Injury prone looking for hope

[tj]

Hey all - I haven't been on here for awhile but am trying to get back into the program post-op (non-climbing related surgery).  I am hyper mobile which means my joints move more than they should.  This means (according to my doctor, PT, and history) that I am VERY injury prone - sometimes strains but mainly tendinitis.  I have had ongoing issues with my shoulder, knee, and wrist.  Weight training is the best thing for me but it is hard since overuse injuries spring up on me often (so I can't do tons of reps of something without risking injury).  I recently re injured my shoulder and wrist on a particular climb.  Part of the problem is that with my mobility, I don't realize I'm doing damage until later.  Does anyone else have this?    Any other injury prone folks out there who can give me hope?  I feel like every time I start making progress - something happens that drops me right back.  I am restarting my PT routines to strengthen the shoulder and wrist.  Any other tips?

[Lundy]

Sounds like a pretty unique situation that, honestly, I'm not sure is best solved by soliciting tips from us hacks. Not sure where you live, but I would recommend trying to find a physical therapist or trainer who understands climbing and the stresses it puts your body into, and begin working with them to figure out how to get strong in the right way to avoid climbing-specific injuries.

Otherwise, if the general advice is just to get stronger, than I don't see why you should put yourself into the position of potential over-use injuries. As a general rule, as climbers, the idea is to get nails strong without adding weight. The protocol for doing so is very high weight, low rep training. So that's where I would start, but again, seems like a pretty complex issue that you might want more professional support on.

Good luck, though. I hope you manage to figure it out.

[MarkAnderson]

Interesting question. I don't have any experience in this area, but in the past I've used different tricks to artificially limit the range of motion on a recovering joint. Perhaps you could find some braces, or a method of taping that would limit your hypermobile joints to a safe ROM for rock climbing. Maybe something to discuss with your PT.

[Chris W]

TJ, if you have been given specific PT exercises to help specific problems, such as for your shoulder and wrist, you should continue to do them indefinitely if they have been successful in treating/preventing issues.

If you're "injury prone" and you don't have a specific medical condition, such as Ehlers Danlos, you would be well served by getting "strong". It may seem like sacrilege on this site, but I'd recommend you check out athleanx.com. The website looks a bit flashy and caters go guys trying to look a certain way, but don't let that fool you; it's actually very well done.

The guy that designs the program is a physical therapist (masters degree, received before all the programs started becoming doctorate degrees). You'd want to check out AX-1, the men's version. It's very well designed and planned and he does a good job building general strength SAFELY. Sure, he's trying to build muscle and will do some work on legs. If you eat well, you will likely not gain much if any weight. If you're always injured, however, you won't be able to climb.

FYI, I have a lot of personal and professional experience with these types of things. I also recovered from surgery in May (my third surgery) to have a stellar fall season, climbing some of my hardest routes yet.

[Chris W]

And there is always hope

[tj]

Thank you all for the responses! I agree that a PT is the best source of info but I haven't found one that 'gets' climbing yet so I figured I'd try here as well I am looking into tape solutions as well - that's a good place to start I think, and I agree that low rep/high weight might be good (this was confirmed by a PT). I'll check out that workout site as well. It's nice being so 'bendy' but it puts me at such high risk. No yoga (even though I love it), more weights. Thanks for the 'hope' as well. It can be frustrating for sure - gotta focus on the future!

[Steve P]

I can definitely sympathize with being injury prone. It seems like my entire climbing career used to be as soon as I started climbing 5.11's I would end up with some injury/issue that would put me back to square one. When I was 38 I ruptured my biceps tendon, which seemed to be the start of getting significant injuries every year which I never recovered from.

When I started RCTM I was amazed at how I started improving, but didn't get injured compared to my previous haphazard methods. I attribute a lot of this to: 1. Losing about 30lbs.(the book convinced me after years of just saying I should lose some weight). 2. The reduced training volume I was doing in any one particular session. 3. The increased consistency of my training, and the increased precision I was increasing training intensity.

That said, it seems my injury prone ways may be coming back. I tore my calf muscle in July doing a warm-up move on a boulder problem which has sidelined me for the season. Plus I seem to be redeveloping tweakiness in the fingers and shoulders. I think a lot of this may be age related (47 y.o.), but the thing I'm noticing is all of this seems to happen/ be the worst in the last week of the performance phase, so right now the plan is to just have a very short performance window once I get back on track (plus lose a little more weight, add rice bucket, and theraband type prehab excerises for the shoulder, even though I'm not too convinced these last things are helping).