Week 4, part 2

Since I have started on some exercise that ultimately aims to smooth my return to climbing once all of my physical rehabilitation is complete (in about a year from now), it seems somewhat deceitful not to discuss an issue that has been playing on my mind for several months now; I'm not sure I want to return to climbing. (Not to mention this blog is meant to be about getting back to the wall).

Prior to my injury I was climbing 4-5 times a week, and I had just started to make trips outdoors (I had only been climbing for a little over a year when I was injured). I really loved climbing, and whilst I was nowhere near an advanced climber (a single v7 (indoors), after a good couple of weeks work is the hardest I have ever climbed) I had made quite a lot of progress in the latter part of the year (I started with hardly any upper body strength and it took me months to be able to climb even the simplest v0 over hangs). I was running a couple of times a week, trying some upper body, finger and core conditioning exercises and doing a lot of stretching to improve my climbing (I'm not tall, and not hugely strong, so my climbing was really based around my flexibility). Basically, a lot of my time revolved around climbing.

When I first had to stop climbing due to injury I missed it terribly. There were huge gaps in my schedule where climbing and climbing related activities used to be and I didn't know what to do with my time. However, as the months past that desperation to get back to the wall faded and I just got used to not climbing.

Now, I look at videos on youtube of the bouldering world cups, or see my friends trying problems and I wince at every drop knee, every fall. Instead of a really interesting or fun problem and great technical skill all I see are the many ways you could injure your knee. As much as I have learned to cope with being injured and it definitely isn't the end of the world, I really doubt I have the mental strength to go through what will in the end be about 18 months of rehab again.

I am starting to prepare myself for a return to climbing, building up my finger strength etc, so that I can decide much later down the rehab line if it is what I want to do. In some ways I know that this is stupid, my fall was very unlucky and I could do exactly the same injury slipping in the street, but at the moment I feel like I would psychologically hold myself back. I want to climb because I enjoyed it. If all I end up doing is thinking about my knee and the possibility of injury the fun will be well and truly zapped out of it.

There isn't a proper conclusion to this post because I haven't worked out what I want to do yet. Part of me thinks I won't know until a year from now when I try a problem again for the first time. I just wanted to share my doubts because I think there's more to injury rehabilitation that the physical.