Wrist: Fractured Scaphoid
A few weeks ago, I fell while using Powerisers [jumping stilts that allow the wearer to leap up to six feet] and fractured my scaphoid.
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A few weeks ago, I fell while using Powerisers [jumping stilts that allow the wearer to leap up to six feet] and fractured my scaphoid. I had just climbed my first 5.13 a week ago and was super psyched to send the Gnar. I am currently in an arm cast above my elbow for three weeks, then I am getting a shorter one. I have been going crazy not being able to climb for the past two weeks, and was wondering how to keep my strength up.
– birdseal | Rock and Ice Forum
Good times. How can you know your limits unless you’re breaking bones? If you’re not hurting yourself, you’re in the grandstand.
I googled those thingies you mention – looks like sweet fun and an excellent catalyst for wrist and brain damage.
Rest up, bro. Some lounge time will do you good after pushing your physical limits with the 5.13. You are in the danger zone for injury right now. Come to think of it, it’s lucky you’re injured already or you might injure yourself. A week or two off would be perfect. Four to six weeks, though not ideal, will take very little effort to make up. I try to take a six-week block of rest every year. Good for the body, good for the head.
The badge of (dis)honor will come off in a month or so, but it will take two more before you can really give that wrist a yank. Be gentle initially. You’ll be trusting a massive assumption that the bone has knitted well. The scaphoid is notorious for avascular necrosis (bone death). Any pain that is not subsiding should be investigated rapido.
You could do some one-arm deadpoint practice, but it would really just be for party tricks and mental relief. You could do one-arm dead-hanging… and ensure yourself a few more painful months recovering from elbow tendonosis.
Or you could romance your girlfriend. Cut my fingers off for saying it, but there is more to life than right, left and left again. Perhaps you should just bang your head against a wall for risking your climbing future on a pair of over-sprung pogo sticks. Your call.
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