Why is it so hard not to climb?

It was the end of 2016 when I injured my middle fingers. I had been training on the boards at my local wall and, having seen the gains I was making, had been ignoring the swelling that was starting to trouble my middle digits. There were no "pops", but through overuse and heavy strain, something changed in my fingers and suddenly after every session they became swollen and painful - It took a large amount of effort for the joints to hurt during training and I think this is part of why I continued to train, when the post-workout swelling had reduced.

All climbers get injured - I cannot think of one climber I've met who hasn't had a twinge or a tweak in a finger, elbow or shoulder. Others take a bad fall and break ankles, blow knees or throw out their backs. Every climber also keeps on climbing and training through injuries. We have all seen a climber with a pot on his or her ankle on the pull up bar. Half of all climbers have one or more fingers taped, most gyms seem to have a guy with KT tape on an elbow or shoulder. The climbing community is unlike the rest of the sporting world; you are far more likely to meet an injured climber than an uninjured one.

Objectively the high rate of injury makes sense. Finger tips didn't evolve to have our entire weight dangling off them. Elbows make for an incredibly efficient way to move our arms, but are not built for high, constant strain. The shoulder joint has the greatest range of movement of any joint, but this mobility comes at the expense of stability. You can see why climbing leads so commonly to injury.

Climbing isn't alone in putting untold strains on it's participants bodies though. So why does it seem climbers are more injured than other hobbyists? The answer I think is three-fold:

1. Climbing is developing at an alarming pace. If you go to many indoor walls now you can climb grades on plastic that didn't exist 30 years ago anywhere. It is incredibly difficult for conditioning and training to keep up with the advancement at the top end of the sport.
2. Strength is seen as a quick way to improve, rather than the slow progress of technique. With easy access to training videos and information it is very easy for anyone to learn about campus boards etc. We all know these are dangerous and can lead to injury but the risk of injury vs. the reward of improvement is very difficult to balance.
3. Climbing is a community. With many climbers socialising with other climbers, gyms and crags become a place you go to socialise as well as climb - blurring the lines between social and sporting lead to people climbing when they shouldn't.

Point 1 & 2 above will change more with time, and in some ways we have already started to see this change in recent years. Cafe Kraft have brought out conditioning guides to help with exercises not directly related to climbing, with the aim to reduce injuries. Dave MacLeod has also brought out a book on climbing injuries and treating them - though the main emphasis is on prevention - Make or Break is a really good book and one every climber should read.

Point 3 however I doubt will change.  Unlike more established sports, practitioners of climbing at every level call themselves "climbers". It is not very often that a player of five-a-side calls themselves a footballer. Climbing unlike many sports is more holistic than the physical activity itself. Climbers climb, but they also socialise with other climbers and go on holidays specifically to climb. Climbers spend hours going over guide books looking for routes, and go walking to look for undiscovered rocks and routes.

It's this all-encompassing nature of climbing, that it permeates all corners of your life, that makes recurring injuries hard to avoid. When you go to the crag or the gym to socialise, you end up climbing more often than you should. You decide you will have an "easy session" just so you can chat to friends on the mats or you've walked all the way to the crag now, so you might as well put your shoes on, even though you have aches and pains. Twinges turn to tweaks, tweaks to pulls, and pulls to tears. It's the communal nature of climbing that makes it hard to recover, because when all your friends are climbing how can you sit out just because your middle fingers hurt?