Preventing Rock Climbing Hand & Tendon Injuries: Part 3 - Dynamic Hang Boarding - Bottom Up

How do you hangboard? Are you a long-time rock climber who wants to climb for a lifetime? A beginner climber who wants to train right and train smart to prevent injury? Are you currently side-lined due to a tendon or pulley injury in your hand and want to know how to rehabilitate it? Are you scared by witnessing your friends get sidelined from finger injuries for months or years and you want to do what you can so this doesn’t happen to you?

https://youtu.be/NuPYYDr0MB8

This is a long-awaited Part 3 to our video series about preventing rock climbing finger, pulley, and tendon injuries in the hand. Make sure to watch videos Part 1 & Part 2, if you haven't already, in which Dr. Elle explains why injuries commonly occur in the hand and tendons/pulleys of the hand, how your technique may be contributing to this, and why strengthening your hand, not just your forearm is important for preventing this and rehabilitating injuries here.

In this climbing training video, Dr. Elle addresses a common training error in hang board training - when climbers only hang statically. Climbing is not static and the abrupt movements in climbing are associated with injury, especially when projecting a route or problem, when fatigued, and when under-trained - all of which are common. You need to bridge that gap in your training. Here is a bottom up way to improve your hangboard training to include more dynamic load to your fingers and make them more resilient to injury.

Comment below with any questions and let Dr. Elle know what questions you have. This shelter-in-place is a great opportunity to train weaknesses and correct imbalances in your body to get you climbing healthy for a lifetime.

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Daily Dose of PT (#dailydoseofpt)

Yep, I made a hashtag #dailydoseofpt. Why? Because everyday for 2019 I’ve committed to myself, for my own personal health to do at least one physical therapy exercise. I’m not going to limit myself to one, but I will do at least one.

After some thought, I thought": “why not bring others along?” 365 exercises is a lot and sharing them is a lot, so the daily dose of PT will be shared just on one platform. For ease of use, I’ve chosen Instagram and the live story. It’s not that you won’t find any excerpts or references anywhere else - blog, Facebook, Youtube, Google+, or newsletter, but the journey will be unfolding and evolving on Instagram live and then kept up on the story for 24 hours.

Daily dose of PT - climbing gym edition

My hope is that my quest for personal health and well-being will be educational and motivational for you and those that stumble across it. At the time of the writing of this blogpost, I am 9 days into the challenge, with 356 to go. There are lots of opportunities to participate. To not miss out, make sure you follow @artisanpt on Instagram and even allow notifications for live posts from me.

The focus to-date of the #dailydoseofpt has been primarily shoulder, neck, shoulder blades (scapula), and postural stability. Over the course of the year, the whole body will get covered, as needed by my own personal PT intervention needs. If there are regions or parts of the body, that you would like me to focus on, let me know and I’ll do my best to incorporate them sooner rather than later.

Thanks for joining on this journey to optimize health and wellness.

Together, let’s get moving!

Liz

Pull-ups!! - January Daily Fitness Challenge

Pull-ups. Pull-ups can be an arch nemesis for some, yet pull-ups are essential to advancing rock climbing potential. 

This January I've been continuing my daily fitness challenge, that I began in October of 2017. The first month I ran, the next month I did abdominal exercises everyday, and December I did and 7 minute body weight exercise routine, and in January, right now, everyday I'm doing pull-ups.

I've been able to do pull ups for a long time. Meaning I have had the strength to do pull ups for a long time. But strength is different than endurance. If I want to climb long or hard I need to have the endurance to sustain myself. So my pull-up challenge this month is important for my performance while climbing. 

