UKC

Bit of a weird one. 

Basically I think I've overexerted my fingers a bit when I started using he moonboard for a couple of weeks. Not a style of climbing I'm used to, and I'll sack it off now I reckon.

My fingers feel achy in general when closing my hands. All in the middle joint on basically all my middle 3 fingers. 

But the odd things is, it goes away when I climb? First bit of crimping I do, my fingers feel weak and painful in their joins. Then before long, no more pain and I'm good to go. 

Same with hangboard. Can't even hang off the big edges without a lot of pain, but after a few hangs fighting through it, good as new. 

Anyone experienced this? Any tips? 

I know finger pain is a repetitive and boring subject to discuss, but having searched and searched I couldn't find anyone with similar symptoms whereby it got better with climbing, not worse. 

Cheers for any help. 

My unqualified thoughts are that you have increased intensity, so the fingers are being "over used", and warning you to slow down a bit or get an injury.

I've found it's not unusual for pains to go away as you warm up. However, the issue is still there.

It can be a fine line between adaption to harder training and injury

I have had similar sounding finger joint pain. Mentioned it to a climbing physio who basically said that you should really avoid joint pain, finger joints apparently have little in the way of nerve ends and blood supply so if they hurt, it normally means it's inflamed enough to be engaging other nerve endings around the joint, and it can take ages to heal. Took a while for it to go away for me, and I just have to be more careful when stepping up the exertion... 

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm switching to sport climbing for the next month and a bit, so generally intensity in regards to pulling hard on crimps will go down compared to bouldering. 

Just kinda hoping I don't need to stop climbing altogether for weeks on end, for this to fix itself. 

I took 4 or so days off climbing recently, and the pain went away during normal activity. Instantly came back with my first climb though, which was frustrating. 

Training for a trip, so this is coming at a bad time :/

Going to try some hot/cold therapy to help stimulate blood flow, and bought some collagen suppliments although I think that latter one really is a long shot in regards to helping ha.