[smellyfox]

Managed to do this yesterday pulling on a two finger pocket. 

It hurts in my palm and lower finger when I make a fist, which I presume is because of a bit of swelling. Ice and vitamin I for this I'm guessing.

Would it be better to keep it active, ie keep climbing on it while avoiding anything that makes it sore, or should I lay off for a bit? I don't get much pain as long as I'm hanging something with all 4 fingers.

Cheers in advance for any tips!

[TheTwig]

rest for a few days, avoid ibuprofen if you can help it, ice and massage to get blood circulating around, gradually start climbing again but if it hurts then rinse and repeat until it doesn't hurt.. (IMHO)

[Three Nine]

Managed to do this yesterday pulling on a two finger pocket. 

It hurts in my palm and lower finger when I make a fist, which I presume is because of a bit of swelling. Ice and vitamin I for this I'm guessing.

Would it be better to keep it active, ie keep climbing on it while avoiding anything that makes it sore, or should I lay off for a bit? I don't get much pain as long as I'm hanging something with all 4 fingers.

Cheers in advance for any tips!

mite well be a torn lumbrical, of which i've had a few. If so, couple of rest days, then resume climbing and don't do anything where you drop your pinky (or anything else that hurts). It will take ages to be back to full strength on anything where you drop your pinky, however you should be able to crimp hard etc. You'll be fine.

[smellyfox]

[/quote]
mite well be a torn lumbrical, of which i've had a few. If so, couple of rest days, then resume climbing and don't do anything where you drop your pinky (or anything else that hurts). It will take ages to be back to full strength on anything where you drop your pinky, however you should be able to crimp hard etc. You'll be fine.
[/quote]

Thanks. Could well be this, as there is no pain at all when crimping. At least it's happened now when the weather is shit...

Any reason why I should avoid ibuprofen? I've always considered it quite a good anti-inflammatory...?

[Fultonius]

I had never even heard of a lumbrical before,  know I realise that's what's been bother me recently! Seems to heal up quite quick.

Sent from my XT1039 using Tapatalk

[smellyfox]

I had never even heard of a lumbrical before,  know I realise that's what's been bother me recently! Seems to heal up quite quick.

Sent from my XT1039 using Tapatalk

Good to know! (Not good to know that it's been bothering you obviously, but good to know yours healed up fairly quick).

[Three Nine]

Yeah i've had a couple of these. Flexor unit strain involves pain in your forearm because its some shit to do with the tendon attaching to your flexors.

From what i understand, your ring and pinky fingers sort of have the same tendon, which splits at some point in your hand before it gets to your fingers. After it splits there are these little muscles called lumbricals which hold the two bits of the bifurcated tendon together (i think?) So when you pull on a two or three finger pocket and curl your pinky into your palm (as you do when giving it some shit), it puts strain on this little muscle and if you pull too hard or too much you can tear the muscle.

Fortunately i dont think the muscle does much else, so if you avoid those grips till its not sore and then train them again very gradually on a hangboard before using them in anger, you can get by just fine.

[Three Nine]

Personally if its sore id use ibuprofen for a few days.

[Nutty]

mite well be a torn lumbrical, of which i've had a few. If so, couple of rest days, then resume climbing and don't do anything where you drop your pinky (or anything else that hurts). It will take ages to be back to full strength on anything where you drop your pinky, however you should be able to crimp hard etc. You'll be fine.

I've done this a couple of times, once trying to force improvements in open-handed strength on the fingerboard and once when my feet cut loose having caught a hold open handed with only two fingers. Crimping still felt absolutely solid and pain-free, but isolating the fingers open-handed caused pain in the palm of the hand. Takes a while to fully recover. Since these injuries, I always include warming up the lumbricals as part of my warm up by squeezing a hand therapy ball sideways between the fingers, and haven't done it again since. Once the swelling was reduced, I started doing very low resistance open-hand pulls and built up the resistance slowly, and massaged the part of the hand where the tear was.

I'm much more wary of over-doing moves involving pockets/open-handed grips involving 2/3 fingers now, having previously thought training open-handed grips was 'safe' compared to crimping/half crimping. 

[smellyfox]

Thanks everyone. Some good info here.

[kelvin]

mite well be a torn lumbrical, of which i've had a few. If so, couple of rest days, then resume climbing and don't do anything where you drop your pinky (or anything else that hurts). It will take ages to be back to full strength on anything where you drop your pinky, however you should be able to crimp hard etc. You'll be fine.

Cheers for the probable diagnosis - stuffed the left hand up on Wed being a bit overkeen on my first full effort indoor session on exactly the sort of hold and move that made me pull my pinky into my fist and use the other three.

Crimping is fine, so rest for a few days and carefully back on it.

[haydn jones]

Ive had a torn lumbrical. From experience it was a month of easy climbing followed by a month of climbing hard but very static to avoid hitting a hold open handed. Followed by months of being nervous to jump for crimps incase i only hit it in  a 3 finger drag.

[kelvin]

Ive had a torn lumbrical. From experience it was a month of easy climbing followed by a month of climbing hard but very static to avoid hitting a hold open handed. Followed by months of being nervous to jump for crimps incase i only hit it in  a 3 finger drag.

Thanks Haydn. The year's been a write off since I rolled the van anyway, so a couple of months more wont be too bad. It's always the left ring finger I mash up - collateral last time.

Roll on 2017.

[BID]

**Usual IMHO disclaimers**

I'd avoid Ibuprofen as a general rule for all finger injuries.
It makes it too easy to reinjure yourself. Better to have more pain and more feedback.

In a perfect world, if you had a great deal of self control, then you could use ibuprofen to allow you to train just a tiny bit harder and speed up repair slightly. The great likelyhood is that you wouldn't tread that line line perfectly and risk reinjury. ( Read "you" as "one" - I sounded like a complete tosser when I wrote one though  )

[boxmonkey]

  dave Macleod's "make or break" book includes a section on this very injury. I remember the diagram of the ring finger and palm indicating where you'd get pain. The books worth investing in.