Sore tendons kind of come with the territory when you climb. Let’s be honest, we love this sport, and because your fingers don’t come with a pain sensor that flat out tells you to stop, it’s really hard to know when to back off. The good news is you can do a lot to prevent tendon injuries and keep climbing for years, and most of it comes down to a few simple habits.
For me, it started with waking up in the morning and noticing it was tough to grip my coffee mug, and that when I pressed on the tendon along my ring finger, it was sore.
Luckily that was pre injury, or maybe a tiny micro injury, so it didn’t stop me from climbing. But there were definitely a few things I needed to do to recover and keep it from turning into something worse.
We sat down with Eric Horst, the author of Training for Climbing. You probably know him from his YouTube channel or from all the other work he’s done on this stuff, because he really is one of the leading voices in the space.
This is part two of a three part series. In part one we covered the science behind your tendons, and in this one we’re talking about what you can do physically to recover from sore tendons and stay ahead of injury. There’s also a part three where we get into the nutrition side of tendon health.
Quick note before we dig in. This is general info from a climbing coach, not medical advice. If a tendon is genuinely painful, swollen, or you felt a pop or a snap, see a doctor or a physio before you load it. If you’re not sure where the line is, our roundup of 5 common injuries in climbing and how to prevent them is a good gut check.
When should you exercise your tendons?
When it comes to training, it’s all about the right dose. Climbers who just go overboard, whether that’s session after session in the gym, endless reps on a hangboard, or too much too soon, tend to pay for it. It takes years to build the capacity to train hard, and there’s no shortcut.
A climber of two years shouldn’t try to train like the person they see crushing at the gym who’s been at it for ten. In most cases that’s how you get hurt, trying to copy someone whose tendons have a decade of adaptation you don’t.
Find a coach, or learn to self coach, and get on a program that actually fits where you are right now.
For the hard stuff, where you’re hanging on your fingers or pulling with real intensity, three to four days a week is about the limit.
You know how it goes. People hit the gym seven days a week and tell themselves today is an easy day, and then that easy day quietly turns into something a lot more serious.
It takes discipline and actually tracking your sessions, what you did and how hard it was. Keep the high intensity days to maybe two or three a week, and then maybe a fourth lower intensity day.
You want rest days where you’re not tugging hard on your fingers, and you can put that energy into other kinds of training. Go for a run, do some antagonist work, but you wouldn’t want to do anything really targeted or rigorous on your climbing muscles or tendons on a rest day.
Exercises for rest days
Total rest isn’t actually the best thing for tendons and ligaments either, with one big exception. If you’ve got an acute injury, one of those ruptures or a sharp problem in your shoulder or elbow, you need a full break from training and climbing.
During that acute stage you want to assess the situation, see a doctor if you need to, and maybe ice it the first day or two. So there does need to be at least a short withdrawal from climbing.
You don’t want to climb through an acute injury.
But for an uninjured climber, someone like you or me, ideally we’re getting our three focus days of climbing and training in, whether that’s at the gym or outside.
On rest days, you can do some light loading of your tendons.
Squeeze devices are a great example. Not one of those strongman grippers where you’re crushing at a hundred percent, but the easy rubber balls or doughnuts, or even a tennis ball, something that’s simple to squeeze.
If you have a hangboard at home, hanging on the biggest holds or the medium holds that go two pads deep for a few easy hangs works well. Some forearm stretching, some of those light activities every day is fine and actually good for you, because connective tissue has poor blood flow, so it gets a lot of its nutrition during loading.
Think about a sponge. You drop it in a bucket of water, squeeze it, and let go, and the fluid moves in and out. In a much more subtle way, that’s roughly what’s happening in our tendons and ligaments when we load them.
The idea is that when you load a tendon, that gentle in and out movement helps carry nutrition to the tissue, which normally doesn’t get a lot of blood flow on its own. So a rest day where you do nothing but sit at a computer isn’t really enough to get that effect going.
But if you did some doughnut squeezing, a bit of easy hangboarding, a few pull ups, or some rotator cuff work, that’s a great thing to do on a rest day, as long as it doesn’t escalate.
The moment it turns into a hangboard workout where you’re grabbing small holds, you’re right back into heavy loading. So it takes discipline.
Eric calls these very light, brief workouts protective sessions.
He’s done a couple of videos on safe tendon loading, so you can speed up recovery and the rate of remodeling, or even the healing of a tweaked tendon or ligament, over on his channel here. If your issue is more about a raw or splitting finger than a deep tendon tweak, our guide on taping fingers for climbing covers the support side of things.
How to prevent tendon injuries and keep climbing strong
If you zoom out, the plan to prevent tendon injuries while climbing is pretty simple. Keep the hard finger days to three or four a week, track what you’re actually doing so easy days stay easy, and use rest days for light protective loading instead of total shutdown. Respect acute injuries with real rest, and let the tissue rebuild before you load it hard again.
If you want structured finger and tendon training that manages the dose for you, that’s exactly what the Grip & Grind app is built for, so you’re not guessing at loads on your own. And if you’d rather just get one climbing drill in your inbox each week, our free 15 minutes of training newsletter sends short, practical drills you can knock out in about fifteen minutes.
If you liked this one, you’ll probably like the next piece in the series. It’s all about the nutrition behind tendon health, so you can support recovery through what you eat, including one thing that’s really important when it comes to the science of tendons.
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?
Frequently asked questions
What exercises help prevent tendon injuries for climbers?
Light, low intensity loading on rest days is the big one. Think easy squeezes with a rubber ball or doughnut, a few easy hangs on big or medium hangboard holds, some forearm stretching, a few pull ups, and rotator cuff work. The goal is gentle movement that keeps the tissue loaded without turning into a hard workout.
How many hard climbing days a week is safe for your tendons?
For rigorous climbing or hard finger training, Eric Horst suggests three to four days a week as the limit, with only two or three of those at high intensity. The rest of the week is for lower intensity work and recovery so your tendons can adapt instead of breaking down.
Should you rest completely when a tendon is sore?
It depends on the injury. For an acute injury like a rupture or a sharp shoulder or elbow problem, yes, take a full break and see a doctor. But for a normal, uninjured climber, total rest usually isn’t ideal, because gentle loading is part of how tendons stay healthy. When in doubt, get it checked by a professional.
Why does loading help tendons recover?
Connective tissue like tendons and ligaments has poor blood flow, so it relies on movement to get nutrition. The idea, as Eric explains it, is that gentle loading works like squeezing a sponge, helping fluid and nutrients move in and out of the tissue. Sitting still all day doesn’t create that effect, but light protective sessions do.
Is this medical advice?
No. This is general guidance from a climbing coach, not a diagnosis or a treatment plan. If a tendon is painful, swollen, or you felt a pop, stop and see a doctor or physiotherapist before you load it again.
