Notes on Life

Most of the people I meet at the bouldering gym do not warm up enough, if at all. This article is for them.

Is warming up an effective preventative measure against injuries?

The main claim I want to make in this article is that warming up decreases the risk of injury. The idea is neither new nor especially adventurous, and most people seem to accept it. But if we look at the data, we might feel as if we needed to review our beliefs.

According to some studies, warming up did not seem to have an effect on whether or not athletes were injured at all.¹ Even warm-up strategies that are recommended by other experts in the field, such as Schweizer, are claimed to have no preventative effect.² The rather thorough finger warm-up he prescribes is dismissed as being useless:³

After extensive warm-up, 100 climbing moves, or 50 cyclic crimp grip holds, there is an increased distance of bowstringing over the distal edge of the A2 pulley in the crimp position by 30%. However, our data showed no relationship of warming up for greater than 10 minutes to rate of any injury. This could relate to the heterogeneous nature of an individual’s warm-up.

This is rather silly. The last sentence is key: The warm-ups in the study are neither described nor were they standardized. Do 100 climbing moves reduce the risk of an A2 pulley injury? The study above cannot give an answer, because the warm-ups discussed are merely categorized by the time investment (5, 10, 10< minutes).⁴ It is not even clear whether these warm-ups contain any work on the fingers at all.⁵

The study is also unclear on what a warm-up is defined as, and whether or not a certain activity might have been counted both as part of a warm-up and a preventative measure in and of itself: Yoga, weightlifting or stretching are activities that are discussed as preventative measures but could, of course, also be a part of someone’s warm-up.⁶ Given that weight training is supposed to have a positive effect on injury prevention, as the study clearly claims, a warm-up consisting of weight training should have the same effect.⁷

What is my point? It is quite simple really: If we do not define what a warm-up is, and every activity done before climbing could be understood as a warm-up, it is not surprising that no preventative effect was found. Next time you are at the gym, look at the warm-ups being done. No wonder they don’t do anything. But even so, the study itself allows us to construe a warm-up that should, according to its own findings, have a preventative effect.

The study does not show that warming-up, if done properly, does not lower the risk of certain injuries.

I assume that a good warm-up can indeed prevent (at least some) injuries. It will take more than 10 minutes, and it can of course not make you injury-proof. But based on my own experiences, and based on the observations made at my gym, it seems quite obvious to me that a warm-up does indeed help.⁸

How do I know? Well, by experience. Sure, that isn’t much more than bro science, but it isn’t nothing. There are legitimate ways of knowing things that are not science.⁹

Injuries in bouldering – An overview

Warming up can of course not prevent all injuries, and it cannot prevent all occurrences of one specific sort of injury (such as the above mentioned A2 pulley injuries). But it can decrease the likelihood of certain injuries occurring, and that makes it worth doing. If, as I said above, it is done properly.

But all of this means nothing if we do not roughly define the term “injury”. There are surveys on climbing injuries that seemingly find no evidence of the fingers getting hurt at all. Why is that? Because they asked for records of “significant injuries”, defined as “one requiring the injured party to be transported to a local casualty department for emergency treatment.”¹⁰ It is no wonder then, that the same study found no evidence of warm-ups helping with injury prevention. I do not know a single climber who went to the ER after sustaining a finger injury, for example.

Warm-ups for sprinters are pointless because they do not prevent significant injuries. Do they help with pulled hamstrings? Yeah, maybe, but these don’t count. So we conclude that warm-ups don’t prevent injuries in sprinters. Incredible.

I don’t want to spend time on polemics, so let us move on. It is still possible that warming up does reduce the risk of minor (that is “non-significant” in the above terminology) injuries, which we might define as injuries that do not require a visit to the ER but still prevent you form engaging in bouldering at your usual level. Swollen PIP joints, mild climber’s elbow, a pulled muscle. Things like that.

If we look at the lists of the structures most commonly injured by bouldering, we find mention of almost every part of the body.¹¹ The usual suspects are the fingers, the shoulders, the elbows. But the knees and the ankles are also at risk (especially in bouldering). Given that rather exhaustive list, and given that many climbers might also experience back pain, we might feel as if climbing just injures everything eventually.

Not all structures have the same risk of being injured, though. If we focus on the most recent overview by Vagy J. et al., we see that the fingers, the ankles and the shoulders are at an increased risk compared to other body parts (though I would add that many climbers I know also struggle with climber’s elbow, something a warm-up might be able to address as well).¹² A warm-up should therefore prioritize the upper body (though there are arguments to include some stretches for the lower body as well).¹³

To summarize: I believe that warming up will help decrease the risk of injuring yourself on the wall. It will not have the same positive effect (if any at all) on injuries caused by a fall. A good warm-up should therefore focus on decreasing the risk of injury in cases where such a thing is possible.

