I have recently upped the intensity of my climbing. I've been climbing more frequently - 4 - 5 times a week (up from 3) and about two months ago I started using rings, campusing etc.
A couple weeks after the rings / campus I managed to injure my right index finger, its very sensitive to pressure above the knuckle and I can only close it to 80% of where it should go. I have been climbing on it and avoiding any holds that aggravate it - i can feel it "go" on moves where I have to put pressure on that part of my finger but anything else and it is un noticeable. As soon as I developed this finger I've quit the campusing etc completely, thought i was surely on the road to recovery when today....
halfway up a wall on a quite intensive (for me) overhanging route I felt this sudden and very weird pain in my right arm. Its on the inside of my elbow, the tendon on the bottom right of the bicep feels kinda sore as does the bottom of the bicep - it feels somewhat ceased. The pain isn't acute at all, its very dull but significant - rather than not be able to do a move because of the pain it seems its more that my arm won't pull as hard as i know it can, it feels very weak. So i took the day off after that happened and it seemed to get really "ceased" - contracting my arm teh pain appeared at about 70% of the possible motion and i could only close it to about 85% of where it should go. Got home petrified it was the dreaded tendonitis, the dull pain was now somewhat constantly there, but having googled a bunch I'm not so sure it is tendonitis - from what I've read tendonitis is usually a developing thing rather than something that suddenly appears like this; i literally felt it "go". More forum browsing and youtube hunting led me to assume this may be a "muscle knot" combined with a sore tendon (possibly very early tendonitis) as when I followed a massage video described on youtube as an effective method of getting rid of muscle knots the pain went away and I can now move close my bicep 100% of the way with about 40% of the pain that was there before, I've combined this with some palm stretching tendon excersizes and noticed that my right arm is definitely significantly tighter than my left.
I'm just posting for some advice, google isn't the greatest doctor and following massage videos on youtube, whilst so far effective feels like the kind of daring uninteligent adventure they'd put on byker grove when they'd do an episode of kids playing in a builders yard and having the time of their lives only to get squashed by 12 tonnes of sand falling on them.. I dont' want to get squashed by sand :-(
Is this arm injurly likely to be tendonitis in its early stages or are muscle knots common in climbers? - Is it possible that this injury is a result of not following the correct treatment and rehab for the finger injury that i (still) have?
Apologies for the inevitable bad grammar and essay of a post, I'm pretty worried & just tried to include as much detail as possible
ah yea, the elbow is not sensitive to touch (isn't that a symptom of tendonits?), only when I'm apply really hard pressure do I feel any mild pain, its the movement of it that creates the pain
