If your arm is broken, you should probably wait for a bit before climbing again...
Climbing is great. Not being in pain is greater.
About a month and a half ago, I hurt my foot while running. Whenever I walked, I had a sharp pain on the lower outer side of my left foot. I kept off it for a few days but then went back to climbing and hiking and stuff as usual. Eventually the pain went away, though every so often I’d take a bad step and the pain would come back for a bit. Then last weekend I ran a marathon and screwed it up all over again.
Speaking of the marathon, it gave me a mild case of shin splints. I was in pain for a couple days, but after that the pain wasn’t bad enough to keep me from walking more and more. A couple days ago I went and tossed a baseball around with my roommate. I wasn’t doing a whole lot of intense running or anything, but I had to jump a few times to catch the ball and jogged after the missed ball every once in a while. My legs hurt a bit more after that but it still wasn’t excruciating so I didn’t worry about it too much.
Then yesterday I went climbing for the first time in a couple weeks. The approach took me about an hour and my foot and my shins were hurting a little, but again, not too much to keep me from doing what I love. The four pitch climb didn’t hurt too much, but walking back on the trail hurt more than the approach.
(Stay with me here, I promise this is all leading to something…)
Today I went mountain biking and had to stick my leg out a couple times to keep me up when I had some minor crashes. Now THIS was not good for my shins, and it was pretty painful. Now it hurts more to walk than it has since the day after the marathon. In other words, I’m not really getting any better.
This is a problem of mine. I hate down time. I hate not climbing and not being outside. I expect that a lot of you are the same way. But let me just say that being injured SUCKS. If you’re hurting, take time off until you feel better! Take time off until your body has healed. The rocks (and mountains and trails and so forth) will always be there. Sure, in the state that I’m in now, I can still do stuff. But 1) It’s painful, and 2) I can’t perform at the same level that I could pre-injury.
How about you? Got any good (or maybe not so good) recovery stories?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I teach middle schoolers and see students all the time walking on their casts with their crutches leaning against the wall. Especially as you get older and your healing time increases, it’s so important to heal completely before really pushing it. These little injuries when you’re young don’t seem like much, but if they don’t heal completely, you’ll be feeling them much of your life.
an old friend of mine that played a ‘high’ level of basketball gave me the best advice on shin splints (apparently shin splints are very common in basketball??!).
walk around as much as possible on your heels. toes up in the air. around the house…where ever you can.
i did that for a week (or just under 2 weeks) and my shin splints disappeared and i’ve never had that issue again.
good luck!