Does climbing rocks affect your shoulders?
Climbing works your entire body and, when done properly, is an excellent technique to strengthen your shoulders and straighten your posture. But like with any workout, doing it wrong might result in harm.
Climbers frequently sustain ailments including biceps tendinopathy and subacromial discomfort syndrome, also known as shoulder impingement. Repetitive arm motions, gastons, side pulls, reaching overhead, and shoddy climbing technique can all exacerbate them.
1. Using improper form when climbing
A rock wall requires a lot of strength to climb, but moving on the rock efficiently requires even more ability. This sometimes implies that inexperienced climbers must ascend a route more quickly than their tendons can tolerate, which increases the possibility of blowing a shoulder tendon!
Moving your hands before your feet is a typical issue that can be brought on by bad posture and balance. By using your legs to propel you up the wall instead of just your arm and grip muscles, you can keep your legs doing the majority of the work during a climbing session.
Climbing with a "rounded" forward shoulder is another typical movement pattern (see picture E). You may get hurt as a result of having to engage the smaller muscle between your shoulders. By taking the time to practice proper technique on beginner routes or during your warm-up on the bouldering wall, you may immediately improve your shoulder movement patterns.
2. Posture-impaired climbing
The little muscles between your shoulder blades might become tense as you're climbing, especially if you're stooped over. This can shorten and tighten your larger, more powerful muscles, such as your pec minor and major, while also weakening these crucial ones.
You may also begin to lose thoracic spine (middle and lower) extension mobility when your neck and back are slumped. This is frequently a gradual alteration that happens over time, so you might not even notice it.
When climbing, this improper movement pattern might lead to discomfort and damage. You must train and practice excellent shoulder movement in all areas of your training, including pull-ups, finger boarding, core work, and climbing, in order to repair it.
3. Climbing without warming up properly
A lot of climbers don't adequately warm up before ascending. The muscles are put under a lot of stress without having time to adapt. An adequate warm-up helps to prevent dangerous tearing or straining by lubricating the joints and increasing blood flow to the muscles.
Rock climbers frequently suffer from shoulder ailments. These include rotator cuff tears, shoulder dislocations, and subacromial discomfort syndrome, often known as shoulder impingement. Dynamic loading of the shoulder, such as what happens on a dyno or when a climber's foot slips and they absorb an unanticipated pressure, is usually what causes them.
One of the best ways to avoid these kinds of injuries is to do dynamic stretches for the shoulders. For instance, to feel a stretch in your shoulder and pec minor, try bending forward while standing in a doorway with your forearm on one edge at roughly ear level. Do this three times, and then ascend. Spinal twists, arm circles, and finger clenches are a few other dynamic stretches.
4. Using inadequate strength to climb
The little muscles that connect the shoulder blade bone to the arm bone can become more stressed in climbers because they frequently rely on their shoulders for strength. This is particularly true if the climber pulls without maintaining a solid position with their shoulder blades.
Climbing injuries are on the rise, along with the sport's increasing popularity. But it's crucial to keep in mind that misuse, as opposed to actual trauma from a fall, causes the majority of injuries. Usually, overuse injuries affect the elbow, shoulder, or hands and wrists.
Bicep tendinopathy, subacromial impingement, and rotator cuff tears are a few typical shoulder ailments among climbers. It is possible to avoid many of these injuries by using appropriate climbing techniques and scheduling regular rest days. Stretching and closed-chain workouts are other ways climbers can strengthen their shoulders. A quick and efficient approach to stretching your rotator cuff is to stand with your forearm 90 degrees bent at eye level in the corner of a doorway.
