Squatting Arm Pain

[Damian]

For the past month maybe I have been experiencing pain between my bicep and tricep on the outside of my arm during/after squatting. It has affected my bench afterwards and chin-ups. I have searched the forums and found it to be quite common. I believe it is because my grip is too narrow on my squat. Currently I use a thumbless grip where my ring fingers go on the rings on the bar when I squat. I plan to now widen my grip and put my wrists on top of the bar with loose fists. I know many of you have gone this already, so my question is when I start to use this new grip will the poundage on my squat decrease? My squat has gone up pretty nicely even with the pain so I do not want the new grip to stop that, but I will have to change to it because I cannot bench with the pain.

Current squat 3 sets of 5 @ 250

Thank You

[Carlos Daniel]

I have experience with this, happened to me about 5 times. This is due to unstable supporting of the bar on the back, such that you end up supporting the bar with your arms. I have been able to reduce this by narrowing my grip. This made the bar much more stable, but do what works for you. If the pain starts getting worse, don't try to lift through it, it will only get worse. Take a week off squats, take some ibuprofen and come back to it.

[Damian]

Carlos do you put your wrists on top of the bar and make loose fists or just regular fingers over bar?

[Carlos Daniel]

Carlos do you put your wrists on top of the bar and make loose fists or just regular fingers over bar?

I kinda grab the bar, but with thumbs on top of the bar.

[Apple-Man]

How wide is your grip? Don't give a number, tell me where your hands are relative to your shoulders or shoulder blades, since everyone's body size is different.

But if it turns out you'll need to decrease your squat loads a little bit until your grip strength catches up, I'll be telling you to do that. A weak link in a chain is enough to break the chain. If you just want to squat higher numbers, just go to any fancy gym and they'll show you how. If you want to be strong, you'll pay equal attention to all aspects of your lifts.

[Damian]

Apple-Man my hands are about a foot away from my shoulders in my current grip. And what does going to a fancy gym to squat more weight have to do with anything? I am going to have to change my grip whether I like it or not because the pain is too much to bear....I was just wondering how much I should deload my squat working weight. From Carlos's advice I may now believe that I should keep my grip width but bring my elbows up higher so the weight is more on my back and I'm hoping that should solve the problem.

[Carnivroar]

do curlz and dipz to strengthen your girly arms

[Trei]

Apple-Man my hands are about a foot away from my shoulders in my current grip. And what does going to a fancy gym to squat more weight have to do with anything? I am going to have to change my grip whether I like it or not because the pain is too much to bear....I was just wondering how much I should deload my squat working weight. From Carlos's advice I may now believe that I should keep my grip width but bring my elbows up higher so the weight is more on my back and I'm hoping that should solve the problem.

I could be wrong on this, so take this with a grain of salt, but that sounds like your hands are too far out to me. I know when I had my hands far out I was getting a good chunk of wrist and some arm pain, and so I started doing shoulder dislocations so my shoulder flexibility could get better. Because of that better shoulder flexibility you should be able to get a narrower grip, which forces your shoulders to be tighter and gives a better structure to hold the weight on.

[Damian]

My problem is not back upper back tightness...I can get my hands really close and narrow but that only worsens the pain in my arms.

[Damian]

What do you mean by "squeezing" your elbows in....do you mean like trying to get my elbows closer together?