How I fixed my Wrist injury (TFCC Ulnar)

[krymson]

Had a nagging wrist injury for almost two years which seems to finally be ok. Here's how i fixed it:

The injury: I got the injury almost two years ago after covid lock down - i started climbing again and was working a 13a (my project at the time). I did a lot of training including kilter board. the kilter board was effective but i think along with climbing at my limit it stressed my wrist a bit. After sending the project I did a few 12's with side pulls and underclings. after one 12b with a side pull crux, my wrist start feeling pretty painful on any kind of sidepull.

The pain was so bad i stopped bouldering and basically stopped climbing except super easy 5.10, 11a type of stuff. Anything else hurt.

Initial recovery
i got a wrist widget and some tape. As long as i used one of those, i coudl climb easy stuff. but sidepulls still hurt.

after a while of climbing easy stuff with tape, my wrist slowly felt better but i stilll couldnt pull hard on sidepulls.
Recovering

Then i met a pretty psyched friend climbing at her limit who pushed me to climb harder stuff. Weirdly, my wrist was occasionaly painful, but improved!

I found that at this point (past initial recovery and basic conditioning), climbing harder stuff actualy helped rehab the wrist.
Final recovery

ive continued to climb near my (wrists) limit since then and steadiliy improved. Near the end I found climbing without tape helped more - the tape is a bandaid you need to get rid of for full healing.

IN conclusion the path to recovery for a wrist injury seems to be:
-rest in the beginning until you can climb easy stuff with out pain
-very gently ease back into it while taping wrist or using a wrist widget
-use pain as your guidance for intensity: try to mostly climb without pain, but a little bit of pain each session is not bad and may aid healing: no sharp or strong pain, just an ache.
-when you can climb without much pain, start trying to climb without tape- this is the final step of wrist recovery.


One last thing i did which i think was helpful: fingerboarding with half crimp. The half crimp position is what aggravates the wrist the most (open handed is fine), so slowly strengthening that position in the controlled situation of a fingerboard seems to be helpful.

One last thing which may or may not have helped: i did some reverse wrist curles near the end which may or may not have helped. I found that my injured hand was very weak on them.

 

[Fultonius]

Well..... the inevitable happened......

Run up to a trip, everything going well, trying to stay in good shape and seem to have developed a wrist tweak.

I've had a lot of them, especially my right wrist. I probably need to put some decent effort into getting it properly strong this winter.

Right now I have quite an intermittent sharp pain on the pinky side of my wrist. Things like holding a kettle and then pouring can cause a sharp pain, but holding and lifting are fine. Seems to mainly be when clenching a fist and then letting the hand drop / flexing it towards the pinky side.

Climbing seems fine.

Pressups are fine if I do some stretching first (the one where you pin the hand to the floor at the crease with your other hand then flex). Most of the day I don't notice it. Climbing is mostly fine, but I'm taking a few days off now.

Surfing on the weekend seemed to aggravate it the most.

 

[MischaHY]

Biscuit helped me sort my wrists out very effectively a while back. I have mild hyperflexibilty and they still get tweaky occasionally but reapplying the rehab sorts it out and strength is building over time. Money well spent.

 

[Duncan Disorderly]

Whoa!! This is spooky! I was just going to post summat bout this.....

I've never had a wrist injury in my life but after an afternoon out on the grit a few weeks back I'm now waking up in the night with a dull ache and the odd sharp pain pretty much as you've described in me LHS - wearing a watch seems to aggrovate it too.... Seems fine when climbing.

Interested to see what the oracle thinks (gutted to hear that surfing seems to make it worse as was thinking I'll just do that til it goes away :'()

opcorn:

 

[grimer]

Here’s what I think about injuries. They are a message from the body to the brain. Not always but often.

When I have an injury I try to lie on my back in bed and listen to it. To try to understand what it is telling me about my body, my mind, my life. It’s not necessarily a thing that needs to be silenced.

As well, I recently got my first bad elbow in all me climbing life. I rubbed it and did eccentrics on it.

But I also rained that on the same side, in the last year or two, I had a bad wrist, bad shoulder and intermittent neck pain. So decided all were connected.

So I kept up with the eccentrics but also worked on opening up me body and try to get all parts to communicate better.

I’m pleased to say my elbow seems a lot better.

