Elbow Pain during Close Grip Pressing

Hi Drs.

Just want to say thank you to Dr. Baraki for a tip he gave me last year on how to resolve my elbow pain during squatting, eventually the pain went away entirely and my squat has been pain-free since. However the pain has returned in the exact same place (lateral side of my elbow, “tennis elbow” I think it is), but this time it only ever gets aggravated during close grip presses. Press, close grip bench, push ups, even the air assault bike all cause pain. It has been fairly consistent for about a month now, and I’ve started doing more pressing volume (12 week strength) a couple of weeks ago, which has made it significantly worse. The pain then affects all lifts that I do after it becomes aggravated that day, and sometimes aches for an entire day after training. I’m competing in my first powerlifting meet in April, so I’d like to compromise all of my training variables like volume and intensity as little as possible leading up to it. Any tips?

Hey @Jacobsa1030 ,

This sounds like a load management issue. Have you tried adjusting RPE and/or external loading (weight lifted) for provocative movements?

I have played around with a few things on my close grip bench like lowering the weight and adding a pause. Both of these helped a little bit but ultimately I still get the pain even during warmups at around 60% intensity. The same goes for my press, though I haven’t tried dropping the weight significantly on that lift. I have mainly just been trying to follow the prescribed RPE in the program as well.

Gotcha. So there are a few ways to control loading of the area:

  1. Drop RPE (internal intensity) which will likely effect the next step
  2. Drop weight (external intensity)
  3. Increase volume for sets of 8s, 10s, 12s,15s - take into account recent training history
  4. Add tempo (3.0.3)
  5. Adjust frequency of provocative lifts

Once we go through those and we really still are not seeing improvement then I recommend a consultation with us: Contact Us | Barbell Medicine