by Tom Markiewicz on May 28, 2009
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As climbers, we suffer from numerous injuries. One of the more common climber injuries is medial epicondylitis or golfers elbow. Essentially this is pain on the inside of your elbow and it originates from overuse of the flexor muscles. All [...]
by Tom Markiewicz on March 16, 2009
I’m always going through a lot of tape for my fingers, but buying it at REI or other retail stores is getting ridiculously expensive. I did manage to find a great deal on Amazon a few days ago, but I was almost skeptical at the low price per roll. My order just showed up and [...]
by Tom Markiewicz on February 27, 2009
I’ve been struggling with some climbing injuries recently and finally decided to visit a sports medicine doctor highly recommended by a friend. My issues were a recurring finger injury at the base of my right ring finger and pain in my elbows and thumbs. He rather quickly diagnosed the elbows/thumbs as flexor tendinitis and set [...]
by Tom Markiewicz on January 7, 2009
Over the years, I think I’ve read almost every book on training for climbing. Always looking for that missing element to my training plans or that hidden technique I never knew existed.
Obviously, there never has been a magic bullet, though many books would have you believe so (although I do recommend Training for Climbing). As [...]
by Tom Markiewicz on April 4, 2006
I stumbled across a provocative set of articles discussing the treatment of climbing injuries from an Eastern medical perspective (primarily using acupuncture). From Acupuncture Today, here are the links to these articles:
Treating Common Wrist and Finger Injuries and Integrating Medical Philosophies, Part One
Treating Common Wrist and Finger Injuries and Integrating Medical Philosophies, Part Two
I’m interested [...]
by Tom Markiewicz on November 25, 2005
I’ve been missing in action for the past month or so primarily due to work demands. I also unfortunately injured my thumb bouldering and it still hasn’t quite healed yet. So, having not really been able to climb for over a month now has been driving me nuts. The worst part is that I missed [...]
by Tom Markiewicz on February 23, 2005
The forearm pump. Is there a climber who is not familiar with these awful words? Every climber has their own methods of attempting to reduce the lactic acid burn and pumped forearms. The 8a.nu site has an article putting a little science behind the madness.
by Tom Markiewicz on February 1, 2005
Judging from the number of hits I’m seeing on my previous finger injury posts, it looks like this is a popular topic. Unfortunately, this likely mirrors how common finger injuries are with climbers. I recently found a site dedicated just to climbing injuries of the shoulders, elbows, and fingers called ClimbingInjuries.com. An informative site, [...]
by Tom Markiewicz on January 24, 2005
As a chronic sufferer of finger injuries, I’ve sought out the most effective ways of preventing injury while climbing. While I’ve read in numerous books about stretching the fingers and forearms, not much discussion has gone into the stretching of individual fingers. Most climbing training books advise to stretch the fingers as a group.
From my [...]