Saturday, April 28, 2018

Well deserved injury streak and climbing downtime

So, I have been marred with injuries. Two kind of injuries actually.

First, the acute kind which was a result of a stupid fall causing me to land on my outstretched left arm and causing severe elbow damage; mostly soft tissue tear. This one is recent, happened just three weeks back. I don't think anything was broken, but I was panicked because of swelling, unbearable pain and loss of mobility for the first 24 hours. Really scared.

Its been three weeks now and I still feel some pain in my elbow. Mostly because of inadequate rest and getting back early to some easy training. Nonetheless, it is 3 steps forward and one step back for me with this injury, so overall progression is good, without unnecessary strength and mobility loss. But the injury itself was a result of stupid move on an indoor problem that I shouldn't have been gunning for in the first place.

Second injury is more of a chronic kind, result of overtraining, and pushing too hard too fast and for too long, and all of that, embarrassingly, indoors on plastic. Started in December and January, with the injury hitting my sometime in Feb 2018. Well, it was cold and wet in British Columbia when I moved here. I got my first V8s and a couple of V9/10s indoors and probably that fueled my desire to push it harder. I was bouldering hard at my limit 3 days a week, hangboarding and campusing twice each. It was not just the climbing specific training, but also the weighted pulls ups (with almost 50% of my bodyweight added) and presses. No wonder my tendons and pulleys had to give in at some point. And not too surprisingly it took all but one month for my ego to come down crashing. I did it all in December, started feeling tired in January (but still performing at a high level) and started breaking down from Feb 2018. It's been three months now (Feb, Mar and April) since I did something to my A2 pulley on the ring finger (sounds familiar??) and it is slowly coming back, not there yet completely.

I wasn't off climbing completely. But I was climbing atleast 4 grades easier for the past three months, heavily taping my fingers and not pushing hard at all, except once or twice on some impulsive moves. It is during this period of injury and rehab that I also did my only two V7s outside so far. Well, I have only bouldered thrice outside so far. I am the one for bolts and cams you see.

I was trying to be really disciplined with my A2 finger injury, when the acute elbow injury happened and that really pushed me into a frustrated-despressed mood. Not for long though. But, it's been three months of relatively hurtful and performance marring injury - one chronic and one acute. I haven't been able to train (fingerboard or campus) neither have I been able to do any boulders at my limits. So I have lost a fair bit of finger strength as well as power.

The rehab is on and getting there soon. I look forward to easing back into my training regimen and the climbing season is just beginning here in British Columbia. So all is not lost yet and the more disciplined I am indoors, the better the ticklist for the season will turn out to be.

Look forward to being disciplined with my rehab and training regimen in weeks to come.