How does warming up reduce the risk of injury?

By warming up, I claim, we can lower the risk of injury to the most commonly affected structures of the upper body. But how? In theory, a general warm-up of the body – as in literally raising your body’s temperature and increasing your pulse – should have positive effects, at least if it is combined with a specific one. Such a warm-up results in increased blood flow and improved transportation of oxygen to wherever it is most needed.¹⁴ A specific warm-up is also needed though, so that your finger, for example, can profit from the improved availability of oxygen and the like. Your fingers have to earn these benefits.

Let us start with said fingers, which are by far the most likely body part to be injured when bouldering. What follows makes no claim to be anything more than anecdotes, or bro science, if you will. I talk about my own injuries and experiences, and about those of the people I talk with at the gym. I have taken notes regarding my own injuries and strategies to deal with them, but I have no notes on those of others. What follows is at times vibe based.

The main injury that I had the most trouble with and seems to plague most boulderers at one point or another is capsulitis or synovitis, a swelling of the finger joints, most often the PIP joint, most often of the middle finger.¹⁵
Though there are many things that can be done to combat symptoms and prevent swelling after a strenuous session,¹⁶ one thing that can be done beforehand is warming up the fingers properly.
Tendon glides, range of motion exercises and kneading a therapeutic putty before climbing is advisable. For me at least, such exercises have helped me to manage symptoms while continuing to train.¹⁷ How exactly do these exercises work? I don’t really know, to be honest. But they do. Moving on.

Let us discuss the A2 pulley injury that was mentioned a number of times already.¹⁸ What should our warm-up do to make such an injury less likely?
As Schweizer argues, the A2 pulley is slowly stretched, during the first 100 crimpy climbing moves or so, lengthening for approximately 0.6mm (or is it 1.2mm?).¹⁹ As the pulley is being stretched, its fibers align and once they are parallel, the pulley is able to withstand much larger forces, and less likely to tear.²⁰
Based on these ideas, I prescribe at least 10 boulders as part of every warm-up. They should be done after the more general finger warm-up mentioned above, and ideally involve progressively more crimps while being easy enough that you do not need to engage your full crimp at any time. Ease into it.

What about the elbows? It seems to me that doing some joint circles is very useful to get a feeling for the state of your elbows, and should therefore be included in your warm-up. If you feel discomfort during those circles, you need to keep an eye on your elbow during the session (or skip it entirely, depending on how you feel). Tendon injuries seem to be most effectively prevented by doing antagonist training, wrist exercises and stretches. If a minimalist approach is appealing: Strengthen your finger extensors, stretch your wrist extensors, and you should mostly be fine.²¹ Finger extensor training can easily be done as part of your warm-up, and it might be smart to do it then, as it can help to get your hands up to temperature.

If you have been paying attention, you know that the shoulders are next. Some band and mobility work is always helpful,²² but the one thing you really should do are external rotations in order to center and align the shoulder joint.²³ All roads lead to a shoulder impingement eventually, but the road can be very long if you implement this early and do it every single session.
We can discuss the point of weightlifting in order to improve your bouldering, but strengthening the muscles that externally rotate your shoulders is non-negotiable in order to keep your shoulder healthy in the long run.²⁴ If you use bands for your warm-up, you can also do external rotations at the crag (or wherever you are, really).

The last thing I would like to discuss are stretches for the lower body. How do they prevent injuries? Directly, they might not. The use of stretching in order to decrease the risk of injury to the stretched muscle is debatable. Still, if you have to engage a very strenuous heel hook, it might be nice for your hamstrings to have worked a bit beforehand. The point Schweizer makes is that stretching your lower limbs can have a positive effect by reducing the amount of work your upper body has to do, therefore decreasing the risk of injury indirectly.²⁵ If you can get your foot onto that high step and are able to use it properly, your fingers don’t have to work so hard.²⁶

Conclusions

Warm up. Just do it. Yes, it will take some small amount of time each session but being injured (more often) also takes time, really hinders your progress and is just generally more unpleasant.

If you feel like the conclusions drawn in this article, regarding the effectiveness of a warm-up on injury prevention, stand on shaky ground given the (scientific) evidence we have, I cannot blame you. The science says fairly little and speaks mostly in tongues. You can spot some patterns in its flailing gestures still.

You still don’t feel like doing a warm-up? Maybe my other articles on the benefits of warming up can convince you. Or maybe you need more guidance, and would like an article that gives you a walk-through and tells you exactly how I warm up? They are in the works. These articles will offer less science (yes, even less), but they still present some worthwhile ideas and more reasons for why you should warm up. Please check them out once they are ready, and thanks for reading.

