I Had Climber's Elbow. I Don't Have Pain Anymore; and Two Years Later, It Hasn't Come Back

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Overuse. It’s a very real risk in climbing. Finger injuries can happen due to overuse. On big mountaineering routes with a lot of walking under heavy loads, tendonitis can happen in our ankle or knee. And then there is the classic “Climber’s Elbow.”

Luckily we can align the heavy endurance focus of climbing training (and thus the need for many repetitions of particular exercises) with the need for diverse training protocols due to the complex demands climbing puts on our bodies. At the macro level, we can think about things like mountaineering or alpine routes that may demand exception leg endurance, not just finger strength. Or at the micro level, we can talk about the needs for isometric endurance (holding muscles in tension for a long time) along with contact strength and recruitment (getting muscles to contract at high velocity at the moment you grab a hold). Because we need to balance myriad strength and endurance demands, we can - and maybe should - have a wide variety of training stresses. That wide variety can help protect against overuse.

When you get down to it, that what this protocol (which was given to my by a physical therapist) is designed to do: to balance out the seemingly constant work done to improve gripping and pulling. And I was told to create that balance in three ways:

1) flexibility - I needed to work on lengthen the muscles that were getting trained so hard so that the constant contraction (tight muscles) that come from training didn’t place undue stress on the tendon in - in this case - my elbow.

2) mobility - I needed to address the “kinetic chain” that was coming from my shoulders that put more stress on my arms. Because our muscular systems are interdependent, weaknesses or sub-optimal mechanics in one area of the body can create oversized burdens on another area of the body.

3) antagonistic strength - Working a group of muscles creates fatigue in those muscles; at that point, other body tissue will kick in and try to take up some of the burden. If I have other muscles involved in the movement that can still fire while lengthening (like a tricep helping stability your elbow even while contracting your arm), then there is less burden to be taken up by the connective tissue.

So, when I find myself wishing the many and varied types of training demanded by climbing were a little less numerous, I remind myself of the silver lining. If I’m paying attention, that variation is a good excuse to both due the right thing from a “train hard” perspective while also reducing the risk of “overuse.”