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jon789
Jul 10, 2013, 12:47 PM
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I hear a lot about climbers pushing too hard and destroying pulleys.
What I want to know is whether the pulley injury is predictable or not.
If your hands feel perfectly fine, no pain and you warm up well, can a pulley just explode on you without any warning at all?
Or does it only happen after some kind of ignored 'warning pain'?
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Kartessa
Jul 10, 2013, 1:17 PM
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jon789 wrote: I hear a lot about climbers pushing too hard and destroying pulleys. What I want to know is whether the pulley injury is predictable or not. If your hands feel perfectly fine, no pain and you warm up well, can a pulley just explode on you without any warning at all? Or does it only happen after some kind of ignored 'warning pain'?
The only warning you'll get is "don't push too hard too fast"
Otherwise, no, you won't see it coming.
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madam
Jul 10, 2013, 1:23 PM
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Hi,
I agree with the previous post.
In my case I had a strained pulley and noticed it one day after it happened. Then 3 months of "climbing on slopers" recovery:)
adam
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milesenoell
Jul 10, 2013, 3:18 PM
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To echo Kartessa, the warning (at least in my case) is the realization that you are pulling too hard too early. How hard is too hard and how early is too early? You find out when the damage is done.
For me is was when I went from climbing lots of cracks with solid jams to face climbing with lots of sit starts on small holds. I'd never had any issues in the first few years of climbing and then in a period of about three months I jacked up my middle finger on my right hand and it has never again recovered the full range of motion as I close my hand. More than seven years of being nice to it has returned the strength (that came back pretty fast), but not the flexibility.
For what it's worth, I never "popped" the pulley. It just got progressively stiffer and more painful and I never backed off until it became so bad I couldn't use it effectively.
Be nice to your hands. They have to do a lot more than climb.
(This post was edited by milesenoell on Jul 10, 2013, 3:22 PM)
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onceahardman
Jul 10, 2013, 8:50 PM
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Usually it's sudden.
Also usually, it is while crimping. Learn to trust and use the open grip.
IMPORTANT EDIT:
This looks really interesting. I have never seen an engineering-type discussion of the biomechanics of crimping vs open grip (here called "slope grip") before.
It looks like a power point presentation for an engineering course, start around page 23. It's long, but well done:
https://engineering.purdue.edu/...ies_and_problems.pdf
Look on page 33, at the difference in force at the A2 pulley, crimp vs slope grip! WOW! 3.26 vs 400.1 N !!!!
(This post was edited by onceahardman on Jul 10, 2013, 9:12 PM)
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milesenoell
Jul 11, 2013, 2:51 PM
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onceahardman wrote: It looks like a power point presentation for an engineering course, start around page 23. It's long, but well done: https://engineering.purdue.edu/...ies_and_problems.pdf Look on page 33, at the difference in force at the A2 pulley, crimp vs slope grip! WOW! 3.26 vs 400.1 N !!!!
That looks like a really interesting class (especially if I had an engineering background and could actually understand the analysis)! It looked to me like the first bit where they showed a sixfold increase in force required to halve the time of a curl was suggesting that slow, smooth motions were also a big factor when attempting to minimize the likelihood of over-straining. Is that a valid interpretation? A sixfold increase isn't like the 110-fold increase shown in the second part, but it struck me as bigger than I would have expected.
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altelis
Jul 24, 2013, 2:34 AM
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I did a review of the literature research paper last year on pulley injuries. there is a TON of biomechanical research out there regarding the different loads seen at the pulleys in different grip positions.
if anybodies interested, lemme know, i can forward on the biomechanics section of my paper..
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onceahardman
Jul 24, 2013, 12:07 PM
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Sure, I'd love to read it.
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kenr
Oct 7, 2013, 11:09 PM
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I know some of the mechanics of hands and fingers, and I carefully analyzed one of the articles referenced on page 36 as supporting that (remarkable) finding, and it seemed to me that its methodology was flawed.
(This was discussed on MountainProject ?training? forum in the last year or two)
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