Golfers/tennis elbow. Grip...

[biggbn]

Since introducing medicine ball slams to my morning workout I have been suffering with excessive outer elbow/upper outer forearm pain. I've had this before and can't remember which of the 'elbow' ailments it is, but it is affecting me daily, to the extent its sore when I make a fist or try to grip anything. Healthy otherwise, still training regularly but medicine ball stuff has been dropped. So, question. If I alleviatey need to grip by using straps for my Shrugs and single arm rows, which I do for high reps with a moderately heavy weight, might that also alleviate the ongoing aches and pains? I don't want to stop training for any length of time and an more interested in workarounds than complete break. Thanks in advance for any advice.

[DevestatinDave]

I've suffered intermittent elbow pain for some time, though manage to keep it largely under control with a few approaches. In my experience, the elbow pain comes about from muscle tightness. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some minor tendon damage in my case as well.

I like this little elbow/tricep self care routine - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC9vajAmwMc. Whilst her newer videos are quite 'influencery', her older ones are quite good. In this she does a combination of stretches, followed by self massage with yoga tune up balls. I like the tune up balls for a lot of things, its like a lacrosse ball with slightly more give.

The stretching in particular is good especially after spending a lot of time on the computer or phone

I can't find the video, but another one I do is lean my forearm on the floor, then push into the outer forearm muscle with the opposite elbow. It allows you to get very targeted force on the muscle, which is quite difficult to massage.

I occasionally get dry-needling done in my forearm by a massage therapist. The relief is immediate though only lasts a few days.

I find the a good test of whether my forearm muscles are stiff or loose, is tightening my grip really hard. If I can feel the skin across my knuckles stretch, it's all good. If not, I need to do some forearm/tricep self care.

Avoid any specific moves that aggravate it, medicine ball slams in your case. For me, I avoid skull-crusher, overhead tricep extensions as my elbows do not like it at all.

I've recently started doing dead-hangs off a pull up bar for grip strength, seems to help a bit as well.

Hope there's some useful nuggets in there, good luck

[Fore Left]

New York Times article said:

To arrive at that conclusion, the researchers recruited 21 people with chronic, debilitating elbow pain. Ten of them were assigned to standard physical therapy treatment for tennis elbow; this was the control group. The other 11 also received physical therapy, but in addition were taught a choreographed exercise using the rubber bar that they practiced at home. After less than two months of treatment, the researchers terminated the experiment. The early results had been too unfair. The control group had showed little or no improvement. But the rubber-bar-using group effectively had been cured. Those patients reported an 81 percent improvement in their elbow pain and a 72 percent improvement in strength.

https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com...

Has worked for me and several others I've recommended it to. Original bar is a Theraband Flexbar (I use red) but others are available.

[DFNorfolk]

Sounds like you are thinking of tennis or golfers elbow inflammation:

https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-condition...

https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-condition...

If it’s not either of these the treatments should work.

[biggbn]

I think it's tissue damage rather than joint pain, 99% sure of that. I can still grip hard, but clenching my fist causes pain up the outside of my forearm by the elbow, both sides, so it's definitely one of the new bilateral exercises that has caused it. Hot/cold treatment relieves it a little as does ibuprofen but I can't take a lot of that, so as stated I'm just wondering if minimising the need to grip by using straps will help as griping/clenching fist is when it shows itself the most.

Thanks all for these valuable responses.

[popeyewhite]

If you've had the ailment before it's a chronic injury exacerbated by, not caused by, the slams. What eased it the first time?

[Hoofy]

I think the jerky, high intensity movement can create this problem. I suffered from tennis elbow from playing tennis with poor technique. Mainly slicing and suddenly stopping the movement (professionals follow through after a slice) but any intense movement where the racquet wants to go and you stop it going there will result in tennis elbow (some people get this from serving and others from doing forehand strokes because they're tensing up and trying to force the racquet to move where they think it should go after doing a powerful stroke).

So examine how you're moving the medicine ball and note where you feel soreness. I note you talk about gripping and feeling pain - overgripping might be the cause but it might not be, and now even gripping might be causing pain. You'll have to experiment with how you move.

FWIW now that I've figured out how tennis elbow happens, I don't suffer from it any more.

[biggbn]

popeyewhite said:

If you've had the ailment before it's a chronic injury exacerbated by, not caused by, the slams. What eased it the first time?

Bang on, I did say in first post I've had this before and went to Dr. I suspect complete rest fixed it last time as it may have been pre-covid. Used straps today so I didn't have to utilise the muscles for grip, let's see how that works out.

I'm going to continue the medicine ball 'movements', ie squat jumps etc jist without the ball, so no slams...and that's the fun part!! At least it will be working my mobility and cardio, I'll try to incorporate squat thrusts and similar. Off work for holidays now so can afford to really tire myself in morning workouts!!