Make or Break: Don’t Let Climbing Injuries Dictate Your Success

As Wolfgang Gullich said, “getting strong is easy, getting strong without getting injured is hard”.

True.

Dave MacLeod recently released his new book, ‘Make or Break‘, about climbing injuries- what to do once you have them, and how things we do in our climbing routine can cause them or prolong them.

As he says:

“During the process of writing the book, I have discovered many pieces of hard scientific information and subtle concepts I wish I’d known when I was 16. They would have saved me so much of the pain and psychological torment of injuries that climbers everywhere share at some point in their career.”

In this article from Dave MacLeod’s blog, davemacleod.blogspot.com, he outlines three of the points he makes in his book about climbing injuries and how they can make or break you.

“It will be injuries that will get in the way of your progress, and if you let them, they will dictate how far you get in climbing. The research suggests that nearly all climbers get injured at some point. Finger injuries are most likely, followed by elbows and shoulders.”-Dave MacLeod

For instance, one of the points he details:

“2. Know pain or no gain.

….Climbers need to be able to differentiate between healthy soreness from training and activity, and damage that demands action. They need to be able to take understand how various treatments affect pain from their injuries and what this means for their daily decisions on how much activity to expose them to. They need to understand how many aspects of their environment and psychological state amplify or suppress pain sensations from their daily activities. Pain sensations are an essential measure for climbers to monitor, but without detailed knowledge of how it works, it is very easy to interpret those messages from pain wrongly.”

This article is full of useful information about climbing injuries including what Dave learned about tendon injuries, understanding the nature of pain, and how to balance the relentlessness of this sport. Hopefully you can learn something that will help you prevent a future injury!

CLICK HERE: Make or Break: Don’t Let Climbing Injuries Dictate Your Success

(photo courtesy of davemacleod.blogspot.com)