Is rock climbing giving you back and neck pain?

Climbing demands a lot of your body and your mind. The mental exertion can be felt as stress in your shoulders and up into your neck.

Belaying

Who would have thought that belaying could lead to back and neck pain?

Belaying, particularly if done one sided, can overload the muscles of the upper back and shoulder of your dominant side. Continuously looking up at your climber also stresses two areas of your neck:

1. The base of your neck as it meets your upper back. This can cause pain that spreads out to both shoulders and makes you feel like you have a coat hanger in your shirt.
2. The upper neck, where it meets your skull. Left untreated for long enough this can cause dull headaches, usually at the back of your head.

Climbing

Many rock climbing routes involve movement and extended periods of time on very small footholds. This causes your calves to take a beating and eventually become knotted up and shortened. This tension can lead to problems elsewhere in the body.

Hard pulls with our arms increases the load to the upper back and shoulders. Pulling on small, crimpy holds causes the muscles of your forearms work overtime. When these become tight enough they may refer pain down your arm into your fingers. Ah the fingers! The tendon attachments here are often sprained from over-stretch or over-contraction.

Preventative techniques

The most effective way for you to keep climbing is to look after yourself.

A small warm up before climbing and a stretching routine after will help.

If you have climbed really hard, conquering that route that had been your nemesis, and feel that you might have overdone it, when you get home, apply an ice pack. Put it over the area that aches for 15 minutes, 3 times a day for 3 days. Don’t leave the pack on longer and think it’ll speed things up, in fact the reverse happens! Remember to wrap the ice pack in something as it’ll burn your skin in this time.

Avoid going too hard too fast. You are most prone to injury when you increase grades or learn a new technique. Build up your strength, stamina and power slowly and you will avoid injury and the need to have take time off climbing to recover.

Try and get aches and pains seen to quickly. The sooner you have them treated, the quicker you’ll be back to 100% fitness. When you ignore or or mask a little niggle with painkillers, your body will cleverly compensate without ever leaving you a memo! Before you know it, that little niggle snowballs into a bigger problem that takes much longer to sort out.

The body responds well to manual therapy. Knots in muscles are worked out with deep tissue massage. Joints can be manipulated to free restrictions, to make sure they function well. Tendons and ligaments, (even the small ones of your fingers), can be worked on to improve healing of ruptured or strained fibres. It’s important, particularly in the case of sprains/strains to control the scar formation of the tendon/ligament. It maintains the elasticity of the structure so that it doesn’t become stiff in years to come.

If you respect your body and listen to the messages it gives you, it will enable you to climb for life.

Dr Jackie Cowie MTech (Chiro)
CHIROPRACTOR

Check out Jackie’s web site: Chiropractor Hull