Olympic Sport Climbing may not have falling rocks, storms, or 100-foot whippers, but pulling plastic at the highest levels has risks, too. Although we often think of multi-pitch trad routes as “riskier” than shorter lines in controlled indoor environments, a 2024 Czech university study actually found “direct correlation between time spent bouldering and lead climbing and increased injury frequency” while injury incidence actually decreased with time spent traditional climbing.
Simply put, the movements demanded by modern competition-style routes put the human body under an immense amount of stress. Monster laches into iron crosses, 360-roses that look like a vertical game of Twister… some of the beta seen in IFSC World Cups has more in common with puzzle sequences from Assassin’s Creed than something a climber would encounter on a cliff.
For those who understand the basics of rock climbing, watching competitors tackle Olympic-level boulder problems is sometimes as cringe-inducing as it is inspiring. When I eye a competitor mantling up with one hand, head-high, off of a fully-extended foot at the same height, I can almost feel my shoulder blasting out of its socket. (This problem injured several competitors at the Salt Lake City World Cup in 2022.)
So what do Olympic climbers have to watch for? How do they go about preventing injury? Per USA Climbing’s National Team Physical Therapist and Medical Manager, Zack DiCristino, bouldering is the most injury-prone of the three Olympic disciplines, followed by lead climbing and, after a significant gap, speed.
DiCristino sees finger maladies more than any other injury. (This is shown in numerous studies, including this 2022 report from Wilderness & Environmental Medicine.) Digit woes are followed by shoulders and elbows, and all three are overwhelmingly due to overuse, as much as 80%, says DiCristino. Few injuries occur in complete isolation. Instead, they are either the culmination of a building stressor, or the result of poor training, which has left a given system underdeveloped.
DiCristino and his team also report seeing a rise in injuries in new areas, primarily the knees and lower back. DiCristino said these injuries can come down to the routesetting. “I can name at least six athletes that got injured this year doing a heel hooking maneuver, either spraining or partially tearing a ligament in their knee,” he said.
DiCristino explained that, no matter how much strength a climber gains in certain areas of the hips and knee, nor how much mobility they have, there are certain positions—in this case a heel hook with the knee and foot rotated outwards, “where the only thing protecting your knee is your ligament, just some connective tissue. It doesn’t matter how strong you are, it’s a vulnerable position.” (This move resulted in a serious injury for Miho Nonaka leading up to the Tokyo Olympics.)
Unfortunately, this comes down to routesetting, not climber fitness and technique. “Watching a competition and seeing that maneuver used, you just kind of grit your teeth,” DiCristino said. “It’s not good.”
In a broader sense, DiCristino said that age naturally plays a role. Younger climbers are more resistant to injury, and quicker to recover. This is well-documented in studies, such as a report commissioned by the International Olympic Committee pre-Tokyo, which showed that even the age ranges from 11-14 and 15-19 presented with different predispositions to injury. Injury in a sport other than climbing and preventive taping were two other risk factors. “It’s also about how hard or how difficult they climb,” DiCristino said. “The harder the grade, the more risk.”
DiCristino also said it’s likely that certain body types could be more prone to certain injury types. Climbers with longer limbs, for example, can experience more stress on their joints. “[It’s] basic biomechanics. The longer the lever arms on either side are, the more stress you’re going to get.”
With the infamous Salt Lake City mantle in mind, DiCristino said that although several women were injured, it’s hard to say if the issue was the setting. “For the one climber on our team that got injured [Sienna Kopf], she already had a unique elbow posture. Some people have a little bit more angle … Certainly the angle of the wall and the angle of the pushing motion was not ideal. I’ve never seen a situation like that, with that many injuries. But at the same time, there are other factors we don’t know that could have predisposed them.”
DiCristino also speculated that some level of cross training is conducive to injury prevention. “Growing up I played baseball, basketball, football—sports with a lot of side to side movement. That builds durability in the sides of your legs. Some of these athletes who have been strictly climbers their whole life, they don’t have as much experience with these lateral movements.”
Although certain sequences, like the hooking maneuver DiCristino mentioned, can put climbers at risk of injury, he said that hold types don’t play much of a role. “It’s more about the grip a climber chooses to use.”
The biggest preventative, for DiCristino and his team, is learning to read the competitive scene and anticipate which moves are in vogue. “The last year it’s been the lache, and then mantles kind of got in there in the last couple years, and these heel hooks. It’s about training the athlete for what they’re most likely to face.”
Ahead of Paris, DiCristino focused Team USA on building up their lower bodies. “We’re seeing [sets] that demand all this jumping, bounding motions that require a lot of stability and precision but also a certain ‘springiness.’” Athletes like Natalia Grossman, who come from a gymnastics background, are well-positioned to apply these techniques, but climbers without this background can find it difficult.
Ironically, DiCristino said that the overwhelming majority of the injuries his professional competition climbers receive don’t actually take place at competitions, but during training. Once a given competition starts, DiCristino said his role has ended. He doesn’t advocate for a certain strategy, for example, when it comes to how long to rest between burns to take on each boulder problem. “You’ve educated the athlete, you’ve trained them so when it comes time, they have it within them to put in these multiple attempts and be as robust and durable as possible,” he said. “That’s all you can do.”
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