Dealing with elbow soreness

[Peter]

Hi, Coach. I'm a 43-year-old beginner, 11 weeks into SS. I've got some soreness in my left elbow that won't go away and I'm wondering how to deal with it. It started two weeks ago when I was doing mechanically-assisted chinups (that chinup-machine thing). I think I strained it trying to do one too many reps. Perhaps using the machine was a bad idea?

I'm guessing this is tendonitis - the soreness is in the soft tissue between what Wikipedia tells me is the "humeral medial epicondyle" and the pointy end of the ulna - basically, the "funny bone" area. I've laid off chinups because I'm afraid I'll hurt myself. Should I not be trying to lay off it? Is there something I can do myself to help heal this up? And presuming it goes away, should I be warming up my elbow joints somehow, or wearing elbow sleeves in order to keep it from happening again?

Thanks.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Peter, my friend, old guys get hurt when they train hard. If you're going to keep doing this, you're going to have to learn how to train around little injuries. This particular topic has been addressed several times. Use the search function and try to start caring less about how bad you hurt.

[Gwyn Brookes]

That is the problem I have had for about three months now. I switched my grip first, to a pronated (pull up) grip. I also made sure to warm up my pullups just like I would my squats. I still do this. I was trying to work up to an unassisted pull up, so I'd do a couple of warm up sets and then on to jumping pulls and negatives. I only train them 2 to 3 times a week and never more than 5 sets (not including warm up sets). My tendonitis was pretty bad at first, I could not open jar lids.

I am now doing 4 sets of 2 pull ups and have about 25% of the pain I did three months ago. I also use ice and naproxin sodium when I feel like it, but my use of both of those (at least for my elbow) has reduced considerably in the past month.

Hope this helps!