Can You Climb With a Finger Injury? What to Keep Training and What to Stop

The answer is probably yes. But it will depend a lot on what finger injury you actually have and how serious it is. Regardless of that, there are many things you can do that will help your climbing in the long term, even if it means adapting your climbing very considerably. A finger injury doesn't have to mean sitting on your ass for six weeks waiting for a date on a calendar. It means changing what you do, for a while, in a way that still lets you train, helps you grow, and still lets you enjoy the thing you actually love doing.

Before we carry on, this blog post is my own interpretation of the research I've looked at, cited below, mixed with what I've seen coaching climbers through the years. It's not physio advice, and it's not a diagnosis. Your injury is your own personal situation, it can be shaped by your lifestyle, your history, or it might just be a very different injury to what's being talked about here. But the principle stays the same across most injuries. What I'm trying to do is put what the research actually says into something you can understand, to hopefully help you see where to take your training from here. Not exactly what you should do, just a clearer picture to work from.

Get Your Finger Injury Properly Assessed

First of all, we need to know what the finger injury actually is. Now, I'm not here to tell you to rush to the physio with any little niggle. If you've been climbing for a while, you've probably learned by now the difference between being sore and hurt. But if you're just starting out and something doesn't feel right, I recommend getting it assessed and actually understanding what you're dealing with, ideally with a climbing physio, because climbing injuries tend to be quite niche. A generalist GP or physio who doesn't see many climbers might not know how these injuries actually happen, or what to expect from a climber.

This matters even more depending on who you are. If it's a young climber who isn't fully skeletally developed, not just kids, there are injuries very specific to them, growth plate stress fractures, that simply don't happen on fully developed skeletal bodies, because the growth plates are still open and vulnerable to this kind of repetitive stress. If a young climber's finger is sore, don't let them wait it out. Stop, and get it checked with a climbing specialist physio and get referred for an X-ray. Left untreated, this kind of injury can cause lasting damage to the joint. I go into a lot more depth on growth plate injuries specifically in a longer piece I've written, a short version on UKC and the full version here on the site.

If you're fully grown, there's many different things it could be, and the treatment or rehab for one and the other will look kind of different. So the first thing, before anything else, is understanding how bad the injury is, and what it actually is. Guessing here is where a lot of climbers go wrong, either underreacting to something that needed real attention, or overreacting to something manageable.

How to Adapt Your Climbing With a Finger Injury

What I recommend when you have an injury, not just a finger injury but in general, is this. First, lay off training, or lay off whatever is actually upsetting the injury. Then understand what it is that you actually have. At the right time, start progressive loading until you find an intensity you can manage and tolerate well. Keep progressively loading it, until you're back at full form, or stronger. If you upset the injury again, start the cycle over.

The first change is usually in style, not effort. Practicing slabier climbs and cutting down how often you use your injured finger is one of the simplest ways to keep climbing while you take the load off what's actually hurt. If you have two finger injuries, one in each hand, you might benefit from holding onto very good jugs and doing more balancing climbs, where your hands are there for stability more than raw pulling.

If your focus is entirely outdoor climbing, there are real benefits to training slabs indoors, and it's very transferable to some styles of routes outside, particularly anything vertical or demanding on your feet, where trusting your feet, mobility and balance matter as much as finger strength. And if what you like is climbing really hard routes in a cave, or long, steep, physical, pumpy routes, this gets a little bit more limited, especially if your finger injury is bad, simply because there's less room to avoid loading the finger on that kind of terrain. That doesn't mean you stop entirely, it means the adaptation has to be a bit smarter and probably more conservative while things settle. Even so, you'll benefit from strengthening your ankles and improving your range of movement on and off the wall. This transfers really well to applying force into small footholds on steep terrain, and to fitting your leg into narrower kneebars.

Track the Pain, Every Day

Once you know what you're dealing with, start tracking the pain. Write it down every day. Keeping a diary of pain, tracking it over days, gives you a lot of data, because it means you can adjust your training based on what the previous week's training actually did to your finger, rather than guessing or going off how you feel in the moment. I go into why this matters and how to actually do it in How Long Does a Pulley Injury Take to Heal in Climbing, so I won't repeat all of it here, just know that this single habit will tell you more than most other things while you're dealing with an injury.