 

[Wellsy]

I think a lot of climbers could do with doing general strengthening work, I think it'd help them when it comes to both avoiding and dealing with injuries, as Grimer says it's all holistic

 

[Fultonius]

I do think I need to incorporate more basic strength work, it's so easy to skip it and just climb more.

Physio has pointed towards a cartilage aggravation which seems on the money, so far the stretches and basic work seems to be helping.

 

[Duncan Disorderly]

Physio has pointed towards a cartilage aggravation which seems on the money...

Upon reading Dave Mac's book (wrist section) that sounds like pretty much what is going on with mine - his advice: stay away from big indoor slopers!

As they're the antithesis of what I like to climb I'm not too worried about that...

Ratty crimps on the 25 degree MB seem to cause it no problem.... Phew!

so far the stretches and basic work seems to be helping.

Interested to know what stretches and weight work your physio gave you? Defiintely feel the need to strengthen the wrist area - probably go see a physio if it doesn't sort itself/gets worse....

 

[Paul B]

I'd strongly suggest people go and see a knowledgeable physio with any wrist issues. I'd self-diagnosed a TFCC problem after I tweaked something on a weird side-pull and then also managed to whack it off a large blobby sloper on the dismount. It wasn't the TFCC (I forget what it was actually called) and only started improving (and fairly rapidly) after taking professional advice.

 

[duncan]

Had a nagging wrist injury for almost two years which seems to finally be ok. Here's how i fixed it:

The injury: I got the injury almost two years ago after covid lock down - i started climbing again and was working a 13a (my project at the time). I did a lot of training including kilter board. the kilter board was effective but i think along with climbing at my limit it stressed my wrist a bit. After sending the project I did a few 12's with side pulls and underclings. after one 12b with a side pull crux, my wrist start feeling pretty painful on any kind of sidepull.

The pain was so bad i stopped bouldering and basically stopped climbing except super easy 5.10, 11a type of stuff. Anything else hurt.

Initial recovery

i got a wrist widget and some tape. As long as i used one of those, i coudl climb easy stuff. but sidepulls still hurt.

after a while of climbing easy stuff with tape, my wrist slowly felt better but i stilll couldnt pull hard on sidepulls.

Recovering

Then i met a pretty psyched friend climbing at her limit who pushed me to climb harder stuff. Weirdly, my wrist was occasionaly painful, but improved!

I found that at this point (past initial recovery and basic conditioning), climbing harder stuff actualy helped rehab the wrist.

Final recovery

ive continued to climb near my (wrists) limit since then and steadiliy improved. Near the end I found climbing without tape helped more - the tape is a bandaid you need to get rid of for full healing.

IN conclusion the path to recovery for a wrist injury seems to be:
-rest in the beginning until you can climb easy stuff with out pain
-very gently ease back into it while taping wrist or using a wrist widget
-use pain as your guidance for intensity: try to mostly climb without pain, but a little bit of pain each session is not bad and may aid healing: no sharp or strong pain, just an ache.
-when you can climb without much pain, start trying to climb without tape- this is the final step of wrist recovery.


One last thing i did which i think was helpful: fingerboarding with half crimp. The half crimp position is what aggravates the wrist the most (open handed is fine), so slowly strengthening that position in the controlled situation of a fingerboard seems to be helpful.

One last thing which may or may not have helped: i did some reverse wrist curles near the end which may or may not have helped. I found that my injured hand was very weak on them.

This is all very similar to my story. My first wrist injury was from a high side pull on a board. Second time - on the opposite wrist - was through thumbs-up jamming, a similar wrist position. Both were aggravated by big slopers, jamming, and high side-pulls. If I was careful to keep my wrist extended somewhat I could still crimp quite hard. Press-ups aggravated them inconsistently.

First time I recovered through climbing easy then not-so-easy trad. Second time I was more proactive, used a wrist widget (as modelled by Aidan Roberts) and continued to fingerboard. I find fingerboard lifts make it easier to control the load and lower loads mean you can vary the grip. After a couple of weeks, the initial healing phase, I did reverse curls to functionally strengthen my wrist extensors in a neutral wrist position. Second recovery was about twice as fast despite being 10 years older.

I continue to do reverse curls for general arm and shoulder conditioning (power club ad nauseam).