I did five months off climbing after my accident. Doomsday was the 29th of March, first visit to the climbing wall top ropes was the 26th of August and I climbed at least once a week after that. First lead was on the 29th of September. Hollybush Gully Right, VDiff. What a day!
Before I started climbing again I was just crutching and walking about (both of which felt like exhausting full-on training!) with exercise bike
starting a few weeks before I first went to the wall. In November I started doing bodyweight strength stuff and weights as well.
I had a wrist injury that I had to wait to heal so that was a factor in how soon I could climb come to think of it. I may well have been on a top rope sooner if that hadn’t been the case. I was cleared by the spinal consultant to start lifting and carrying things again by the middle of June IIRC.
I was very lucky that my consultant and physio were both climbers so I didn’t have to argue my case about climbing again and they appreciated the benefits to my recovery that climbing would bring. They also knew I wasn’t just going to stop!
I was however (and I’ve said this before on here and to many people in person) told by my physio that I’d used up all of my shock absorbing ability in one go and that while he wasn’t going to tell me not to boulder if that was what I really wanted to do, I had to realise that it would hurt to land, it would hurt more the next day and it would hurt more each time. I made the decision not to boulder but I have tested his advice out and realised that the sensation of landing now takes the fun out of it anyway. If before I felt like a hard rubber dog toy landing on the floor- an impact but with some degree of recoil, now it’s more like I’m a spanner. Roped climbing, leader falls included, is physically the same experience as ever though so I’ve found my niche
How much that will apply to you I’ve no idea. It’s the distance that I fell rather than the specific nature of my back injury that caused my situation as I understand it and our injuries were different vertebrae and by different methods, compression vs “distraction”.
In terms of what you’re actually asking about, it was December before I started fingerboarding but I could probably have started again sooner, probably as soon as the spinal guy had discharged me. Get on that ASAP for obvious reasons.
The fact that you can move around well and unassisted is great and you want to just be moving as often and as comprehensively as possible: medium- to long-term what I’m working against isn’t so much the direct results of my injuries it’s more the knock-on effects of how little I could move in the months immediately after the accident- the amount of strength, fitness and mobility I lost, how quickly it went and how long it’s taken/ taking to restore is absolutely staggering!
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