Sports Injuries in Climbing

Well, the fact is that if you plan on staying active the chances are that you are likely to get an injury at some point along the way. I have had no end of problems with annoying and painful injuries so I thought it might be a good idea to write a short article about my experiences and the people/services I have used around Glasgow to get everything sorted out.

Injuries in climbing can occur for many reasons. Many people simply pull muscles or tweak a tendon in their upper body - usually down to not warming up or cooling down properly, or simply cranking too hard. Some TLC and chilling out will usually sort most of these problems out. I am no expert when it comes to training, and the best line of defence is to train to avoid the injuries in the first place. There are plenty of brilliant online resources with training advice including Andy Kirkpatrick's Psychovertical, PlanetFear.com and UKClimbing.

The best thing to do with any niggling injury though is to see the professionals. That's where you're fairly lucky to be a member of the University of Glasgow. Being such a large organisation, there are a number of sports medecine services attached to the Sport and Recreation Service. (information for all the services I mention is available on the Sport and Recreation Service website - http://www.ugsport.co.uk)

The university has a chiropractor that works a few days a week and charges £12.50 a session. There's nothing like a good all over joint cracking session to get your back and any dodgy joints back on form!

A brilliant physio works out at Garscube twice a week. The clinic there is a satellite of the National Sports Medicine Centre at Hampden Park (in the stadium). The Garscube clinic has all the basic equipment required for basic treatments but will refer people onto the main clinic at Hampden if the skills/equipment required are only available there. To visit the Garscube clinic it's £20 a session for students, however, if you have to go to Hampden, you will have to pay the full amount of £35 a session (no student discount), plus the cost of any specific treatments (£140 custom orthotics in my case!).

If you don't have much luck with the university, In the Westend, the running shop Achilles Heel on Great Western Road have physios that operate behind the shop. They will see you quickly, in my experience, know what what they are doing and charge £30 for a session.

Barnyard has also mentioned that there is also another private physio in the Westend - "The physio at The Buckingham Clinic (just off Gt Western Rd) was great in getting the shoulder back up and running. £37 a session but money well spent!"

The NHS obviously have all the people and equipment needed, however, in my experience, waiting for 4 months to simply get a first appointment is a bit pointless. Being out of action for that long is going to cause serious problems for most serious athletes. Going to see the GP is often not too helpful - unless you are lucky to see a GP just so happens to know what they're talking about when it comes to sports injuries. Most will just tell you to rest, which might work in some cases, however many problems can get worse, or require fixing the cause of the issue to stop it just re-occuring in the future.