A Defense Of Injury

“I had an injury, as I always do.”
- Jerry Moffatt, explaining what kicked off a great training cycle

We should change our outlook on injuries. We think they’re bad because they keep us from doing what we want at a given time. But they also force us to change, which with the right outlook is almost always a good thing. Change forces adaptation and, as any trainer knows, the specificity of adaptation is the key to making progress.

So just after training camp, during a full-swing translation towards building biking and running fitness back up, I hit a snafu. Or rather it hit me, as one of my dogs decided a snowy downhill run was a good time for some impromptu tackle football. Regaining my footing from her cross-body block wrenched something connecting to the old L5S1 injury and, voila, I’m back to traction exercises and back care yoga while my endurance training gets shelved a few weeks.

It’s not my first rehab rodeo and before I’d even assessed the damage I’d refocused my training schedule. A couple of years back, in the midst of recovering from the injury highlighted above, I took one of Kristen Ulmer’s seminars on the mental aspects of sport. Part of this was focusing on the beauty of injuries and how the changes they force on your life give you a new lease; license, or an excuse, to re-focus on something new. Reflection during this lesson confirmed it; many of my best performances have come in the wake of an injury.

The serendipity of this story is that Ben and I had become overly enthusiastic about sending a new route in the Coop. We were fit enough to get close but consistent redpoint attempts tend to make you weaker over time. Training makes you stronger, meaning if we stopped trying to climb and trained we would simply be able to do the route without all the fuss. When I called Ben to inform him that it was time to get serious about training he said, “I know what you mean. During one go (redpoint failure) I landed on the floor and just happened to be looking at The Beastmaker. I swear it was saying ‘Buddy, if you want to do that route you're staring at the answer.’”

Fingerboard (hangboard) training is almost perfect traction for the back. It’s also the single best way to get seriously strong for climbing. Its only downside is that it's hard to focus on because it's not necessarily fun. I haven’t had a meaningful climbing road trip, where I was peaking strength-wise, since sometime last century. Granted I've been focused on other sports but still; The Year of the Van beckons. My injury being the key to great success.

The One Workout Every ONE Should Do

My latest training article for DPM has launched. It’s titled The One Workout Every Climber Should Do but it’s a workout every single person should do. Although the strength you gain from it is very specifically applied to climbing it’s also vital for almost everything else you do with your upper body. So while it may not be the ONE workouts you should do, everyone will reap huge benefits from it. I could go on but I’ll quote the article instead.

Climbers aren’t the only demographic to ignore the importance of stability training. A few sports scientist friends, trying to answer the riddle as to why bigger, stronger and faster-than-ever-before athletes are also most injured in history found that most—in some cases as high as 90%--showed significant muscular imbalance. When we’re out of balance don’t move with biomechanical efficiency and our linear movements don’t “track” correctly. When this occurs an injury can happen anywhere along the body’s kinetic (movement) chain.

In populations where these imbalances have been correct they’ve seen non-contact injury rates plummet. The major areas of focus are the shoulders and hips. Pelvic (hip in the colloquial) stability can be important for climbers (and everyone) but in the need-to world of sports specific performance we’re only going to address the shoulders.

This region hosts the origin of almost every move that climbing begins with. And while it does not include the “money” area, the hands and forearms, biomechanical alignment problems will radiate to that area as well, meaning that imbalances in the scapular region can lead to elbow, wrist, or even finger problems. Even though you rarely fail on a climb because your back or shoulders were pumped, strengthening these areas properly will shift more of each climbing movement’s burden to this region’s larger muscles, thus saving your smaller hand and forearm muscles for when you actually need them. This energy savings also translates to less strain on connective tissues, reducing instances of tendon and ligament damage.

Html version of the article (easier to read)

This article is the second in a series. The first is titled Should You Train?, which means should you train for climbing (it is a climbing magazine after all), but has some application across the board as well and should be worth reading, especially if you participate in a sport where you get a lot of exercise by just doing the sport.



The movement videos should be live sometime today on DPM. If they aren’t you can find them by clicking the two presented here on the You Tube icon and following the series.

Plantar Fasciitis Exercises (Video)

Here are videos the support the article I wrote last month:

How To Treat (and Avoid) Plantar Fasciitis

In and Outs


Towel Crunches


Toe Raises

How To Treat (and Avoid) Plantar Fasciitis

Here’s a decent little video on what plantar fasciitis is and how to treat it in its acute phase. What it doesn’t cover is how to get rid of it or, better yet, prepare your body so that you don’t get it in the first place. Once you get it there’s no way around a fairly lengthy rehab process and it’s not all that hard to avoid. Here are a few exercises that, when done regularly, will greatly reduce the chance of you getting plantar fasciitis. When you have it, these are also your go-to movements.

A,B,Cs: I hate it when doctors prescribe this exercise as a treatment for foot injuries. Not because it’s bad but because once you have foot issues you must get more aggressive with your rehab and this tends to get prescribed the most only because it’s simple. All you do is draw the alphabet with your feet in the morning before getting out of bed. If I’m spending a lot of time on my feet—like when I’m running ultras—I’ll do the alphabet both forward and backwards, slowly. It’s a great warm-up for your feet prior to getting out of bed.

In and outs: While A,B,Cs are a great warm-up, you need to strengthen all the muscles of your foot and ankel so that it doesn’t collapse, which is probably how you got PF in the first place. This exercise can be done anytime and anywhere. Sit with your legs parallel about two fist widths apart, feet flat. Rotate your toes inward as far as they can go, forcing your weight onto the outside of your foot. Now rotate out as far as you can go, forcing weight onto the inside of your foot. Do 50 reps daily until this is easy. Then you only need to do it once in a while to ensure you haven’t lost your strength.

Towel Crunches: I use a hand towel (wash cloth). Sit as above with a small towel on the ground in from of you with the edge under your toes. Use your toes to crunch up the towel as small as you can get it. Then use your toes to flatten it back out. Do 25 if you can. If not, that is the benchmark of strength you are looking for.

Toe raises: Stand with your back flat against a wall, feet together, flat on the ground, out in front of you about a foot or so. Now raise your toes while keeping your back presses flat against the wall. This works the tibialis anterior muscle on the front of your leg, which helps balance flexor/extensor leg strength and will also keep you from getting shin splints. Do 50 a day until they feel easy, then do them once a week or so for maintenance.