Climbing injuries - prevention and management with Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine

What is it you love about climbing? 

Is it the challenge? The focus it brings on? The thrill of hanging on the edge of your destiny? Being a speck on an ancient weather worn face? 

At some point it must be the flow - the flow of your blood as it saturates your muscles, pushing them to expand and strengthen - the flow of your mind as it follows the rock, envisioning each movement and hold - the flow of your breath as it paces you through your route - all in all, the flow of life creating the rock face over the course of aeons and you on the face at that one particular moment, launching to catch a hold with all the intent you can muster...

Sometimes that moment is glorious!! ...  and other times, well, accidents happen...

So what can you do, besides the oft cited RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) acronym?

Chinese medicine has a number of tools to offer such as tuina massage, application of liniments, cupping therapy and qigong exercises, all of which help to increase blood flow, prevent stagnation and nourish injured tissues. Acupuncture can also be very effective both in aiding a speedy recovery from acute injuries and in working out old problems that may be nagging at the least and downright debilitating at the worst.

One common problem that comes up for climbers is instability of the muscles and attachments around the shoulder. This is due to the nature of climbing in that the climber excessively uses the muscles that pull from the shoulders and comparatively under-uses the muscles that push from the shoulders. A simple preventative measure is to make a habit of doing push-ups and lifting weights above your head (shoulder presses). This will balance out the muscles around the shoulder and strengthen the underused portions of those muscles. Acupuncture, tuina, cupping, etc., as cited above, could help if this is already a problem and therapeutic massage is always wonderful for releasing muscle spasms and in general nourishing and realigning muscle tissue fibers so they can relax, heal and function optimally.

Other common problems for climbers involve strains & sprains of the various muscles, tendons and ligaments of the wrist and hand, and the formation of nodules in the joint capsule areas of the fingers, often due to the stressful and repetitive nature of common grips. Adequate rest and thorough slow stretching of the fingers, hands, wrists and arms are the best preventatives for these problems. Repetitive strain exhausts the energy flow through an area and blood and fluids stop circulating properly. This can result in pain, inflammation, numbness, tingling, even the formation of nodules and the buildup of scar tissue due to repeated small scale trauma. Certain liniments and massage can help to soften scar tissue, disperse nodular accumulation and bring blood and nourishment to tissues, while acupuncture will help to re-integrate and maintain the circulation of blood and fluids and accelerate self-repair of the tissues.

Acupuncture also addresses any underlying health imbalances in the body which may be allowing for an injury to persist without healing properly. In this way acupuncture helps to strengthen the core while at the same time assimilating injured parts back into a healthy whole.

For more information check out this article from the magazine, "Acupuncture Today":

Treating climbing injuries with acupuncture part I

Treating climbing injuries with acupuncture part II

Also, check out the qigong exercises on my previous post to improve your energy and boost your climbing power!

Qigong for Climbers

These exercises are great to do in the morning to get the blood flowing to all those aching muscles, or to prepare muscles that are aching to climb! 

This one stretches out your neck, shoulders and upper back.

This one adds on to the previous one and stretches a little further down the back.

This one just has cool mysterious music!

Ok, really it's a great seated stretch for the upper back and arms.

Remember to breath out when you extend the arms and in when you bring them to your waist.

This one can strengthen the grip and forearm muscles. 

The key to that though is to do it with a firm, strong grip - imagine that you are grabbing onto a log with each hand and gripping it tight as you do the exercise. 

Open the fingers slightly as the hands reach out & close them slightly as the hands pull in.

Also feel the connection, as if it were magnetic, between the center of each palm and your center of gravity above the waist.

Here's one more that helps to loosen up the shoulders.

Be sure to rotate as far as you can in each direction. Emphasize the raising and sinking co-ordinated with the breath - raise up and breath in, sink down and breath out.