Footnotes and references

1. Josephsen G. et al. 2007. Injuries in Bouldering: A Prospective Study, in: Wilderness and Environmental Medicine 18, 271-80. ↩︎
2. Schweizer A. 2001. Biomechanical properties of the crimp grip
   position in rock climbers, in: Journal of Biomechanics 34, 217-23. ↩︎
3. Josephsen G. et al. 2007, 278. ↩︎
4. ibid. ↩︎
5. The study (ibid. 277) also discusses “finger injuries” in general, and has nothing to say on pulley injuries, much less A2 pulley injuries specifically. ↩︎
6. ibid. 276. ↩︎
7. ibid. ↩︎
8. Even if it does not prevent injuries (and I believe it does), it might still positively affect your session anyway. I will return to the idea in the later parts of the series. ↩︎
9. Science is cool, yet it stays silent on many things you do know. Do you know your mother’s name? Do you know that your partner or your dog loves you? Do you know what you need to live a happy life? Do you know that pull-ups trigger your climber’s elbow? Knowledge can have many forms. ↩︎
10. Limb D. 1995. Injuries on British climbing walls, in: Br. J. Sports Med. 29(3), 168-70 ↩︎
11. cf. Vagy J. et al. 2026. Musculoskeletal injuries in rock climbing: a scoping review, in: BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine 12, 6. Saeterbakken et al. 2024 report more shoulder injuries than finger injuries. See also: Cole K., Uhl R., Rosenbaum A. 2020. Comprehensive Review of Rock Climbing Injuries, in: Journal of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons 28(12), throughout. See also: Schöffl V., Simon M., Lutter C. 2019. Finger- und Schulterverletzungen im Klettersport, in: Die Orthopädie 48, 1005-12. They focus on finger and shoulder injuries, but offer an overview of all injuries in their circle of patients on p. 1006. See also (again): Josephsen G. et al. 2007, 276. ↩︎
12. Vagy J. et al. 2026, 6. ↩︎
13. Not sure how to cite this, so here goes: Schweizer A. 10 Regeln zur Prophylaxe von Kletterverletzungen. You can find it online. ↩︎
14. ibid. ↩︎
15. Though not exclusively. Jimmy Webb’s fingers are able to hold incredible amounts of ill health in every single joint. Just look at them. ↩︎
16. I will have to write a post about this at some point. For now, check out Steven Low’s article on the topic. What helped me most were finger rolls, ROM exercises and tendon glides (at the beginning done in warm water), more thorough warm-ups, and compression sleeves to wear over night if a session proved to be too long or intense (they were a game changer). These claims seem to be supported by: Schöffl V., Lutter C., Lang H. et al. 2025. Efficacy of a new treatment algorithm for capsulitis of the fingers in rock climbers, in: Frontiers in Sports and Active Living 7, 1-10. ↩︎
17. At the moment, my joints seem to profit from me using Mobeta’s Hand of God grippers instead of more traditional tools. I haven’t had problems in quite some time. ↩︎
18. If you would like to see photos of these structures and are not squeamish, check this out. Schweizer’s entire website is worth a look. It is an artifact of the earlier internet and quite cool. Want to mouse over a photo of a hand to see what injury might cause pain? ↩︎
19. There is a difference between the claims found in Schweizer A. 10 Regeln and Schweizer A. 2001, 222. I’d trust the paper more, as the 1.2mm could be a mistake caused by mentally getting stuck on the number of 120 climbing moves. I don’t know though. ↩︎
20. This is, again, what Schweizer A. 10 Regeln says. Schweizer A. 2001, 222 describes something similar, though the tone is more speculative: “After a warming-up, the course of the tendon could become more even and regular preventing peak forces at distinct points of the flexor tendon sheath” (my emphasis). I’d have to check if more research has been done by now. ↩︎
21. Lattice mentions the locust stretch as being very helpful to treat symptoms. It might help you as well.
    I remember a video by David Quinn/mobeta for DIY a finger extensor training tool, but can’t find it at the moment. I might have to share my own version at some point. Should you need something right now, this goofy-looking thing is quite cool, even though the resistance is not sufficient in the long run. ↩︎
22. There are many things you can do. I find this overview quite well organized and helpful, and there is a helpful summary in the video you can screenshot for future reference. ↩︎
23. You can find a brief description of the point of this exercise in: Schweizer A. 10 Regeln. Given that pictures only work so well in demonstrating an exercise, I would refer to the video I just mentioned in footnote 22. The external rotation using a band is the first exercise shown. ↩︎
24. For a certain style of climbing, these exercises might also improve performance. If that sounds more motivating to you, do them for that reason. ↩︎
25. cf. Schweizer A. 10 Regeln. ↩︎
26. If Tommy Caldwell had properly warmed up, the high step depicted here would not have been as strenuous. Am I being serious? No. Am I wrong? Also no. ↩︎