Closed Kinetic Chain Exercises to Rehab Tennis/Golfer´s Elbow?

Hello.

First of all, a huge congrats on the awesome work done at Barbell Medicine.
I will try to be as brief as possible since everyone´s time is precious.

I have a golfer´s elbow on my left arm for 3 years for doing heavy tricep pushdowns. After long time of research about what kind of therapy I could do, I found Barbell Medicine. Since I was already convinced before by many studies I found online that eccentric exercises were the way to go, here on the forum I was also advised to do those kind of exercises, including dumbbell wrist flexion. Resources from other studies also suggested dumbbell wrist extension so I also did those, and pronation supination exercises with a hammer.

I did just about 3 times per week, only 2 exercises of 2 sets of 10 to 15 reps. Didn’t took long enough until I also got tennis elbow on the same arm. After resting again for more than a year and the pain being still there, I decided to contact my former sports doctor that is abroad, so it wasn’t easy to do it before. He advised me to do only closed kinetic chain exercises, suggesting that I could start will push-ups (with floor handled since my wrists are also weak) and farmers walk. 5/6 set of 7 reps for push-ups, and 2/5 sets farmer´s walk with 1kg dumbbells (then going up to 3kg if no discomfort). Only 3 times per week. Well, again, wasn’t too long until I started to feel some discomfort, not much pain to be honest, more discomfort, in the tennis elbow and golfers elbow on my right arm. Great! Now 2 same injuries on both of my arms?? I stopped, afraid of getting, again, more injuries while trying to rehab one. The discomfort is basically gone after more than a week but i´m divided if I should continue. Do you recommend this kind of closed kinetic chain exercises to rehab golfers and tennis elbow? Would like to have a second opinion since i didnt had success with the eccentric exercises.

Thank you very much in advance!

Hey Jack_K,

I’m sorry to hear about the elbow issues you’ve been dealing with. It can be quite frustrating when symptoms have lingered around for that long, especially after going through various protocols and not seeing improvement. If you would like to schedule a consultation with us to gather a second opinion, here is our intake paperwork.

To your question, both closed and open kinetic chain exercises can be beneficial when addressing elbow symptoms depending on your goals and what you want to get back to. The challenging part is finding the appropriate dosage (volume, intensity, frequency, tempo, etc.) and formulation to address your specific needs. This typically takes a fair amount of trial and error, especially in the beginning phases. On the rehab programming side of things, we typically recommend starting on the more conservative side with load selection/dosing those specific movements to assess response during and in the 24-48 hours afterward. Every person’s tolerance level for symptoms will vary, but we typically define ‘tolerable’ as not feeling debilitated or unable to perform your usual activities due to symptoms. If symptoms exceed a tolerable level during or after the session, that is when we start to modify the dosage and/or formulation to continue training while aiming to bring symptoms back down instead of complete rest. More on this here and here

Thank you very much for your detailed and fast response, Mr. Dickson! I also thought that my case is too complex just to be solved by sendind a simple message. I will then submit the paperwork. Thanks again.