SS & Golfer's Elbow

[Brad Davis]

Mr. Rippetoe, I searched the forum, but didn't find anything about this. I apologize if it's been covered and I didn't find it. Thanks for offering such an awesome Q&A Forum. I can't think of many others similar to it.

I just finished reading SS and am going to start the program. Just a little background: 37 year old, decent competitive PLer in my early 20s, intermittently worked out and sat in front of a desk from 25-35 and started following CF and then a CF-like program for the last couple of years. Now I want to switch gears and work on strength, which is my biggest weakness.

I'm healthy and ready to go except that I gave myself a case of golfer's elbow in both arms last July by over-reaching on towel pullups and weighted fat-bar pullups. No pulling exercises since then. At this point the pain is only about half as when I noticed the pain. In other words, it's healing VERY slowly. I can't grip the bar for DLs or cleans, but appear to be able to squat, bench, and press with no pain.

My question is how to adjust SS for this. Should your method listed in the sticky thread be tried first? (Not sure if it's applicable to golfer's elbow.) OTOH, should I go ahead with squats, bench, and press and simply wait out the golfer's elbow?

One question about the injury rehab method from the sticky thread: When you typed to stop all heavy work, does that include conditioning? It seem clear enough that "heavy work" includes squats and bench even though they don't seem to hurt golfer's elbow.

Advice would be greatly appreciated.
DBD

[Mark Rippetoe]

Golfer's elbow (medial epicondylitis) is a bastard sometimes. If your loaded up on ibuprofen already (and if you're not you should get that way) you'll just have to do as much of the program as you can tolerate. Sometimes a hard friction massage helps, sometimes it hurts. Deadlifts with a hook grip or straps should allow you to train your pulls. Straps can get you through chins. Don't do any more rope or towels for a couple of years, and respect them when you do start again. It will eventually heal, and as it does use less and less grip assistance, until you're back to normal. But be aware that this may take a while, like 6 months to a year.

[Brad Davis]

Thank you very much for your reply. I'll dust off the straps and get to work on the DLs. Same goes for power cleans. I guess that means I might be able to do the entire program.

[Ryan Blair]

How I cured my golfers elbow.
Rest and Ice ofcourse.
Got a 5 lb dumbell and did reverse wrist curls 100 rep each hand, 5 days a week.
Went to ironmind.com and bought a set of hand expanders, basically rubber bands of varying widths and started with the lightest one sets of 20, then started moving up.
After about month pain was gone, now I can do all pulls including weighted chins or pullups with no pain.

Yours may be worse than mine was so take it slow. At one point in my right hand it hurt to hold a dinner plate.

[Brad Davis]

Ryan, thank you for chiming in.

How do reverse wrist curls work the muscles affected by golfer's elbow? Did you have tennis elbow instead?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Reverse curls don't work that area. That's the tennis elbow side. Golfer's elbow is medial epicondylitis, the flexor side.

[Ryan Blair]

My pain was Golfers, on the inside of my elbow. So basically I worked the opposite muscles. It hurt to grip so I worked the expand. I couldn't even think about doing regular wrist curls, so I did reverse. But I believe one of the biggest causes of Golfer's elbow or Tennis, is an imbalance. I know in my case I never ever worked the extensors, but I worked the crap out of the flexors. After bringing up the strength of the flexors I've not had a problem since.
Good luck!

[Brad Davis]

So would it be a good idea to try Ryan's protocol (or the one in the sticky thread? -- seems like a similar idea) using some form of wrist curls that works the golfer's elbow side?

I meant to ask about this before: Does the method in the sticky thread apply to golfer's elbow?

Thanks again to Ryan and Mr. Rippetoe

[Jeff Power]

This is an old blacksmith trick. They get "golfer's elbow" from using a hammer so much. The thinking is that this is an imbalance in the flexion and extention muscles of the forearm. If you think about it, most of the things we do in life require you to grab and pull in and we hardly ever work the extensor muscles.

I've used this same combination of exercises with my patients that have
medial epicondylitis with great success.

Good call.

Dr. Power

[Mark Rippetoe]

This is an approach I have not tried, but it makes sense if you consider the fact that it is really not possible to completely isolate the extensor and flexor functions of the forearm from each other. Chins are thought of primarily as flexor work because of the position of the fingers in maintaining grip, but the extensors are antagonists to this work and are heavily involved. Deadlifting likewise. I healed up a very bad dose of tennis elbow on my left arm by inundating it in submaximal grip stuff like chins and sledgehammers. I had assumed it was the direct work to the extensors that occurred as they functioned as antagonists, but maybe not. I know it works, but I'm not sure about the exact mechanism.