One more thing: I'm in no way suggesting that you take any of my advice. I'm merely telling you what has worked for me. Many of you may believe my advice to be dangerous. Welcome to earth, newcomer, where the mortality rate is 100%. What are you going to do with your short time? Rest away all the tweaks and twinges, or push through the pain and keep getting better? I suppose that's up to you.

What you absolutely SHOULD do is decide for yourself whether the severity of the pain or injury is enough to warrant seeing a doctor, and only embark on a course of healing that you feel comfortable with.

Now that we understand that I'm no medical professional, let's get on with it. All of us are going to get hurt at some point. A finger, a shoulder, an elbow, a knee; something. Probably all of them. Probably all of them several times. And then a few more. Climbing is hard on our bodies, particularly if you make a habit of going for it, pushing yourself, or giving maximum effort. I've got some experience in this department. I've nursed myself through multiple tweaks to each of my four middle fingers, strains to both knees, both shoulders, several cases of tendonitis in both sides of both elbows, and one very odd tendonitis in the back of my hand that did scary things. I currently have (this is my own diagnosis) medial epicondylosis in my right elbow, and a strain (or possibly tendonitis) of the supraspinatus tendon in my right shoulder. The thing that all these have in common is that I climbed (or am climbing) through them, and that they all eventually disappeared and allowed for mostly pain free seasons. In fact, the only injury that has forced time off was a broken hand, which I sustained while belaying my friend Justin Edl on an ultra thin RP seam in Vedauwoo. He fell, his gear pulled, and I tried to physically catch him. We rolled in the talus, he bruised his heels, I broke my hand. The resulting time off was the period of inactivity that confirmed to me that I had to start training and get better at this climbing thing. Thanks, Justin.

Why not just rest until the tweak is no longer tweaking? Frankly, I've never heard of anyone, though they may exist, who rested through one of these injuries, continued training, and never had a recurrence of the same injury. More often I hear that someone has taken two months off to clear up a sore elbow, and saw it return within a week. In my opinion, resting is ignoring the issue. You're letting the symptoms go away, but you're not addressing the root of the problem. There are steps you can take to strengthen the weakened, injured areas that don't require you to stop climbing entirely. In fact, in most cases, where the injury is a tweak or twinge rather than something more severe, continuing to climb will actually help the healing process.

Let's take a look at a few of the common climbing injuries I've had over the years, and I'll tell you what I did to help the healing process and how (if) it changed my climbing at the time. Again, these instances are merely anecdotal evidence that it can work; what you choose to do about your injury is entirely up to you. This post is only part one and will deal exclusively with fingers and elbows. Later, I'll discuss shoulders and knees.

Fingers

I'll start with the most common: those fragile fingers. The tiny crimps and tweaky pockets, combined with the big dynamic movements that make up many a difficult gym problem, can be hell on your fingers. Add in the fact that the wood and plastic flex a little, then pull back on your fingers, adding to the forces, and you have a recipe for potential disaster. I've had dozens of minor tweaks in my fingers and none have amounted to an epic story. Nearly every one has been the common pulley injury, usually at the A2 pulley.