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Tennis Elbow (Pain in muscles on top / outside of forearm). (Read 23880 times)

bigironhorse

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Those biggish striated muscles that flex if you wiggle your fingers, sort of on the opposite side to traditional golfers elbow.

That description sounds like tennis elbow to me.

Fiend

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Cheers. I'll order some beetroot juice from the local hippy shop.

SA Chris

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If it's at the specific bony point of the elbow it's tennis, if it's the muscle itself it's just a strain?

I strained both of mine quite badly carrying two very heavy concrete blocks, by gripping the sides. it was really sore for a few days, but went away in a week or so.

sheavi

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If you're getting a numb/painful thumb this points to nerve irritation.  Things to looks for are compression of the radial nerve as it passes through the forearm muscles (radial tunnel syndrome) or you could have issues with your lower cervical spine.  I'd try some cervical and thoracic mobility exercises and some radial nerve flossing.

Fiend

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Cheers. The thumb was really painful at the time, but that hasn't come back.

The arm pain is weird. The muscles are still sore, but the pain has now also migrated into the bony spurs typical of tennis elbow. There has been no improvement after 4 days rest (since a light / careful wall session on sat - only done gentle massage since then) and the areas are still very tender to the touch. This is totally different to my golfer's elbow which would feel tender during and immediately after sessions, and then feel mostly fine at rest. Not really sure what to do about that...

cowboyhat

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Along with most others, sounds like Tennis elbow to me.

Been rehabing it again recently myself, always reach for the flex bar thingy. This treatment was recommended by notable heart doctor saltbeef.



Works for me.

Oh and I've found that massaging the tricep really helped with tennis elbow, loosening it up on a foam roller.


Usual advice about shoulder imbalance, over use etc that always applies to the elbow tendons; the pain is manifestation of a bigger problem, not usually local.

tomtom

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Biggest Q for me with all the rehab is how often - for how long - and how this weaves into going climbing...

cowboyhat

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Biggest Q for me with all the rehab is how often - for how long - and how this weaves into going climbing...

Well you should go climbing.

The flex bar exercises i was doing ten 'reps' x 3 sets, morning and evening. Long term, incorporate other shoulder/balancing exercises into the training you are doing.

tomtom

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Which one did you use if you don’t mind? At £20 a pop.... right one etc...

cowboyhat

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I got the green one which is called 'medium' but is actually second toughest of four.

Seems right for me. Pretty subjective though?

r-man

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There's also one with interchangeable inserts which give you three different resistance levels. The brand is Simien. I thought it was pretty good - worked up to using the toughest one with no pain.

This one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Simien-Sports-Flexible-Rubber-Twist/dp/B019FZ48VW

(Just to be clear though, my issue was golfer's elbow, and I also combined with exercises using increasingly heavy dumbbells. I have no experience rehabbing tennis elbow.)

Fiend

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From the video, the twisty bar thing looks like it's doing exactly the same as eccentrics with a dumbbell, but more conveniently. I might get one.

Fiend

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Still fucking sore. Have been keeping the worst one (right) warm with heatpacks etc.

Did eccentric wrist curls and rotations with about 5kg. Almost no discomfort at all, just a very faint sense they were being used.

Tried the twisting STRETCH as shown in the Horst video. This is problematic as it stresses the pulling arm a lot more than the one that's being actually stretched. Both arms hurt a lot more after this.

I will stick to the conventional pull the fingers downs stretch as I feel this one in the stretched arm and it doesn't aggravate the other arm.

Booked a physio for next week, cheers for the recommendation Puntonious. Fuck knows what's going on as the general feeling is different to every other injury I've had.

tomtom

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Yours sounds bad Fiend. Mine is very much a niggle (bit achy in the morning and the odd twinge). Got amazon sending me a bendy bar - see if it does anything... or may (like the foam roller) become another baby toy,,,

Fultonius

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Still fucking sore. Have been keeping the worst one (right) warm with heatpacks etc.

Did eccentric wrist curls and rotations with about 5kg. Almost no discomfort at all, just a very faint sense they were being used.

Tried the twisting STRETCH as shown in the Horst video. This is problematic as it stresses the pulling arm a lot more than the one that's being actually stretched. Both arms hurt a lot more after this.

I will stick to the conventional pull the fingers downs stretch as I feel this one in the stretched arm and it doesn't aggravate the other arm.

Booked a physio for next week, cheers for the recommendation Puntonious. Fuck knows what's going on as the general feeling is different to every other injury I've had.

5KG is waaay too heavy for an acute injury. I started on 0.5kg or 1kg.  (note, I started on about 5kg with the CHRONIC tendinosis, 2-3 months after first injury with no tenderness). You really want to avoid any aggravation in the initial stages. You just want to make sure you get *some* loading while it heals, but any discomfort (in my experience) is too much. 

andy_e

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This treatment was recommended by notable heart doctor saltbeef.

He's the most injured man on earth and you took his advice? Dangerous.

Fiend

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How about no discomfort which was what I was getting?

I get plenty of aggravation in non-specific movements and at rest - but not when doing the eccentrics. I could feel the area working, that's all.

I don't really see what 0.5kg will be doing?? I probably load it with more force than that just moving my arms around normally.