But first and foremost I'm using it as a transition from not climbing for almost a year back into climbing. The progressive loading through my finger flexor tendons my joints, my finger pulleys, my lats, my shoulders, and my rotator cuff will be essential to the health of those tissues as I transition back into climbing. (Let's be honest: gripping to the edge of a cliff for dear life is not the most normal thing for the human body, but it sure is fun!) The body does the best with slow sequential loading, with time for recovery, and time for the body to rebuild and remodel. While I have the strength and ability to climb brief bursts of climbing at the level I did when I stopped a year ago, my tissues haven't been repeatedly loaded over that time and are vulnerable. This is a common mistake that people make that leads to injury. People often want to start off where they left off, regardless of the time that has transpired since their last participation in the activity. What I encourage my patients and clients to think of when they're deciding their activity level is not - what did they do the last time they did it - but rather - how much of those movements and activity and similar loading of the joints and muscles and tendons have you done in the past few days, weeks, and months. This should be your guide. Increase slow from what you've  done recently. In this way you're building your body to be healthy for a lifetime.

So'm getting back to climbing, but not before I begin with some progressive loading off the wall. Because of my baseline strength, pull-ups are sufficiently safe, but for others starting with partial weight gripping and pulling would be much more appropriate. I started with 10 pull-ups per day and added 10 pull-ups per week until the end of the month. Always mixed in with in my workouts is common sense and listening to my body. I'm always having a conversation with my body to determine whether I should do something or not and I modify as needed to stay healthy. No fitness challenge should lead you to unhealth. 

P.S. Going now to stretch these lats that are getting overloaded through pull-ups, and soon, climbing!

Let's Get to the Source - and TOGETHER - Let's Get Moving

Liz

Preventing Rock Climbing Hand & Tendon Injuries: Part 2 - Techniques For Open Grip Strengthening

People are often injured by trying to progress too quickly and this is very prevalent in rock climbing. People fall hard for the sport and enjoy the challenge of pushing their limits, but lack the knowledge needed to stay healthy, prevent injury, and thus climb for a lifetime and not have to take months and month off due to tendon or pulley injuries in their hands or forearms.

In this video you'll learn the how-to principles of hand strengthening to cross train to improve open grip strength and reduce hand pulley and tendon injuries for rock climbers. Climb better, climb harder, climb longer. Climb for a lifetime.

For a personalized assessment, contact us at our Portland office.

If you have injured this area, make sure to give sufficient rest and see your local PT who specializes in manual therapy & treating climbers to learn how to get back to your prior level and incorporate this open hand strengthening to improve your grip and reduce compensatory strategies that overload your pulleys. Also find out how shoulder weakness, for example, can influence which grip you choose. 

This is Part 2 of a 2 Part series, with the possibility of a Part 3 adapted to interest, questions, and feedback from the first 2 Parts. Watch Part 1 to learn why hand strengthening matters to prevent injury and the important of incorporating into your climbing routine. Questions? Should we do a Part 3?

Let's Get to the Source, and TOGETHER, Let's Get Moving!

Car accident blues

Were you in a auto accident? Rear-ended? T-boned? Don't relinquish control of your health!

One of the biggest mistakes we see people make after automobile accidents is not taking responsibility for their health. Waiting on payment from insurance and settlements before receiving professional medical care to rehabilitate from whip lash, pulled, strained, and sore, achy muscles, joints, and ligaments is common and results in prolonged injuries, negative outcomes, side effects, and chronic pain.

The best thing to do is to receive professional care as soon as possible, and what better, than a physical therapist? Physical therapists are EXPERTS in musculoskeletal movement dysfunction and rehabilitation.

Make sure to rest, limit extremes of body range of motion and speed, let your body recover, and take steps to reduce inflammation in your body. Don't put off take care of your health. It is your livelihood. It is your life. First get the quality, personal, and focused care you need to deal with your motor vehicle accident (MVA).

At Artisan Physical Therapy, you don't get generic treatments such as lying on hot packs, getting electrical stimulation, and ultrasound. Instead you get quality and focused manual therapy specifically suited to your needs to reduce swelling, inflammation, pain, stiffness and tightness so that you can get back to doing what you love and when you want to do it. We give you things to put you in control of how you feel - education on the specifics of what to do and what not to do in your daily activities and active body movements and therapeutic exercises.

It's not uncommon that people through care with Artisan Physical Therapy can learn more than they even knew about their bodies and live healthier lives than they did even BEFORE their car accident.