In early December I hurt myself climbing (long winded explanation here) and was unable to climb for 7 weeks. The hand specialist said that my fractured finger would be good in 4 weeks. So when week 5 rolled around and I still couldn’t squeeze a sponge (avoiding doing the dishes in this time period was a blessing) I was concerned that I'd permanently mangled my finger somehow. The other big drawback was that most of my friends were away having awesome adventures, while I was stuck at home watching ABC News 24 as our National Parks went up in flames.
So it feels a little bit like déjà vu for me, except that now everyone is stuck at home and the isolation and movement restrictions are way more severe. During my Summer there were a fair few negative thoughts which brings me to the first and probably most important section.
Mental health
Early on while my body was still quite sore, I couldn’t do any exercise for a week and a bit. I really noticed this lack of endorphins and was quite antsy to get up and moving, so I would really encourage you to keep active for your sanity. But while I was in couch potato mode I did a little evaluation. I obviously wasn’t going to be able to exercise for a little while, let alone climb, something I’d done for nearly every spare moment of 2019. I had to accept that reality, so the next question was what else could I do? I decided to use this time as an opportunity to do all the things I’d neglected while being outside all the time:
- Hanging out with my family and non-outdoorsy friends: while this isn’t possible in a physical sense now, it’s still really nice to reconnect with people you might not have interacted with in a while.
- Life admin and inside/desk jobs: clean room, consolidate super into one account, etc. etc. Yeah this stuff is batshit boring but it’s a good time to do this. Then you’ll have more free time to get outside when normalcy resumes!
- Sedentary hobbies: probably watched Ben Cossey send groove train 20 times, and also played too many games of 500 against strangers online. Sometimes you gotta treat yourself.
You've probably already done a few of these, but still, it was nice to view them as opportunities while other things are off the cards (I've added some other people’s suggestions at the bottom).
During the summer I was glued to the Fires Near Me App and ABC News 24 due to the bushfires. Keeping across the news so you know why you can leave the house is good, but soaking up a lot of negative news is not. So I'd recommend attempting to limit your doom and gloom input. I also tried to avoid the black holes of youtube and facebook in December (not always successfully). Right now I actively throw my phone to the corner of the room so I’m less tempted to look at it, in an attempt to be more productive.
One of the biggest things that sustained me during this period was knowing that it would come to an end. The current situation is going to last longer and have more significant impacts than a dodgy finger, but it’s still nice to realise that in the future we will be able to hug each other and get outside again, even if we’re uncertain what things will be like then. For me in early January I wasn’t sure that my finger would be 100% again, but it was slowly improving. I knew I wanted to keep climbing, so how could I make sure I was in the best shape for whenever I was ready to get back in action?
Home Training
(Some of these will just reference climbing, but if you're into something else you can likely draw parallels.)
Before I list a bunch of random exercises, I think it’s a good idea to evaluate what exercises you should do. As a first step I would recommend thinking about your weaknesses. Whatever you’re training for or working towards, it’s likely you’ve got some weaknesses. It may be unpleasant to focus on your shortcomings, but improving on them will give you the biggest gains. They are also fantastic to work on because you can typically make progress quickly which feels amazing 🙂
I knew a big weakness of mine was my flexibility, I was as rigid as a dried out baguette. So I got stuck into hip mobility exercises, and now months later I can hit high footholds and more readily “Spread ‘em baby” on climbs like Spread ‘em Baby! Sometimes I have to take a moment to question whether it’s actually my own foot, because for all of my life that range of motion was impossible, and honestly it still feels a bit unnatural when it happens.
I also focussed on some of my niggling injuries, for me it was my right leg, if you don't have anything like that, just wow. I realised that the pain in my knee probably wasn’t helped by the fact that my right ankle seems to roll at the drop of hat. So I worked on some strengthening exercises to build them up a bit. Also once the stiches in my shin were out I started running/walking again, specifically some laps on the death stairs in preparation for big walk-ins. Probably wouldn’t recommend the close quarters of the deaths stair now though 🙁
Maybe you’ve got a goal you can focus on training towards. One of my goals is successfully inverting in an offwidth, you can view a poor attempt here. On that day I realised I needed to really strengthen the muscles for dorsiflexion so that I could lock off with my ankle. This should hopefully also help with my dream of completing a full 360 rotation in the Squeeze Test at Araps.
I would encourage you to do your own research on exercises and what you need to work on, reps, sets etc. Firstly you don’t want to get injured repeatedly doing exercises with incorrect form. From my experience the worst injuries are chronic soft tissue injuries that persist for a while due to misuse. So doing some research on correct form will reward you in spades through avoided injuries (Make or Break by Dave MacLeod is a good read for this). So here’s a list of exercises that keep me occupied when I’m home:
Lower body:
- Balance exercises, eg. shutting your eyes on one foot, you can easily progress this.
- Ankle strengthening with resistance bands
- Single leg squats, with the other leg behind you on a chair or something. Probs wouldn’t recommend jumping straight to pistol squats unless you have good knees.
- Hip mobility stretches
Core:
- Join in the club cult core sessions
- If you get sick of core endurance maybe shift to core strengthening exercises that are a bit more climbing specific…
Upper body (shoulders):
- External rotations with resistance bands, for those rotator cuff muscles.
- Focusing on hanging right
- I like the exercises in this video as well
- Various stretches to open up the shoulders from all that pulling
- In climbing we pull, maybe some push-ups to balance things (guilty of not doing these, but probs a good idea)
Lower arms:
- Rice bucket exercises. These are great for wrist strengthening and finger extension. I was cheap and lived near the beach so I used sand which is much more viscous than rice but also does the trick. In corona times coming by rice at the supermarket or finding an open beach is probably more challenging haha.
- Finger training: hangboarding etc. When I couldn’t use my middle finger or for pulley injuries, half crimping individual fingers with hanging weights worked well.
I’d be interested in whatever exercises or activities you’re doing at this time, chuck them in the comments on fb 🙂 . The Club has also got a bunch of activities to keep ourselves occupied for the next while.
Also here’s a list of good activities some peer reviewers have suggested:
- Cleaning your cams
- Cleaning/marking your gear
- Going through old photos
- Patching up your holey clothes
- Making a rope mat from that old manky rope
- Get an irreversible hair cut
- Writing a blog post to get all this junk out of your head.