TT, it's just plain fucking weird that's what it is. I've had my fair share of injuries, but an injury that seemed to have a clear cause event BUT wasn't particularly aggravated at the time of that event (and only a bit generally, not specifically tired/achey) afterwards, that is getting worse with rest (including warmth, light massage, very light usage), where the most notable events coincided with bicep pain in the left arm but now the pain is more prominent and non-bicepy in the right arm?? It makes no fucking sense at all.

tomtom

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Waits for someone to say shoulder imbalance :)

Fiend

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Quite possibly. My shoulders are incredibly inflexible although I have done a bit of stretching and mobility every gym/wall session this autumn/winter, and plenty of antagonist work. I've had shoulder impingements regularly in the past, but none this year.

r-man

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5KG is waaay too heavy for an acute injury. I started on 0.5kg or 1kg.  (note, I started on about 5kg with the CHRONIC tendinosis, 2-3 months after first injury with no tenderness). You really want to avoid any aggravation in the initial stages. You just want to make sure you get *some* loading while it heals, but any discomfort (in my experience) is too much.

But surely if 5KG isn't making it hurt, then it's not too heavy.

Fiend, hope the physio can help. I don't know what's going on with your arm, but here are my experiences with a basic tendon injury. Perhaps they will be of interest to you or someone else reading.

I've had golfer's elbow, not tennis elbow, but... Having had elbow problems since my early twenties, I've seen the theories and advice change a lot. Once upon a time it was all stretching and massage, based on notions of breaking down scar tissues and realigning fibres. This did nothing for me but make my elbows worse. It lead to me taking a year off, then finally climbing again even though it still hurt. I managed my climbing and gradually healed.

Years later, I had more problems. The new trendy thing was the eccentric exercise protocol with lots of reps and tiny weights. Again, no help. I ended up doing progressively harder campussing (seemed like the most controlled way of increasing intensity) and gradually healed.

More recently, ramping up training over last winter brought me more problems. This time, I managed to join together current rehab ideas and other people's experiences in a way that has actually helped me. Some of the new ideas which made a difference to me:
1) Tendons need to be stimulated to heal. This requires a discomfort level of around 3/10 when doing exercises.
2) Progressing to heavy weights is important. There is some evidence to suggest tendons respond better to heavy loading. I progressed to doing eccentric bicep curls with 20kg, and wrist curls with 12kg.
3) You might feel no pain doing exercises like the wrist curls and bar twists with your elbows at 90 degrees, but what about straight arm and locked off? Do them all. Seek out that 3/10 discomfort.

I did eccentric bar twists, eccentric bicep curls and the flexbar thing. The flexbar was a good warm up for the other stuff. I know this is golfer's elbow stuff rather than tennis elbow, but maybe some of it is useful. My problem was probably in the chronic rather than acute stage (it got gradually worse over a few months until I decided it wasn't going away and I had to do something about it).

Rant time... It is a bit of a minefield trying to find answers on the net. So many youtube videos are filled with confident explanations of elbow physiology, and often from outdated trends in rehab theory. Even the modern ones often say "eesentric" instead of eccentric (it's not a bloody word! Not in English or American!) which doesn't exactly suggest mastery of the subject. And as far as I can see, the science behind eccentric protocols is all based on a fairly limited study of achilles tendon rehab in runners. People really don't understand tendons yet, let alone climbing tendon injuries.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

By the way. Not sure about body imbalances. Sounds reasonable, and I bought a book on it once. But the exercises did nothing for me. Perhaps I was doing something wrong. Seems to me though that the most obvious explanation is more likely for most people. Your elbow hurts because you hurt your elbow. Climbers put a lot of force through the elbow - it makes sense that this can lead to damage. If there are studies that show imbalances to be the root cause *most of the time*, I'd be interested to hear about them.

Fiend

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Cheers r-dawg.

I have had chronic golfer's elbow which was relatively comprehensible and manageable. Initially gentle climbing, icing, avoiding complete rest, then regularly warmth, massage, stretching, taping, avoiding slopers and compression if it was feeling tweaky, and regular eccentrics all worked for me. It's been vaguely persistent but very manageable over previous winters - except this winter, when my golfers is almost completely absent.

I recognise that this is for chronic rather than acute, and that my "possibly tennis elbow" is probably in an acute phase. But again it's a very strange acute phase.


saltbeef

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Fiend, rest up boss. Someone commented earlier about acute and chronic phases. These overlap in my experience. Rest and ice at first.

Eliminate all tension you can in your shoulders arm and then do isometrics. Do that for a few weeks then get on the twisty bar.
Paradoxically I found the bar thing worked well on left arm, right has responded much better to the upside down kettle bell holds.
Hope it helps. Tennis elbow is a bastard.

Re diagnosis try the extended finger test for tennis elbow- have a google. If this replicates pain then it’s probably the diagnosis I reckon. I found mine was really diffuse pain over forearm.

Fiend

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Cheers Beef. I have been resting. 6 full days now. I'm raging. The last time I actually pulled hard was....over two weeks ago, admittedly that was pretty hard by my standards.  Are you allowed to deadlift while resting elbows?

Good point about the ice. I've started doing that. I'll focus on it as if it was an acute injury that actually hurt when I did it or right after I did it, instead of not hurting so much then and getting more painful as I rest it. Twatting thing.


lagerstarfish

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any chance of you posting a photo of your face demonstrating how angry this is making you?

sheavi

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No evidence that ice will do anything other than numb the area - no effect on inflammation. If in fact it is an inflammatory condition as opposed to elbow tendinopathy.
I don't think there is any one particular method that works for 'tennis elbow' but I would not advise total rest.  Do any exercise that doesn't really hurt. When I had mine I just did kettlebells/push ups etc until it calmed down and I could climb again.  I also have found Volker Schoffl's taping technique really beneficial and can climb now without pain and next to no pain post climbing.
https://www.epictv.com/media/podcast/climbing-tips-%7C-elbow-taping-101-part-3/605522

 

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