Lateral Epicondylitis: How do you pinfire it?

[Geoff Bischoff]

Hey coach;

Okay, maybe this gets moved to Repetitive Inquiries, and if so, you have my apologies. Forums search give lots of hits, but I found more chaff than wheat.

I've had the golfer's elbow before (medial epicondylitis). It was due to squat grip and stance deficiencies. I fixed it by a) fixing my squat and b) pin-firing the injury with chin-ups. Worked great.

Now I've got the tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis). Not sure what jackassery I did that caused it (suggestions welcome), and also not sure how to pinfire it. My intuition says, since gripping is what hurts, then I pinfire it by doing the heavy deadlifts I've already got scheduled for Wednesday ... Right? Anything higher-volume to add rehab-wise?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Look up the chinup protocol on this website. Do it.

[Geoff Bischoff]

I distinctly remember providing my advice for tennis/golfer's elbow. High-volume chins. Look it up. Tendinitis does not heal with a layoff.

Well hey, a change in search terms wins the day. Counterintuitive to me that it would work on both ailments. Guess I know how the rest of my Wednesday goes now.

[Mike Longnecker]

It works!! The first few sessions hurt terribly. But it works.

If it hurts too much to do them bodyweight, use bands or the gravitron.

[Milton]

I'm having the same issue right now and it took me a while to find the actual protocol on the website, here it is:

2x a week do 25 sets of 2 chin ups.

Try to add reps to every workout as possible.

Work your way up to 30 sets of 5 chin ups.

Hope I'm not totally fucking it up.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Here's a good article on the veterinary practice. Maybe you can see the origin of my application: Pin Firing – The Horse


Money shot:

The driving idea behind firing is that it makes chronic inflammations acute and allows them to heal. When the body responds to the new injury of firing, which is performed over the old injury, it responds in a different way than the initial injury. I feel that until the condition is made acute, it will not heal.

[Bestafter60]

Hope this is worth adding to the discussion:
Rip, is the same "acute inflammation overload" concept employed in your epicondylitis method in any way applicable to plantar fasciitis? I have PF now, likely caused by new shoes, and don't want to waste a good injury. I'll play guinea pig if you've got any ideas. Calf raises?

[Mark Rippetoe]

I've never dealt with plantar fasciitis with this method. You're on your own.

[Geoff Bischoff]

Here's a good article on the veterinary practice. Maybe you can see the origin of my application: Pin Firing – The Horse

Helpful, thanks. Makes sense I suppose, and worked for my medial-epi awhile back. I won't hesitate to use it for lateral-epi in the future.

Update report, just because this is quite weird to me:

Tuesday: I was in hell; pulling my kids' pants up and changing diapers and even grasping my coffee mug in even a partially-pronated position set my whole arm on fire, but I kept doing it just to avoid "favoring" the injury. Was sure I had done a serious whackjob on my right arm. Drugs, ice, rest.

Wednesday: Woke up in much less pain. Went in to do my deadlifts, pulled a PR triple and light squats, then did chins with whatever steam I had left. No elbow pain in them, just really smoked from deadlifts, so I only got 5 doubles across. Went home in even less pain than I came in.

Thursday (today): Woke up in no pain at all. Went in to do bench press, pushed a PR triple and did light presses. Still pain free.

Coach: Near as I can tell, it just went away without me doing anything discernible at all to fix it (other than prayer, ice, drugs, rest, and a determination not to decrease loading unless I really couldn't move the weights).

Damnedest thing, but I'm not complaining.

[LimieJosh]

Hope this is worth adding to the discussion:
Rip, is the same "acute inflammation overload" concept employed in your epicondylitis method in any way applicable to plantar fasciitis? I have PF now, likely caused by new shoes, and don't want to waste a good injury. I'll play guinea pig if you've got any ideas. Calf raises?

To further Rip's point, I have no idea what sort of movement you would employ to approach PF with this technique. However, there is another issue when it comes to dealing with these pains that really needs to be explicitly stated when it comes to PF. The pain is mostly the result of continued use of an incorrect movement pattern (e.g one a squat letting your knees slide forward at the bottom or dropping your elbows). The thing you need to do even before starting the pin firing approach is to identify what that movement issue is, eliminate it, and replace it with a correct one.