this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
8 points (83.3% liked)
Climbing
1022 readers
4 users here now
Discussion of all aspects of climbing from indoor bouldering to high altitude mountaineering.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Recently it's been hard for me to get to the gym. Luckily I can still climb outside on the odd weekend since its summer. Also, I am very lucky in that I have a good set of boulders within walking distance from my house. At the same time I've been nursing chronic synovitis that has been slowly getting better. I've been trying to keep fit by cycling through a few routines. I'll miss a day every few days which gives me a natural sprinkling of rest days, and I'll just continue the next day where I left off.
1 - Some rehab exercises (wrist curls and weighted wrist rotations), pullups (I have to be very careful with pullups or I aggravate my elbows, so I don't do too much volume here but I still feel it's important to get some pullups in, well below my max effort), and some hangboarding to maintain strength. If I am feeling OK and have time, I will then go do some boulder problems.
2 - A calisthenics routine that currently consists of pushups, pistol squats, dragon flags, and some knuckle rehab exercises
3 - A sort of "moving hangs" type session. I stick on the TV and do 30 mins to 1 hour of various light grips on the hangboard with feet on the floor, just maintaining a very light pump throughout.
Is it a climbers/golfers elbow? Abrahangs/Sub max hangs are one of my favorite exercises they are just the best for injury prevention/finger health but i do them as pick up exercise.
My elbows have been come-and-go for almost my entire climbing career, north of 20 years. Most often its golfer's elbow. The past couple of years my golfer's elbow has been fine, but I've had some tennis elbow flare up as well as my brachioradialis. I found at that time that pullups were making the tennis elbow worse, so for a long time I had swapped out pullups with some hammer curls, focusing on slow eccentrics to rehab the brachioradialis. Both those issues are mostly gone, now, so I've very gently re-introduced pullups to my routine.
I've played with Abrahangs in the past, in fact I did a couple of months of them when my sinovitis was really bad. I can't say if they did anything, unfortunately. Abrahangs and flexibility are things that I just haven't been able to make stick.