[catbreath]

I'm 33 and  I've been climbing a bit over a year, only indoors really (mostly the Castle). A couple months ago I started doing the odd V4 and giving a couple of 7a top rope routes a good shot, but it felt like I wasn't getting better past that, so I've started going a bit more regularly and getting more excercise in general.

The problem is I suffer from anxiety, and I'm proper terrified that I'm going to push myself too hard and do myself a finger injury, and have to take a break for a few weeks/months. Apart from accidentally punching the holds nothing has really hurt my fingers much more than a bit of mild soreness the next day, but everytime I get a pain in my fingers I wonder if that means its time for a rest. My girlfriend (whos been climbing way longer than me) says not to worry, and to 'listen to my body', but I don't trust my instincts and I fucking love climbing so I'd ignore it anyway.

So how painful does something have to be before it's a signal to stop climbing and go home or have a break for a few days? Is it any pain at all? Or does it have to make you go 'ow'? I realise this is a bit of a dumb/open question but any advice would be appreciated!

[tomtom]

Aching after - and during is OK in my book - but if you have repeated and/or enduring pain then I think its gone to far. You tend to only know via experience when you've pushed things too far (sorry thats not really helpful!) but if you're relatively new - the things you have to watch are tendons. These grow much slower than muscles, so finger and (especially) elbow pains are worth listening to. This can easily be done - by avoiding crimpy stuff (if it hurts) or campus moves/lock moves if its elbows etc...

[iain]

What TT said. Also thinking about (if you're not already) doing everything you can to prevent injuries occurring in the first place. Warming up thoroughly every session, good technique, using different grip types, especially open hand if you don't already, and mix up the climbing you do each session ie. you have to try hard to improve but not the same route/problem all the time. That leads to repetitive high loads and injury, (like me on a current project.)

Dave MacLeod talks a bit about what he changed after being frequently injured and links to another person with the same experience.
http://onlineclimbingcoach.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/another-good-injury-story.html

Hope that's helpful.

[Jim]

I'd concentrate more on brushing your teeth

[catbreath]

Thanks for the great advice! I'm very disciplined at warm ups and stretches these days which has totally fixed the achy elbows I used to get. I also tend to grip everything I can open-hand cos I always think my last knuckle's giong to snap when I crimp hard! Crimpy stuff feels the most satisfying though 

My current finger pain is really mild (climbing doesn't make it worse, seems better even) but its not shifting after 4 days rest so I'm seeing the osteo just to put my mind at ease. I may pester her with the same questions. Thanks again!

[JohnM]

Also strive to improve the quality of you climbing sessions rather than the quantity (to a certain extent).  I see a lot people absolutely thrash themselves and climbing to complete failure.  This is probably counter productive and will increase recovery time.  Obviously this is very general and I am mainly talking about bouldering but try an finish each session at a point where you could have done more.

[Dexter]

I'm going to go out on a limb here but in my experience you get maximum improvement when you get as close to injury as possible but dont actually do an real damage. I see a lot of people improving really really slowly or not at all due to the tentative climbing without wishing to get injured and I have seen people exceed them despite injury and similar climbing volume. Whilst there may be other factors involved I believe that overall if the desire to not get injured starts to overweigh the desire to get better/stronger it will start to impede on the getting better.
Just my twopenneth worth from my own experience.

As a note I have had a few of injuries some big some small but have seen a pretty steady improvement in my 4 years of climbing.

[i.munro]

Note the bit in McLeod's article linked above where he mentions that the risk of injury is much higher in warm humid conditions. On reading that I realised that all my recent injuries ( & there have been a few) had occurred in exactly those conditions.

[a dense loner]

Cat breath if you've not been climbing that long it'll be very hard to listen to your body since it won't have a clue what you're putting it through. Just climb loads but not a muerte, warm up proper get some probs done get on your projects and warm down