Looking for help on the tennis elbow protocol

[DKahler]

I've had bad tennis elbow for about 4 months that I can't kick. I'm 3 weeks into following your protocol explained in this YT video:

https://youtu.be/w2MA5cRxyG0?si=QeTb0z4_71pM8OKL

I'm doing 20 sets of 2 chin-ups every 4 days. I'm doing sets of two because Rip recommended doing about one third of your max reps and I've detrained quite a bit over these months so my chin-up strength is weak now. I can't bench, press, low bar squat or deadlift without elbow pain, so I'm only doing the chins and some high bar squats right now. Essentially everything else is too painful. I know in the video Rip does not say to forego regular training along with this protocol and he also said it explicitly in a post I saw on the forum, but It's really hard to do everything except high bar squat because of the elbow pain.

So far the protocol doesn't seem to be helping. If I start the regular lifts again I'm wondering how much I should push through the pain and if it would be worth the risk. I think pushing through the elbow pain is what got me into this problem to begin with. I really don't like de-training as I have been but I don't know what else to do.

The elbow pain started awhile ago from doing low bar squats with incorrect grip, and then aggravating my inflamed elbows in the bench and press. I see on these forums this squat grip issue has been discussed ad-nauseum so I've now learned a lot on how to fix my squat grip. After the pain got bad from squats and I couldn't bench or press without pain either so I changed everything up and did a bunch of dumbell work for upper body and kept doing deadlifts. I believe I really made the elbow worse than it's every been with dumbell curls and lateral raises. When I could no longer deadlift without bad elbow pain was really a low point for me.

Is the chin-up protocol still expected to help when I'm skipping essentially all my other lifting?

If the answer to that question is no, then what do you think my next steps should be?

[Yngvi]

Are you sure what you have is tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis)?

[Maybach]

The point of the chin up protocol is a low impact way of driving the inflammatory process which leads the epicondyles to start healing. It's done that way to prevent it from impinging on the other training. If you can't train, it should still work, but then...you aren't training, so you might as well just irritate the crap out of them the normal way.

Does this respond to NSAIDs or ibuprofen? If the problem is the tendons are just too inflamed aggressively treating them with a hefty does of ibuprofen for a week or two can often at least get you to the point where you can train.

[DKahler]

I haven't had a diagnosis. So I'm calling it tennis elbow based on all I've read about it online. It is certainly all on the lateral side, not medial.

That's a good point about irritating it the normal way. I haven't tried nsaids for a week. How much ibuprofen do you think I should take?

[Maybach]

Andy Baker says try 2400 mg a day (which is about 12 pills usually) for 3-4 days.

[DKahler]

Does this respond to NSAIDs or ibuprofen? If the problem is the tendons are just too inflamed aggressively treating them with a hefty does of ibuprofen for a week or two can often at least get you to the point where you can train.

Doing the chin up protocol so far I've been avoiding NSAIDs. Before that about a month ago ibuprofen made it feel a little better but still had pain when lifting. This wasn't the heavy doses of ibuprofen though. I do really want to try the NSAIDs to fix this now. The NSAID protocol I've seen mentioned by Rip a few times on this forum is 800 mg ibuprofen qid for a week, so 3200 mg a day. I didn't see it mentioned one way or another about training schedule while doing this. Do you recommend normal barbell training while doing this? In regards to the chin-up protocol I'm thinking it would be silly to do this on heavy doses of ibuprofen because then I would be inflaming the joint and suppressing the inflammation at the same time.

[Maybach]

Yes, ibuprofen and the pin firing protocol are operating at cross purposes. But it sounds like the problem is just pissed off tendons, not any actual insult to the tissue.

You should train as normal.

[Will Morris]

2400-3200mg of ibuprofen exceeds the maximum recommended dosage for minor to moderate pain. 400mg three times per day, or a total of 1200mg per day is a more appropriate dosage. 2400mg per day is a recommended dosage for people with end stage arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis, and your elbow pain should not necessitate greater than prescription strength dosages of ibuprofen. Each year, with some fluctuations, gastrointestinal bleeding caused by NSAID abuse is in the top 10-12 causes of death in the US.

[Maybach]

2400-3200mg of ibuprofen exceeds the maximum recommended dosage for minor to moderate pain. 400mg three times per day, or a total of 1200mg per day is a more appropriate dosage. 2400mg per day is a recommended dosage for people with end stage arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis, and your elbow pain should not necessitate greater than prescription strength dosages of ibuprofen. Each year, with some fluctuations, gastrointestinal bleeding caused by NSAID abuse is in the top 10-12 causes of death in the US.

It's not taken for the purposes of managing pain: it's a short term (that is, a couple days) dose. It's there to alleviate an inflammation (similar to how it works for arthritis patients).

It's about the dose they give you for a bad toothache.

If it doesn't make the pain go away in four days or so, stop taking it, because it isn't working.