Climbing requires extreme physical exertion. You need to train your body for months to get it ready for climbing. Especially if you are going to climb at high altitude like Mount Aconcagua. But, the more you train, the higher the chances are of you being injured. If you don’t take the injuries seriously, it may lead you to stop climbing at some point. In this article, you will get to know about the common type of climbing injuries and how you can avoid them.
- Tears of Finger Pulley
Pulleys are the ligaments in our finger that joints the finger tendons onto the finger bones. During the climb these are more prone to tears due to overloading with body weight. This injury mostly occurs when you are trying to grip a hold with your fingertips. If you are experiencing a finger pulley injury, then you should immediately take a break as it prevents the flow of oxygen in that area. In the first step, you can apply ice and anti-inflammatory medicines. Until and unless your fingers get healed, you should not continue your climbing.
How to avoid finger pulley tears
Climbing requires muscle strength. The more strength you have in your muscle, the higher the chances are to prevent injuries. To avoid finger pulley tears, you should build your finger strength up. Make sure your fingers are strong enough to crimp on small holds. Start slow but be persistent in building up the strength of your finger.
- Subluxation
Subluxation is one of the common injuries that takes place while climbing. Especially if you are going for Aconcagua climb, you need to be aware of this. It mostly occurs in our shoulders. Subluxation means a partial dislocation of your shoulder. While climbing you tend to make large moves but these often lead to injury like subluxation. You may experience severe pain in your back shoulder and it takes time to recover from this injury. Once your back is injured, you should immediately stop climbing for that moment. Otherwise, it may lead to complete dislocation of the shoulder.
How to avoid subluxation
Exercise yourself on a regular basis. While exercising make sure you stretch your shoulders as much as you can and warm them up. You can even do yoga and other stretching exercises. Yoga might be a great way to prevent it as it increases your muscle flexibility.
- Rotator cuff tears
Apart from dislocating your shoulders, you may end up tearing the muscle in your shoulder. The injury has a name and that is rotator cuff tears. While placing your arms above your shoulders and performing extensive moves, your tendons get stressed out. These lead to rotator cuff tears injury.
How to prevent rotator cuff tears
Most of the shoulder injuries can be prevented by doing simple stretching exercises. You can implement cable machine exercises in your daily routine. The cable machine exercise includes external and internal rotations. It will improve your shoulder strength.
Conclusion
There are companies which conduct guided Aconcagua climb. Either you can schedule your time or you can go according to their scheduled time. But, going on a guided climb will reduce the chances of you being injured. Especially if you are going to climb for the first time you should consider taking guides with you. They are experienced and can guide you better to prevent all kinds of injuries.