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Attention shift - body awareness

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If you start feeling an injury creeping up, you can set an intention before a session, route, or a boulder. Take a few breaths and set an intention to keep your focus on the area where you feel pain while climbing. Notice what happens, how it changes, whether the pain increases, and when. This practice can help you become more aware of how you use your body and the feedback that the body is giving you. Climbers are very good at postponing their visit to a physical therapy professional, thinking, “It’s not that bad (yet).” There are masters of self-deception among us. Deliberately choosing to investigate a reoccurring pain will make it hard to ignore it.

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This could be especially helpful if feeling a tweak pushes many panic buttons. You may avoid addressing the problem by continuing as if nothing happened, or you may dramatically seize all the activity. Neither addresses the problem right in front of you. Investigating the sensations can give you insight into the seriousness of pain (or lack thereof).

 

 

 

Mindset shift – value-guided action

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Ask yourself - Is climbing itself fulfilling a need? Or is achieving a goal fulfilling a need? Desiring shortcuts may indicate that your attention is more focused on the future, on being where you want to be, instead of the effort needed to get you there. This effort sometimes looks like taking a step back to check in with your physical and mental well-being. Suppose the goal represents what you want to achieve—experiment by asking yourself why you set that particular goal in the first place. Write down your answer and ask why again. Repeat the cycle until the answer reflects the value the goal has for you rather than the goal itself. Keep this as a guideline.

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Climbers often say that pursuing higher grades reflects an appreciation for progress, but the definition of progress can be very flexible. Progress can be getting physically stronger, becoming more patient, learning to push harder, or just becoming more intentional. One condition for progress is staying engaged in the present challenge and not wishing it away. It’s about being the best we can give the circumstances that will forever change.

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During, treating a sports injury

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After realizing I was most surely dealing with a serious finger injury, I went through a rollercoaster of emotions. Denial was my first response. I was very self-conscious about expressing how I felt. I feared feeling defeated and the impression my reaction could leave on the people I’d just met and whose opinions mattered to me. Then, I felt isolated and lonely, so I broke down and cried. It was a way of realizing I needed support, which was ok. Breathing deeply between sobbing, I thought, “Ok, you’ve got this; you know what to do.” I knew what to do even though I wasn’t excited about it because it was hard. It was time for acceptance and an attention shift. The most important things became healing and finding ways to have a good time regardless.

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So, it happened. The future may seem very grim now, but that’s okay. Adjusting to the situation takes energy, and you must give yourself time and space. Significant changes cause strong emotions, and they deserve to be felt. Conflicting emotions can appear and coexist. In this brief period, it’s best not to argue with them. Let them be for a while. Seek support from people you trust. Verbalize your feelings, disappointment, and fears. Normalize saying – I realize that … (name of the project, grade, training goals, holiday plans) will not happen right now because I first need to heal. Feel bummed about it; it makes sense. There will be more than enough time to get proactive after the storm has passed. Whatever you feel right now, you won’t feel like that forever.

 

 

Attention shift – let the body heal

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After the storm, you can shift your attention from “it’s not fair” and “what could’ve been” to what is now. The process of rehabilitation is never linear; the only way is up kind of thing. It’s important to acknowledge heavy emotions whenever they pop up again. However, focusing on what you can influence, such as recovery, types of training that are still possible, and mental training, is empowering. One of the most important things is to develop trust in one’s own body that it will heal. Some climbers might overdo their rehabilitation, still clinging onto a “more is better” mindset and trying to “aid” the recovery to speed up the process. This is not only unnecessary but can often be counterproductive. It would be best if you could learn to trust your body to climb, get stronger, and recover. Overtraining and persisting fear of re-injury are some of the displays of mistrust in the body’s ability to manage and find balance.

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Mindset shift – from tunnel vision to adjustment

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It can be helpful to question which needs climbing fulfilled. How do you get those needs met without climbing for a while? Could this anyway be useful to maintain and release some of the pressure climbing activity carries? How you think about yourself and what is important to you determines your responses and behavior. If your happiness and well-being rely solely on climbing, then a lot is at stake if you suddenly must cease practicing, even temporarily. While passion, obsession, and total commitment are admirable and feel amazing, your sense of self (self-worth, safety, and self-realization) must be based on a more stable foundation rather than depending on one activity. Climbing might be the most important thing to you, but it does not entirely define who you are. I sometimes joke that I breathe, love, work, and live climbing, but I know now (at least most of the time) that I exist outside of it.

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No matter how motivated you are, sometimes it is hard to stick to the rehab program. Those exercises are indeed not the most thrilling part of the sport. Lack of motivation (amotivation) can come from not valuing an activity, not feeling competent to do it, and not expecting it to yield a particular outcome (Ryan & Deci, 2000). What can help develop therapy adherence is seeing some exercises and behaviors as a general mindset shift instead of a consequence, a chore. You want to support your body in getting better, stronger, more skilled, and more robust, not force it into compliance. Any recovery work is an investment, and it can be important to maintain it, not do it only when it’s an absolute necessity. Use this time to begin creating new habits. An injury can be an incentive for change.

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The shift you want to make is from repairing to restoring. You can stick some tape on a leaking bucket (literally and metaphorically), but how come the bucket started leaking in the first place? Bad quality, too much pressure, too much load, too long wear and tear, etc.? Recovery is a process of adjustment, addressing the cause, and treating the symptoms. During this rebuilding process, revisit which old ways served you well and which are due to be replaced. Why train on the same days, same hours, week after week? Why certain protocols? Are you still having fun, or is it mostly about numbers? Are you feeling stronger after all that training? Are you looking forward to the sessions? Do you need to replace the bucket or not (only metaphorically)?