The Climbing Medicine Podcast – Interview with Dr. Jared Vagy (The Climbing Doctor)

Hosts: Volker Schöffl & Xeber Iruretagoiena

In this episode of The Climbing Medicine Podcast, hosts Volker Schöffl and Xeber Iruretagoiena sit down with Dr. Jared Vagy, physical therapist, educator, and founder of The Climbing Doctor, for an in-depth conversation on climbing rehabilitation, injury prevention, and professional development within the climbing medicine community.

Getting to Know Jared

The episode begins with Dr. Jared Vagy sharing his background, including how climbing first entered his life and eventually merged with his professional career in physiotherapy. He discusses what initially drew him toward treating climbers, how his clinical experiences shaped that focus, and how his academic training and mentors influenced his approach to rehabilitation.

Dr. Vagy also reflects on balancing clinical practice with his role as a university lecturer, and how teaching has strengthened his clinical reasoning and communication with athletes. The conversation explores the origins of The Climbing Doctor project, how it evolved into an international educational platform, and what motivated him to write his book on climbing injuries. He explains what differentiates his work from other resources by emphasizing movement-based rehabilitation, education, and long-term resilience rather than symptom-focused treatment alone.

The hosts and Dr. Vagy also discuss specialization within climbing medicine, highlighting how surgery, imaging, and rehabilitation complement one another. Dr. Vagy shares which injuries he finds most interesting to treat, what aspects of the rehabilitation process he finds most rewarding, and how collaborating with an international teaching team has shaped his perspective.

Rehabilitation and Injury Prevention

The second part of the episode focuses on rehabilitation and injury prevention in climbers. Dr. Vagy outlines the most common injuries he currently sees in clinical practice and how injury patterns have evolved as climbing has grown and diversified.

A major theme is where rehabilitation often breaks down. Dr. Vagy discusses common mistakes in diagnosis, treatment planning, and especially in the return-to-climbing phase. He emphasizes the importance of athlete education, load management, and clear progression criteria to reduce reinjury risk.

Drawing from the framework presented in his book, Dr. Vagy explains how he structures rehabilitation by sequencing pain management, mobility, strength, and climbing-specific movement. He discusses how and when to progress between stages, how to determine readiness to return to climbing, and whether prevention strategies should differ between elite and recreational climbers.

The conversation also addresses warm-ups, recovery habits, and persistent myths around climbing rehab and injury prevention. Dr. Vagy closes this section by sharing what global change he would most like to see in how climbers train and recover.

Quick-Fire Round

The episode wraps up with a rapid-fire round covering climbing preferences, training tools, rehab philosophies, and professional influences. Dr. Vagy shares favorite climbing areas, thoughts on popular training boards, underrated and overrated rehab tools, and key lessons learned from past injuries.

He also participates in a name-association round, highlighting individuals he associates with expertise in areas such as climbing injury diagnosis, ultrasound imaging, functional assessment, exercise-based treatment, load management, and performance training. The episode concludes with book recommendations, both within climbing medicine and beyond the clinic.

Additional Links:

More Articles From The Climbing Doctor Website

Climbing Special Interest Group (SIG)

Make sure to check out the Climbing Medicine Academy podcast channel. It is packed with tons of great interviews

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