Chronic injury

Key Take Aways

✅ Sadly, in general, return to pre injury climbing level will take months, not weeks

✅ The majority of surgical injuries were lower extremity injuries

✅ On a therapeutic note, early intervention is usually key in reducing and avoiding severe debility. The majority of injuries were non traumatic overuse injuries, which can be successfully managed
✅ Don’t ignore the pain or think it will go away, as it may cost you months

Population

Average climber participant: 

➡️ Male 

➡️ 27 years old 

➡️ 4 years of climbing experience

Summary

For an injured climber, usually the biggest question is how long will it take to get back to how I climbed before?

A 2019 study looked at how long it took for injured climbers to return to their pre injury level of climbing

237 climbers were participants that totaled 432 injuries over a 2 year period in California
✅ 378 non surgical injuries: treated conservatively
✅ 54 surgical injuries: required surgical intervention

Top injuries by location in study:
➡️ 42% Hand/ elbow
➡️ 20% Foot/ ankle
➡️ 17% Shoulder

Return to pre injury level of climbing:
➡️ 4.4 months non surgical and surgical
➡️ 3.9 months non surgical
➡️ 9.1 months surgical

This study is great if looking at general injury data. It is difficult to parse out specific times of recovery for specific injuries as this study lumped all injuries together and only separated them into surgical and non surgical times to return to pre injury climbing level

In other words, it didn’t answer the question of how long will it take for pulley injury or tendinopathy injured climber return to pre injury climbing level

CItation

Lum ZC, Park L. Rock climbing injuries and time to return to sport in the recreational climber. J Orthop. 2019 Apr 12;16(4):361-363. doi: 10.1016/j.jor.2019.04.001. PMID: 31024194; PMCID: PMC6476799

Link

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6476799/pdf/main.pdf