youth climbing

Key Take Aways
✅ Finger injuries were the most common at 36%

✅ Injury rate was 2.9 injuries/ 1000 hours of participation, similar to competitive youth athletes in:
   ➡️ swimming and diving
   ➡️ track and field 

But lower than:
   ➡️ Football
   ➡️ Hockey
   ➡️ Soccer
   ➡️ Basketball

Population

Competitive youth climbers

Summary

In a 2022 study by Barrile et al, several risk factors were identified with climbing injury in competitive youth climbers:

✅ Bouldering > Lead climbing: 91% of all injuries occurred during bouldering
✅ Bouldering difficulty: ability to climb at V6 or higher
✅ Returning to climbing while still in pain: climbers were 24x more likely to get injured
✅ Finger taping for protection
✅ Length of session: sessions lasting greater than 2 hours
✅ Increased volume of climbing in a year
✅ Unsupervised climbing 

Equally as important are factors that were not associated with injury:
👉 Age
👉 Age when first started competing
👉 Other sport participation
👉 Level of competition
👉 Safety skills taught by team or learned outside of team setting
👉 Using hang board device
👉 Previous medical conditions
👉 Warming up/ cooling down

Citation

Barrile AM, Feng SY, Nesiama JA, & Huang C. (2022). Injury Rates, Patterns, Mechanisms, and Risk Factors Among Competitive Youth Climbers in the United States. Wilderness and Environmental Medicine, 33(1), 25-32

Link

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35144853/