In my six years of climbing much more of it has been spent with injuries rather than not. The first year and a half, maybe two years, I was uninjured and climbing without pain but I was unwise and inexperienced and didn’t understand anything really and I got injured repeatedly or had pain in my fingers and I really only kept climbing through it. Four pulley injuries in my middle and ring fingers on both hands, at least two or three lumbrical strains, and a bunch of other random tweaks in various fingers. The longest lasting issue I have had through all of it has been a constant dull pain and stiffness in the PIP joint or middle knuckles of both of my middle fingers.

For so long I ignored it, unlike other injuries I could climb through it without any issue other than the pain. Crimping was painful and full crimping was even worse. It really just sucked and I never tried to rest or do anything to improve it because I didn’t really understand it at all. I have a cyst in my right middle finger knuckle that I thought was originally the problem and I even had it surgically removed but the cyst came back as can happen. It makes the pain worse, but because the pain is in both of my fingers, the cyst is definitely not the only problem. As time went on I started routesetting and the pain was still there. Two and a half years with no real break from climbing and the pain was constant. I could ignore it so well at this point but for some reason I finally came to the conclusion that I had to try to do something about it. I didn’t even know if it was possible for the pain to go away anymore it had been over 4 years and I didn’t know anything else anymore. I had to stop ignoring it and recognize that it was an injury, even though I could climb through it.

I stopped routesetting in August of 2026 and I’m currently resting and trying to rehab the pain. I have joint capsulitis/synovitis in the PIP joint of my middle fingers. I never tried to fix it or even diagnose it before because I was afraid that maybe it was permanent or impossible to fix because it had been there for so long. My life is climbing, I live to climb and there is nothing I care about more. It is incredibly scary to have something that threatens that so persistently. I am hopeful that my pain can improve.