Medial elbow pain with LTE

[Paul1]

I've had this problem forever -- basically any skullcrusher / LTE like movement causes it, including the LTE as Rip describes. Using a tight elbow wrap sometimes helps, but even one set of LTE can leave me with days of pain. Warming up and / or stretching doesn't help it one way or another. Interestingly I don't get this pain with any other type of tricep exercise, however heavy -- benches, presses, weighted dips, dumbbell kickbacks, all are fine.

It looks like this is somewhat common (just googling skullcrusher/elbow pain brings up a bunch). I guess the question is whether there is some secret answer to this problem, or whether I'd be better off substituting a different exercise. I want to develop more tricep strength because I think it's limiting my bench progress.

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

Happens quite a bit for some, although never to me personally. Seems to be tied in either elbow flaring or too much volume overall methinks. You could try rolling DB extensions, tricep pressdowns, french press, etc. and see what your elbows can tolerate.

[Jay Mund]

How much are you benching? What do you weigh? What do you press?

[Paul1]

Jay - I'm 38, 5'11", 200 lbs. I pressed 147.5 x 3 x 5 yesterday. On bench I do 3 x 5 at 205 and can manage a couple triples at 215, but I've been stuck there for quite a while.

Jordan, I work out at home and don't have pulldowns as an option. Kickbacks are good, except that it's hard to reach lockout at heavier weights, I think the moment arm just becomes too much to overcome near lockout. Presses feel like a good tricep workout -- maybe I could do lighter presses for volume in addition to the program?

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

What program are you on? Can you close grip bench?

[wakk0]

Paul I have this problem as well. In fact doing LTE is what caused a serious case of medial epicondylitis ("golfers elbow") in both of my arms. I went to the doc and he poked around and said I have loose ulnar nerves which cause them to pop out of the groove they are supposed to stay in. He said it wasn't serious enough to warrant surgery, but even today they can get pretty sore if do a lot of pullups with a semi-close grip.

For some tricep work I typically do dips as that movement doesn't hurt my elbows.

If anyone has any idea on how to find the proper width of the elbow placement at the bottom of the position I would really like to konw it.

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Are you using a straight bar? Get an EZ curl bar if you don't have one. If the EZ bar is causing problems you might just have to stick with the DB version.

Honestly though......you might respond better to just altering your press/bench program rather than adding in assistance work.....are you still doing nothing but 5's???

[Paul1]

Jordan / Andy,

I'm doing pretty much straight SS programming. I could do narrow grip bench to a point -- when it gets very heavy AND narrow it starts to hurt a little. I have an EZ curl bar (which does not help the LTE). I also have one of those hammer curl bars (with the two parallel handles) that I've used to do a narrow grip bench with a neutral hand position -- except that it's too narrow to rack it on the bench.

I don't deviate all that much from the program, except I do chins (I try for 3x10) with every press workout and DB rows from the floor with every bench workout; and I throw in curls and dips here and there. Am I closer to intermediate programming than I thought? Here's where I am --

Bench I'd mentioned. Just can't get past 205 for 3x5, tried a bunch of things, now just doing a reset back to 185, doing 5x5 and going up by 2.5 per workout.

Press I'd mentioned, going up by 1 to 2.5 pounds per workout, but I can't sustain it for much longer -- we'll see.

Deadlift I'm at 365, but I reset by a bit recently because the sets were turning into 5 singles more than a single set.

Squat I'm at 275, seem to be making progress still.

PC I did 3 sets of 5 at 160 the other day. Some days it's 15 singles at 175, other days I'm at 155, the PC is very sensitive to how tired I am.

I do have an EZ curl bar, it doesn't help.

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

I think Andy and I are on the same wavelength (Andy, feel free to bitch slap me through the internet if not) and here's what I'd do:

Since you're switching your bench and press to 5x5 (or should be) on Day 1, you should be doing 1 set of 5 reps across on Day 3. Eventually this will morph into a set of 3, 5 singles, etc. When you bench on day 1, I'd do 3 sets of 8-10reps for Press on short rest after benching. On day 1 when/if you press, I'd do close grip bench press for 8-10 reps on short rest. Rolling DB extensions would work too, but I'd still be leary of the elbows hurting.

[Jay Mund]

I just read the post above where you list all of your lifts and performance #'s. Squat is 275, bench is 205, press is 147.5, dead is 365, pc is 165. Looking at these numbers, it doesn't look like your press or your bench is a problem. You are benching 75% of your squat weight. That is a good ratio.

Jordan and Andy have very valuable programming insight that you could tap into. However, it does not appear to me that you need to do anything other than keep eating (250 grams of protein for your weight), resting, and lifting with perfect technique in order to get your bench press and all of your other lifts to keep going up.

As Jordan mentioned, you should be moving to the Texas Method if you haven't already. Volume on Monday, Recovery on Wednesday, and Intensity on Friday.