, you could probably get by just avoiding pockets for the rest of your cycle. Where are you in your Strength Phase? If you have a bunch of HB workouts to go, you might be able to rehab on those grips and be somewhat recovered by the time your Power Phase starts.

[Lundy]

Hey all,
Thanks as usual for all the insights. So the pain on the day I did it was closer to my wrist at the base of the palm. There were two spots where I felt it, roughly in equal positions left and right of the fold in the middle of the base of the palm that runs into the wrist. Fortunately, MR was the last grip I was training, so I just stopped the workout there (this was HB #8). I then skipped my next hangboard session (Monday morning) and just went to the gym to climb light and make sure I didn't feel anything tweaky. (On a side note, I've never bothered to go get on a rope in the middle of my HB season, and wow. I had ABSOLUTELY no endurance whatsoever, but I could hang on EVERYTHING. It was kindof fun). I then tried again with HB #9 this morning. The open hand, crimp, and pinch grips went fine -- no pain whatsoever. However, for the first rep of the MR hang, I eased very, very slowly into the hold, and noticed that, while not super painful, it was definitely not gonna work. This was with +45 pounds, so I decided, just to test it, to take all the weight off and see how an unweighted hang went. I was able to get off the ground, and I wouldn't say it hurt, but it was noticeable.

So, given that I'm basically at the end of the strength phase, I'll probably just skip that grip for the rest of this season (no key MR pockets on anything I'm targeting) and see what happens next season.

On another note, as I've posted elsewhere, I'm trying a max hangs protocol instead of repeaters this time. I'd say for the first 6 or 7 workouts the results were pretty amazing. However, it's been interesting to see how much deeper the plateau is, and I'm also wondering if the added strain is partially what caused this (hopefully) mild injury. I might have used too much volume given the strain of each hang, as well. Either way, I'm thinking it's probably tangentially related, as you're putting your fingers and hand under so much more strain. I will probably continue to experiment with this protocol in the future, but in smaller doses, me thinks.

And yeah, look out for those fridges. They can be a doozy.

[MarkAnderson]

Feb 4, 2016 11:09:01 GMT -7 Lundy said:

So, given that I'm basically at the end of the strength phase, I'll probably just skip that grip for the rest of this season (no key MR pockets on anything I'm targeting) and see what happens next season.

That is what I would do. I would expect by the time you start your next cycle it will be a distant memory (though maybe the MR grip will be a bit weaker than usual from neglect).

One thing to keep in mind is that sometimes you inadvertently find yourself facing the offending grip.  It could happen anytime you're onsighting, but in particular one thing I would be on guard for is hitting a campus rung (or really any dyno) a bit too low, such that only your MR are really latched. I seem to do that a few times each season, and that could have bad consequences for your injury.

[Lundy]

Feb 4, 2016 15:23:12 GMT -7 MarkAnderson said:

One thing to keep in mind is that sometimes you inadvertently find yourself facing the offending grip.  It could happen anytime you're onsighting, but in particular one thing I would be on guard for is hitting a campus rung (or really any dyno) a bit too low, such that only your MR are really latched. I seem to do that a few times each season, and that could have bad consequences for your injury.

Thanks, Mark. Very good call. I'll be very aware of this...

[mcd]

Sorry to resurrect a really old thread, but I just experienced something really similar to the injury described by Russ on Tuesday. I was in the middle of my third Limit bouldering session (ever) and made a big move to a small crimp, I only was able to latch it with three fingers, and probably ended up with my pinky dropped. It felt pretty tweaky at the time but not terrible. Unfortunately several days latter it feels pretty painful any time I load the ring finger without also having the pinky in the same postion. If the two fingers are loaded together everything feels fine. My goal routes are mostly on Gneiss, lots of edges, not many pockets. I am thinking of buddy taping the ring and pinky fingers, ending my power phase and moving on to PE/performance. Hopefully after the sending season I can get back on the hangboard for some rehab. has anyone had much luck buddy taping this kind of injury? the to fingers are sized a lot different, but I think I can make it work.

[russ]

If it's the same issue that I had, then I think you have a good plan. It never felt like I was doing any further damage when pulling on the hand with my pinkie together with the ring finger. Buddy taping could help you from trying to cheat and drop the pinkie mid move (before the instant pain/regret sets in!). When trying to research my injury, seems like some other people have had success with that taping strategy. In general, though, I wouldn't put off rehab too long-- you want the initial swelling to subside, but don't want to wait forever to address it (you're not really helping healing by resting further after swelling is gone, compared to active healing regiments). I think you could easily start rehab on it without compromising your performance phase (after a couple weeks of healing). My first rehab hangboard sessions were sooooooo light weight on my 2F MR that I don't think I was fatiguing my main climbing muscles at all, yet I think I saw pretty big improvement with only a few sessions. Felt a lot more confident on it after the hangboard rehab, though my numbers showed significant regression at first at 2F MR when I started my next strength cycle. By the end of the next cycle, I was stronger than ever on 2F MR (though I pay waaay more attention to my exact hand geometry with 2F pockets now!).

Good luck, if you have to get hurt, this is probably one of the best injuries!

-Russ

[mcd]

Thanks Russ. In the last few days I have had two good sessions at the gym with the fingers taped. No pain at all. I think I irritated the injury more with my poor typing technique at work than I did climbing. I have started to lightly load the ring finger but just with an elastic band, not the hang board. I feel like I would need to remove 80 or 90 lb right now to hang that grip, and I just don't own that much weight! Sending season will abruptly turn to winter in the next few weeks, but I think I should still be able to get after it with this injury.