Elbow pain
Reply With QuoteI believe I'm going through the exact same problem. About 3-4 weeks ago, I felt "pain/stress" while doing power cleans. I believe it made a potential pre-existing yet dormant tendonitis situation acute -- as in active. I'm 38, so it's very possible I had tendonitis or something going on anyway.Originally Posted by Aamon
This is what I've been doing for the past two weeks. I feel like it's starting to get a little better, but I feel like it may be several weeks before the symptoms of the tendinitis are less noticeable and irritating.. Keep in mind this is just what seems to be working for me.. Don't know if it will work for you.
1) The area of pain in my case is on the outside of my left elbow, as the fore-arm approaches the elbow joint
2) Like yourself, I found it painful to hold a moderate weight dumbbell with the arm extended, palm facing down. I also found it awkward/painful to try barbell curls, particularly at the top of the movement where the hands are closest to the shoulders. In the first couple of weeks, I found it painful when I took a pair of socks and rolled them into a ball, and then squeezed the sock ball. I haven't even tried a reverse-grip curl.
3) I subbed out barbell rows with power cleans as a result. They're doable, it aggravates that area less, but it's still there.
4) As a result, I've been doing daily wrist/forearm stretches for several minutes, following by icing the area, then letting it warm up naturally, and doing stretches again, followed by wrist/reverse wrist curls (not bicep curls) with a light weight for 15+ reps. I've incorporate the wrist/forearm stretches + curls into my SS routine as well. A typical day looks like this
- 5 minutes warm up walk on treadmill, do wrist stretches while warming up (note I don't ice during workout.. just after and on off days)
- 3 minutes warm up on rowing machine
- dynamic stretches for squats
- between sets of squats, which is like 4 minutes or so of rest, do a set of light wrist work with a dumbbells.
- stretch between bench and deadlift
- ice after workout, let it warm up naturally or during shower then stretches
Day 2 - same, where I am doing light wrist stuff between sets of squats and stretching between press.. I also do a couple of sets of seated shoulder-with pull downs (seated chins) for 10 or so reps. Go home, ice, and stretch again.
In addition to the above, I have one of those stress balls I work with here and there during the day @ my desk. Another thing I do here and there is a make a fist with the hand with the bad elbow, and I wrap the good hand around the fist, and I force the good hand open by opening my fingers of the bad hand. I believe this is like working the other side of grip. Gripping is holding something tight but the opposite can be seen as forcing something open.
Finally, I got one of those elbow braces. I really hate that I had to buy "the strap", but for now I wear it on for bench, shoulder press and rows. I see no reason to wear it for squats and deads.
I'm not sure but I feel like this approach may be helping it improve, I'm still going up on my lifts and such, and overall the pain seems to be decreasing, and it's not interfering with my workouts too much.
I even returned to power cleans on Friday after coaching and had a good relatively pain free session @ 95 lbs, where I was doing 115 lbs before the injury. Coach had some suggestions for power cleans to minimize issues with elbow pain:
- use the hook grip because it sets things up nice for less fingers on the rack later
- a slightly wider hand width so that the rack isn't so painful (elbows will be a little further apart)
- make sure you are not just reverse curling the weight up when jump/rack
- the jump/rack sequence has to be a quick movement - the jump has to have height and power
- DROP the weight after racking (assuming you have bumper plates), in order to minimize the effort on the last part of putting the weight down.
- on the rack, do not be holding onto the bar with all the fingers.. you don't need all the fingers, and less fingers is less strain in that area according to the coach..
Also -- make sure your bar grips, stances, etc are VERY VERY GOOD. Bad elbow positioning on squats, bench, press can screw things up, etc.
I still have pressure/pain in the area at times... One thing that sucks is that if I bump into a doorway or something, it's like OUCH so this is not going away in the next week or two but it feels like I am working throughout and still making progress.
On rest days I just stretch the wrists a lot.. and of course ice..
