Coping with Injury

Injury is something I have both little and lots of experience with. Throughout my career as a climber and coach, I have been surrounded by injuries, but I have yet to experience the real horror that is being injured to the point of complete shut down.

Injuries in the Blogosphere

Nat wrote an amazing blog on her experiences with injury that touched both myself and many others around the world. It told of her life of training and competing on the Youth European and World circuit whilst dealing with repetitive injuries in her fingers and abdominals.

Much more recently, Mr Macleod himself has been writing some interesting blogs on his currently unfortunate predicament – one which was suffered not due to the commonly caused over-training, but by accident, a mistake really, by falling off the end of his rope lowering from a warm up route.

My friend and boss at EICA, Nic Crawshaw relates to Dave’s predicament with a funny story in which he was lowered off the end of the rope whilst climbing at Cascade sector in Ceuse. Anyone who has climbed there knows what it’s like being lowered over the edge of the main sector – it’s a little hard to judge with the ground being a further 5-10m lower than the point where you climb and belay from. The funny side of the story being the bit where he described crawling back to the campsite to get an ambulance as he couldn’t afford Mountain Rescue having taken out no Insurance! This always makes me think twice…

And finally, what has made me think more clearly about injuries is the very sad and thought provoking blogs of Ailsa Graham, an English lass who started her first blogs and quickly made a very powerful message amongst young climbers out there which was – A tweek might take 6 weeks to recover, 6 weeks might feel like forever, but it doesn’t feel nearly as long as a fully blown rupture when you’ve pushed despite the pain. Listen to your body!

My Life of Injury 

I have yet to suffer something as terrible as what those above are experiencing now. When I first started climbing at 15 I would climb everyday god gave me. I remember being told to stop and rest but like a stupid little kid I just kept pulling until one day I felt a pain in my back… This knocked 3 weeks off climbing, 3 weeks that still I remember feeling like the longest time on earth, but I recovered and have not felt a pain quite like it since…

During my higher exams I remember feeling a slight twinge in my finger – it hurt whilst writing more than climbing, but after a couple of weeks, it was fine…

Last year during a period of very intense finger strength training I noticed a pain once again in my fingers. I was lucky enough to be hitting rock within a couple of weeks of feeling the pain knowing full well that the release of high intensity training would do it good, a couple of weeks of peak training and 4 weeks on rock – I haven’t felt a pain since…

Now, as any of you who follow my blog will know, I have a gammy knee… This isn’t the worst possible injury I could have but it does affect me and my training. First of all, it is painful just to walk on… Secondly, I can’t climb using my right leg without experiencing pain and I certainly don’t want to make it worse so I am avoiding using it in any way that is going to cause aggravation to the damaged ligament.

Frankly, I am incredibly lucky to have had such an amazing run in my climbing career so far without so much injury. I do think that I am incredibly careful with the way I train and have always prepared my body for the excess training and stress I put it under.

Emotional Injury 

Reading Ailsa’s blog, she is incredibly brave to write about her injuries in such an emotive way. To be honest, when I first read her blog I was both saddened by it and slightly put off, simply because of the intense emotional element to the writing. Obviously she is in a great deal of pain both physically and emotionally.

Since reading her blog however, I have been thinking more seriously about the implications of serious injury and how it would affect someone whose life revolves around a sport. Personally, I don’t know how I would react if I had such injuries that stopped me from climbing fullstop… I hope that it would be easier coupled with the fact that I have a strong connection with climbing more than just the physical aspect i.e. my entire social life is based in climbing as is my work.

Me socialising at the crag with fellow... errrrr... climbers?

With Ailsa, she is still very much involved in climbing to a great deal which I think is fantastic and also shows her passion for the sport – it also identifies strongly that climbing is a lifestyle and not simply a hobby for most of it’s partakers.

A Message to Climbers 

In the ending paragraphs of Ailsa’s blog she quotes Edward Whymper, the first ascenionist of the Matterhorn and also a celebrated author and illustrator:

“Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.”

Scrambles Amongst the Alps

As someone who strives for excellence and improvement daily, this quote hit me hard. Remembering the fact that knowledge of what you are doing and why you are doing it forms the base of effective training, forgetting this is the first step to failing at what we are striving for and risks far more than not achieving. We climb because we love it, that’s how we started and it never leaves us. Never forget that whilst you may lose sight of it for a moment, climbing is something that enriches your life not through achieving, but simply through doing. When the endeavour for success makes you forget why you started and forces you in haste to take risks and badly placed steps, try and remember the beginning… think what may be the end…