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A Girl Who Climbs

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Injury

Knowing When to Rest

Whether it’s taking 10 minutes for some mindfulness and head space to get through the day, making sure to foam roller after training, or enjoying a bath, I’m all about self-care. But what I’m really, really bad at is stopping when I have an injury. We’ve all been there, you ‘kind of’ hurt yourself but carry on anyway because you’re having too much fun. I know I’m not the only one! Between climbing and roller derby I’ve picked up a few niggles which just wouldn’t go away because I didn’t give them the time to heal properly, and this resulted in prolonged pain plus feeling of regression.

 

So how do you know when to stop and/or rest? Deep down you know. Your body knows when it wants you to take a time out, it’s just making sure that you listen. Resting can be hard when you’re doing well with training and don’t want to lose momentum, but sometimes you must make yourself do it. Now I think, would I rather cut my session short/take a week off resting and come back feeling good, or continue and end up in more pain and possibly having to take a whole month or more off?

 

Since you only get one body it makes sense to look after it and strive to climb another day!

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How To Tape Your Finger For Climbing

You’ve probably seen climbers in the gym with their fingers battered and covered in tape. Taping your fingers can help you to still climb even when they’re a bit achy, or prevent a tweak from becoming an injury. Taping holds the tendon against the bone, and stops the already sore pulley from being over stressed. Learning how to tape is a useful skill, so I figured it would be good to write a post on it. I’ve only taped my finger a few times when I had a small pulley injury, which you can read about here. I used the technique shown below, which is variation of the figure of 8 method. I found this the easiest and most supportive taping method, as it’s fairly easy to do yourself.

 

 

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A Boy Who Climbs kindly demonstrating the taping method.

 

 

1. Relax the finger that needs taping and make a fist to tuck the other digits out of the way.
Starting at the bottom pad of finger/proximal phalanx, wrap the tape around 3 times towards yourself, keeping the finger relaxed.
2. After 3 turns, cross the tape diagonally along the side of the knuckle ensuring knuckle is not covered.
3. Wrap the tape 3 times around the middle pad of finger/middle phalanx, and diagonally along the other side of the knuckle, ending back where the tape started.

 

 

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I really like the Psychi finger tape as it’s really hard-wearing and sticky, which stops it from peeling off.

 

 

Hopefully that makes sense, and the pictures are helpful! Ultimately if your tendons or pulleys are hurting you probably shouldn’t climb, as sad as that seems, but I hope this helps you prevent an injury.
Please feel free to leave any thoughts or tips in the comments on taping fingers 🙂

 

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