Turning a Finger Injury Into an Opportunity

For me, an injury is always an opportunity to pick up on things you've neglected in the past. Strength and conditioning, maybe a bit more slabby climbing, focusing more on different grips, paying a little more attention to your body positioning, learning to move more efficiently, practicing techniques you always avoid because you'd rather jump to the next hold and cut loose. Many climbers have a handful of these blind spots, movements or grip types they quietly skip because it's easier and more satisfying to just power through on what already works.

A finger injury is probably going to limit you from the more intense fingery training. But it might be a good opportunity to improve holding slopers, improve your compression, practice heel hooks, going a bit deeper into drop knees that were giving you trouble before, and improve your understanding of movement by raising awareness of how and when you're loading your fingers the most while climbing. None of that is wasted time. If anything, it's often some of the training a lot of climbers need but never get around to.

This is also a mindset thing, and I want to be upfront that this part is coaching philosophy more than science. Rather than seeing an injury as a dark hole to sit in, doing nothing and getting affected emotionally or psychologically by it, I always recommend trying to keep busy, working on other areas you've neglected in the last few months, so that you grow out of the injury as a better climber. That shift alone changes how the next few weeks feel, and often changes what you actually get out of them. Having something to actively work on makes the whole injury easier to deal with psychologically, it gives you somewhere to put your energy instead of just sitting with the frustration.

What You Should Actually Stop

If the assessment isn't very limiting, this is a conversation you can have plainly with your physio. Tell them straight, I don't want to stop climbing, is this a good idea or not. You can get a second opinion too. I understand how hard it is to hear you're going to have to stop climbing for six weeks, like some physios suggest for some finger injuries. I've heard this many times, from countless people, from climbers at the crag, where they've had to stop for six, eight weeks, some even longer. It's not an easy thing to go to bed with. A second opinion can be useful because they might have a different perspective, and finger injuries in climbers are specific enough that not every clinician will land on the same recommendation. It's also important that you're not just trying to find a physio who'll tell you what you want to hear. Be honest with them, and with yourself, first.

What I'll suggest stopping is probably the volume. Quite often injuries are quite loud in pain but actually not that bad, and the body can tolerate quite high intensities. Pain is actually a pretty bad indicator of how serious an injury is, research on this backs it up too, so the first thing to do when something goes sore isn't panic. Let it settle, stay rational about it, and then reflect on whether it's worth getting checked, or something you can manage yourself. What it's not so good at dealing with is intensity plus volume over time. So what I'd suggest is dropping the volume, finding a volume and load you're okay with, and building back up while still writing down the amounts and intensities. Be very humble and honest about how much is too much, because it's very easy to convince yourself a session was fine even when your finger the next morning says otherwise.

Through the first couple of weeks you already start getting an idea of what has irritated the finger a little and what hasn't. That early window is key, and it's also where most people either panic and stop everything, or ignore the signs completely. Neither extreme serves you well. A simple thing like booking a physio appointment, starting a diary, and/or managing and adapting your load is probably already doing more for your head than taking two weeks off and doing nothing. These are things you can control, and taking control of something is usually what stops you spiraling into a negative headspace about an injury in the first place.

Understanding Pulley Injuries in Climbing

A pulley is a small tunnel of fibre that holds your flexor tendon close to the bone as it runs down your finger, it's what lets the tendon pull efficiently instead of bowstringing away from the bone under load. It's also the most common finger injury in climbing. Most people picture it happening while crimping or on a full crimp, mid-pull, when you are pulling as hard as you can, and that's true, it can happen exactly like that. Very often though, it's the moment your grip starts giving way, a foot slipping, fatigue setting in, the finger opening under load. And it's not always one single moment either, plenty of pulley injuries build up gradually from repeated load without enough recovery in between, rather than one clear event you can point to. I go into the full mechanism, grading, and symptoms in Finger Pulley Injuries in Climbing: What They Are and What to Do.

So does having a pulley injury mean you need to stop climbing entirely? Probably not, if you've had it assessed and it's not a big deal, unless it's something really niche or strange. Some physios will suggest a mild, grade one pulley injury might tolerate higher intensity a bit better than higher volume, but this really can be quite personal.

In my experience, for example, this is true. I tend to tolerate quite high intensity for the first three weeks when I've got something aching, but not for a long time, and then I manage it and adapt my sessions considerably. I tend to go through pain and niggles relatively quickly. But for some people, they've dragged a grade one pulley injury for ages. Even though the recovery time of an injury of this scale tends to be around 4 to 6 weeks, it depends a lot on how you recover.

