Climbing tendon injuries tend to sneak up on you once the climbs get harder and the holds get crimpier. Climbing on sore tendons can start to feel almost inevitable. If you take up grip training, there’s a good chance you’ll start noticing soreness in your hands while you climb. For me, it showed up first thing in the morning. I’d pick up a cup of coffee and my hand would hurt, and if I pinched the tendon it was really tender to touch. That was my sign that something was off, so I did what most of us do and Googled it.
There wasn’t much out there. There was a lot of the same information repeated, I should say. Plenty of people said “stop climbing,” but almost nobody talked about actively recovering from sore tendons.
It’s a topic that’s been ignored for a long time.
Eric Hörst said he’s been climbing for 40 years and people never really talked about this stuff until they got an injury. But if you can inform people ahead of time and get proactive about it, you can lower your risk. It won’t drop to zero, but you can bring it down.
Quick note before we dig in: this is here to help you understand what’s going on, not to diagnose or treat you. If you’ve got sharp pain, swelling, or a pop that won’t settle, see a doctor or a physio who works with climbers before you push through it.
Today we’re going to walk through the science behind your tendons and what you need to know so you can recover and build your tendon strength as safely as possible.
This is all made possible by a great interview with Eric Horst. I saw a video he was doing on his Training for Climbing YouTube channel and reached out to him for more information. He’s one of the leading voices in this space, and the author of Training for Climbing (among other climbing books), one of my favorite self training climbing books.
The building blocks of tendons and connective tissue
I don’t think it’s well understood by most people, and even some coaches aren’t familiar with the science of it, but tendons are made up mostly of water and collagen. The collagen fibrils in your tendons and ligaments degrade slightly with use. They weaken a little. There are things called cross links in there that help brace the collagen fibers and add stiffness to the whole system.
Those connective tissues, just like muscles, get disturbed a little from training and climbing. Then, given rest and proper nutrition, they remodel into something stronger, more aligned, denser, and eventually stiffer, so you can perform at a higher level. The catch is that we can’t sense that breaking down and rebuilding process the way we can in our muscles.
Muscle recovery vs tendon recovery
For most climbers, hopefully, you wake up the next morning with no pain in your tendons. So you figure your tendons are fine, and you’re not even aware there could be an issue underneath.
My muscles are a little sore, but my tendons feel fine, so I’m just going to go climb today. I can still climb at a pretty high level.
What you don’t know is that the tendons haven’t recovered. As a rule of thumb, connective tissue recovers more slowly than muscle, and the main reason is the lack of blood flow. So it’s very easy for a climber to push their muscles and the things they can feel right to the limit.
A lot of the time they never climb so much that they get muscle injuries or muscle pulls, but the tendons are quietly falling behind week after week after week.
They keep falling behind and getting a little more degraded on top of the degradation that’s already there. That’s when the pain starts to show up.
Common tendon and connective tissue injuries
If you don’t dial things back and you just keep climbing on, that’s what can lead to one of two things.
- In the A2 pulleys, it’s often a partial tear or rupture. That’s when you get that acute pain at the base of your finger and it hurts to crimp. That one shouldn’t be ignored, because it’s more of an acute injury. This is also where a lot of climbers reach for support once they’re cleared to climb again, and we walk through taping fingers for climbing and how to do it in a separate post.
- In the elbows, you don’t tend to get a rupture. Instead you get into this cycle of failed healing in the finger flexor muscles that connect to the epicondyle, or even the shoulder. That’s when you get into what climbers used to call tendonitis, which is inflammation of the tendon. Tendons don’t swell up much the way a bruised muscle or a broken bone does. They just get more degraded and painful. The term used more commonly now is tendinosis, which is more of a chronic, degenerative injury.
The bottom line is that most climbing injuries start off as this low grade overuse type of thing. If you want the bigger picture, we cover 5 common injuries in climbing and how to prevent them too.
What causes climbing tendon injuries?
A runner’s version of this would be someone who gets into running, buys a new pair of shoes, and it’s New Year’s, so they set a goal to run a marathon this summer. They start running every day when they hadn’t been running at all. They ramp up their mileage really fast. And what do they have a month or two later? Shin splints or plantar fasciitis. Those are leg type injuries that came about the same way.
Climbers get sore fingers, sore elbows, or sore shoulders from too much too soon, or too much too often.
On top of that, maybe nutrition isn’t quite where it should be, and maybe there isn’t enough sleep or enough rest days. So it becomes a bit of a perfect storm when you’ve got a highly motivated, passionate climber who, if they had the time, would climb every day because they love it so much. That’s a lot of us.
Then add to that the fact that climbers tend to do one more rep on the route or one more burn on the boulder. And if they’re really trying to get in shape, maybe they’re cutting their diet back in the wrong places and having a few too many late nights, because work or school or family also eat up time. Combine all those factors together.
And what do you know, a few months later you’ve got an injury that, if it’s ignored, can mean a forced break from climbing where you have to take time off. We don’t like that. We love climbing, so we don’t want to go there.
So now what?
There are two more videos in this series. The next one covers exercises to help recover and prevent tendon injuries, and part three digs into the nutrition behind recovering your tendons.
If you want climbing tips like this in small, doable pieces, the free Send Edition newsletter sends you one climbing drill a week, about 15 minutes each. It’s a simple way to keep chipping away at your climbing without piling on the kind of load that gets your tendons into trouble.
Frequently asked questions
What are the most common climbing tendon injuries?
In the fingers, the most common is a partial tear or rupture of the A2 pulley, which shows up as sharp pain at the base of the finger and hurts to crimp. In the elbows and shoulders, climbers tend to get overuse tendon problems, often called tendinosis, from repeated loading that never fully recovers.
Why do tendons take longer to recover than muscles?
Connective tissue recovers more slowly than muscle mainly because it has less blood flow. You also can’t feel the breakdown and rebuild in tendons the way you feel muscle soreness, so it’s easy to keep climbing while your tendons quietly fall behind.
What causes climbing tendon injuries?
Most start as low grade overuse from too much too soon or too much too often. Poor sleep, not enough rest days, and nutrition that isn’t quite dialed in all stack on top of that and turn it into a perfect storm, especially for motivated climbers who would climb every day if they could.
Should I keep climbing on sore tendons?
If soreness keeps building or you feel acute pain, it’s worth backing off and getting it looked at rather than pushing through. This article is educational, not medical advice, so see a doctor or a physio who works with climbers if the pain doesn’t settle.
Can I prevent tendon injuries from climbing?
You can’t drop your risk to zero, but you can lower it a lot. Ramp up your climbing and grip work gradually, give tendons real rest, and keep your sleep and nutrition in check so your connective tissue has a chance to remodel and get stronger.
More About Safety and First Aid:
- Taping Fingers For Climbing: Why And How
- Proper Nutrition For Tendons For Climbers
- Exercises To Prevent Tendon Injuries For Climbers
- Climbers’ Tendon Injuries And What Causes Them
- 5 Common Injuries In Climbing And How To Prevent Them
- Climbers Guide: First Aid Kit
- How Do You Deal With Climbing Flappers? Prevention And Care
- Should You Wear A Helmet For Bouldering?