If you enjoy this sort of meditative movement practice, there are a lot of subtleties to co-ordinating the breath and moving from your center with all limbs in synchronicity, and there is a whole "internal art" to rooting & moving the qi. Private instruction is available. Contact me at (828)773-5032.

Until then, keep breathing and climbing!

Qigong - flowing with the river of life

Most people have heard of Taiji (aka Tai Chi Chuan) and can picture hordes of middle to late aged Chinese people practicing together in the park. They move with the synchronized grace of a gentle ocean wave through a slow dance of rising and falling, expanding and contracting movements. But what most people haven't seen are all those in the nooks and crannies of any park in China doing individualized qigong exercises as prescribed to them by their physician. They may be standing still in a given posture or doing exercise movements while sitting, walking, or standing in front of a tree, stream or some other natural phenomenon.

Qigong simply means, "energetic flowing over time", and it refers to any of thousands of possible movement sets designed to improve specific aspects of health like blood circulation, digestion, energy and mental clarity, or even lung or other organ function. Qigong is often prescribed by a physician of Chinese Medicine along with herbs and acupuncture to make a more rounded approach toward improving a patient's condition or simply to increase wellbeing and prevent a decline in health. It also gives patients a sense of empowerment in doing something themselves to improve their condition and helps treatment effects to last longer between visits to the physician.

Many people swear by the health and longevity promoting benefits of qigong and enjoy its capacity for clearing the mind and helping them to feel invigorated and ready to engage in each day. In my practice I find it particularly helpful for people with back problems, chronic shoulder and neck tension or stiffness in the hips. I also regularly incorporate qigong exercises in a patient's treatment plan when working to balance internal problems such as asthma, constipation or endometriosis.

Some people may find qigong easier to learn than taiji, because it is generally taught as a few simple movement exercises which can be practiced individually or as a set rather than in the long "form" style of taiji where one has to remember many movements which follow one another without pause. Like Taiji, a class is often the best way to get introduced to qigong, as one is motivated to continue by the group participation and at the same time one learns complete movements that can be practiced daily between classes. Qigong is also often taught to patients by their Chinese Medicine physician, as mentioned earlier, as a part of their therapeutic treatment.

In any case qigong is an awesome way to promote an invigorated balance between being clear-minded and relaxed and feeling like you have the energy to conquer the world. And when you have that balance, man, you're just flowing with the river of life!

Got Taiji?

Taiji practice is to your immune system what calcium is to your bones.

Taiji has been shown in several studies to boost the immune system. One such study found that each individual session of Taiji raised systemic immunity! 


Systemic (humoral) immunity is measured in terms of the number of antibodies present in the blood. These antibodies identify viruses and harmful bacteria and tag them to be eliminated.

"[Researchers] found positive changes in humoral activity attributed to a single episode of practice and indications of humoral immunity improvement associated with long-term Taiji practice. "1

Specific immunity to the virus which causes shingles was also shown to dramatically improve. Even more so than being given a vaccine for the virus! 

"Surprisingly, the Taiji group’s immunity index was slightly higher than the other group inoculated with vaccine."2 

!!!AMAZING!!!

And from a different study:

"a nearly 50% increase in varicella zoster virus [shingles virus] specific, cell-mediated immunity was found in the Taiji group as compared with demographically similar, wait-listed controls."1

This is just incredible... who'd have thought that a simple exercise, consisting of slow, co-ordinated movements that takes only 15 minutes to do, could boost immune function so dramatically. I mean... it makes sense - the blood and much of the immune system comes from the activities that happen inside of bones, and Taiji puts gentle stress on the largest bones in the body, the femur, as we shift the weight slowly back and forth between legs. It is then, just this gentle stress that heats up the bones enough to invigorate them and increase their functional capacity, thus boosting the immune system.  

~ Simply INCREDIBLE!!!

1 http://www.williamccchen.com/taiji1.pdf
2 http://www.examiner.com/tai-chi-in-st-louis/taichi-improves-old-adults-immunity-sleep-quality-and-many-other-health-issues