So your recovery habits and your lifestyle become more relevant, stress, sleep, drinking, eating, and how consistently you'd been training at the time of the injury. I go deeper into how all of this affects recovery in Recovery for Climbers. Let's say you get the "same injury", the same finger, same pulley, same grade injury, in two completely different case scenarios. In one, you've got dialed-in recovery habits and a solid training history behind you. In the other, you're a newbie who drinks, barely sleeps, and hasn't built any base yet. You could heal at a completely different pace. Not because the injury itself was different, but because everything around it was.

Don't approach the injury as the end of the world, because it really isn't. There's a lot of things you can focus on while still being injured. There's plenty to do, and you'll be climbing hard again. It might feel slow while you're in it, that's normal, but you will get through it.

Grip Choice as a Training Lever

In the case of a pulley injury for example, the research disagrees a little on exactly how much extra load crimping puts on your pulleys compared to an open hand. What's safe to say is that it's considerably higher. So if crimping is hurting you, adapt your grip, play with other grip positions, find a load and volume you're comfortable with in a more open position, and start building from there. Keep track of what this does to your finger, and be mindful and respectful of both the recovery time and the progression.

If you're training through a finger injury, that's a lever you can actually pull. Adapting your grip, load and volume keeps you climbing without asking the injured structure to take the worst of it. It's not about avoiding one specific grip forever, it's about being deliberate with which grips you use while things are healing.

My Take

A finger injury changes how you train, but it doesn't have to end it. Understand what it is that you actually have, track what you're actually doing and how it makes your finger feel, drop the volume before you drop everything, find a volume and load you are comfortable with and use the grip positions and styles that keep you climbing without pushing your luck on the injury. Most climbers come back from this stronger in areas they'd been neglecting in the past and that's not a consolation prize, it can be a genuine part of the process.

FAQ

What should I actually stop training with a finger injury?
This will entirely depend on the specifics of the injury, but you can usually start by cutting volume. The body tends to tolerate a fair amount of intensity, it's intensity plus volume over time that could be the bigger problem. Drop the volume, keep tracking, find a load and volume you're comfortable with and build back up gradually.

Does slab climbing help while recovering from a finger injury?
It can. Slabier, more balance focused climbing could reduce how much you're loading the injured finger, and if you climb outdoors on vertical or technical terrain, the skills transfer well. It's more limited if your main goal is steep, pumpy, physical climbs. But there are things that you will still take out of it.

Should I change my grip while my finger is injured?
Often, yes, and it depends on what's actually injured. If crimping is aggravating it, adapting your grip and finding a load you're comfortable with in a more open position takes pressure off the injured structure without necessarily stopping you from climbing. It's not a universal fix, so don't assume the same grip change works for every injury.

Should I get a second opinion if I'm told to stop climbing for six weeks?
If it doesn't sit right with you, yes. Finger injuries in climbers are specific enough that not every clinician lands on the same recommendation, and a second opinion can give you a different perspective before you commit to a full stop. Just don't turn it into shopping around from physio to physio until someone tells you what you want to hear. Actually listen to the advice, and be honest with them about what you have and how it feels.

References

• Schöffl V, Hochholzer T, Winkelmann HP, Strecker W. Pulley Injuries in Rock Climbers. Wilderness & Environmental Medicine. 2003;14(2):94-100. PubMed
• Roloff I, Schöffl VR, Vigouroux L, Quaine F. Biomechanical model for the determination of the forces acting on the finger pulley system. J Biomech. 2006;39:915-923. PubMed
• Vigouroux L, Quaine F, Labarre-Vila A, Moutet F. Estimation of finger muscle tendon tensions and pulley forces during specific sport-climbing grip techniques. J Biomech. 2006;39(14):2583-2592. PubMed
• Schöffl V, Schöffl I, Flohé S, El-Sheikh Y, Lutter C. Evaluation of a Diagnostic-Therapeutic Algorithm for Finger Epiphyseal Growth Plate Stress Injuries in Adolescent Climbers. Am J Sports Med. 2022.
• Docking SI, Ooi CC, Connell D. Tendinopathy: Is Imaging Telling Us the Entire Story? Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy. 2015;45(11):842-852. doi:10.2519/jospt.2015.5880