Tendovaginitis

[jwills]

Over the last 3-4 weeks I've been rehabbing what I'm fairly certain is a mild case of tendovaginitis of my left middle finger. I'm in a strength phase right now and can hangboard essentially pain free. I've been making significant gains and as mentioned have noted the pain is decreasing slowly but surely.

I'm now nearing the end of my strength phase and am a little hesitant to start Power as I know that climbing on gym plastic tends to elicit the pain more so than hangboarding. I'm torn between doing a "light" power phase (and potentially stalling the recovery) versus focusing on other things such as endurance (a weakness of mine) for a few weeks while I hopefully fully recover and then restart with another strength phase. As I write this the answer seems obvious to me (endurance, fully heal, start another strength phase and then progress to power) but what is the shortest time people have successfully taken between strength phases? 

In case people are wondering I've been rehabbing with a combination of contrast baths and ice baths (can't decide which one I like more), a little massage, stretching and avoiding things that elicit the pain including avoidance of taping which I think makes the finger worse. 

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. 

[MarkAnderson]

Apr 1, 2016 20:13:55 GMT -7 jwills said:

what is the shortest time people have successfully taken between strength phases? 

In the case of rehabbing an injured finger, one week. Any shorter than that and I think you would just end up with one really long phase instead of two phases.

One thing to consider whenever tendonitis (et al) is concerned is that ARCing and other high volume activities are often worse than more intense activities (such as power training). A lot of folks tend to gravitate towards ARCing or similar low intensity mileage activities when they are injured, which can be exactly the wrong approach for certain injuries (generally, over-use injuries).

If you feel like the condition is gradually improving, you might consider continuing with a normal training cycle. If you think, based on the current trajectory, that you won't be close to 100% by the time the Strength Phase ends, you could simply extend that phase a bit by adding workouts (and slowing or stalling the loading progression so you don't end up battling against a brick wall plateau for session after session).

[chris]

Mark, is there data for that claim about high volume versus high intensity in rehab?

[MarkAnderson]

Not that I'm aware of, but that's been my personal experience with tendonitis (etc) in my fingers. I know that generally in Physiotherapy the philosophy tends towards lower intensity/higher volume for rehab. I agree with that approach for acute injuries, but I've found that piling on even-more-use to an over-use injury is not productive. And to be clear, the problem with ARCing/OM is not the low-intensity, it's the high-volume. Hangboarding is MUCH lower volume (~10 minutes of TUT) than a typical ARC workout (60-90 total minutes, so let's say ~30-45 minutes of TUT per hand).