Bicep tendonitis at the elbow?

Hello Dr. Miles, Dr. Ray,

I’m currently in week 6 of the HLM template. It prescribes Pendlay rows every 2nd training day of the week (+ rows/upper back work on GPP days).
Since a few weeks I’m experiencing pain when flexing my arms. At first it went away the day after training, but now I feel it every time I bend my arm under load. (even small loads)

I’ve experienced this before, but only in my left arm. It took almost a year to completely go away that time. This was also when I incorporated rows (+ bicep curls, that time) in my program.
So it seems that I’ve got tender biceps tendons at the elbows. Is there a safe way to make them stronger with low risk of running into these problems again?

For now I’ll try to remedy the issue by decreasing the load and volume for the rows & upper back work on GPP days.
Thing is I don’t know by how much. Is there any ballpark figure you could give me? (50% of normal training weights?)
If the pain doesn’t go away, for how long (rough estimate) can I keep going with the lower stress strategy before I better find a different way to fix this?
Are there any supplementary exercises that can help? (eccentric part of a BB curl? => lowering the bar to the pins in the rack, squat down, pick it up with bent arms. Next rep.)

Thanks for your help.

It may have to do with the rate of increased loading (volume/intensity/frequency) compared to what you’re adapted to. I might replace them with tempo rows (which will inherently require decreased loading) to start out with.

Hi Austin, thanks for the reply.

Yes, I also think it’s the increased loading. I go from about nothing (because I get hurt when I do them) to quite a bit (I program them like any other lift / there’s quite a bit of rowing in your templates). I need to easy into it a bit the next time.
Tempo rows: good idea! Never thought of that. I’ll they it out.

Are tempo rows just pendlay rows at 3-0-3 tempo or something else entirely?

I understand it as the type of row of your choice but at a tempo. This can be 3-0-3 Pendlay rows.