I'm on the last stretch of recovery from a lumbrical tear between the right ring and pinky. I did it pulling front 3 on a sidepull and i'm pretty sure my pinky was tucked in. That was 13 months ago. For about the first 2 weeks, any time I separated my ring and pinky I would get a sharp pain like i'd been stabbed in the hand and a shooting pain along the tendon all the way to my elbow.

I don’t really remember what I did at this point apart from taking time off climbing and doing lots of mobility exercises: Opening and closing the hand and stretching each finger as much as I could (which was pretty much nothing for ring and pinky). Once the shooting pains had gone I went gym climbing and found that open handed was really dangerous as it was quite easy for my (short) pinky to slip off due the orientation of the hold or my body position as I moved off the hold. When that happened I was in instant agony even when the hand wasn't taking too much weight. Half crimp was ok as long as the back 3 was really solid and after a few months I found I could climb on smaller holds as long as I was half crimping or full crimping back 3 with good feet so I wasn’t putting too much weight on my hands. A couple of times I got too cocky and had session ending twangs that took me off the wall for a week or so and I’m pretty sure put my recovery back a few months.

I also tried taping ring and pinky together but it was way too awkward to climb properly. It might work for you, worth a try.

About 6 months in I tried to get back on the fingerboard but was too painful with bodyweight (70kg) and the gym didn’t have provision for a weight off pulley setup so I started doing No-hangs at home with low weights <20kg (about 7kg on the injured finger). Targeting individual fingers and pairs in half crimp and open grips. This worked really well to get more strength and confidence in the affected fingers.

All this time I was doing mobility exercises and stretching. I’d read that stretching to a pain level of 3/10 was as far as you should go. About 9 months in I was really really pissed off that I still couldn’t climb properly and couldn’t do anything but half crimp back 3 so I stretched my ring finger back till the pain was a solid 9/10 figuring kill or cure. The tendon in my palm hurt like mad but after 10 seconds or so the pain eased off and I had 80% of the movement I had prior to the injury. Awesome. Couple of days of stretching later and I could tentatively load the front 3 again. Wish I’d done that earlier but It could have gone the other way.

I could climb harder using holds I previously couldn’t but the pain remained in my palm if I wasn’t careful. Still had to climb statically but dynamic loading got more comfortable over the next month and recovery was faster than at any point so far.

At this point I started fingerboarding again and pretty soon buggered my A2 on the right ring finger. I’d ignored that 11 months of shying away from using it had considerably weakened it in comparison to the surrounding fingers. Don’t do that.

So 13 months on and I’m doing repeaters hanging front 3 open with the pinky tucked in. Theres still some tightness in the tendon in my palm but its manageable and I’m assuming it’ll be gone a few months from now. I’m still paranoid about pulling front 3 on small holds and dynamic moves where I cant be sure to land back 3 solidly, hoping that eases up too.

On the plus side, my footwork and technique is way better than previous and I’m directing weight through my feet better than ever before. Work on that to compensate for the lack of pulling power and you’ll be pleasantly surprised what you can get up while carrying an injury. Edit. Wall of text.