I’ve been experiencing pain on the inside of my elbow- localized at the joint right on the bone on the inside. Been going on for a couple of months and I’ve been ignoring it and training through the pain hoping it will resolve on it’s own. It’s particularly intense when doing pull ups/chin ups. I have not used any anti inflammatory medications or any medications for that matter. Any suggestions in how to deal with this? Is training through it the right approach? Do I risk causing any further injury with this approach?
Hi! We will likely need more information for general advice so I just have a few questions: Besides chin/pull ups have you noticed any other particular patterns or movements for symptoms provocation? I know you said you’ve been trying to train “through it” but have you tried any variations that are more tolerable?
It’s unlikely you will cause any further injury, but if symptoms are perpetuating and interfering with your function and training, it’s likely we need to address it in some form. Obviously, that’s specific to the person and what your goals are, and we can discuss that further.
It is likely you’re dealing with some tendinopathy of the forearm/wrist flexor muscles (the ones that grip, hence the pain when you grip hard), which has a lot of names including golfer’s elbow, medial epicondylitis, etc. A lot of this comes down to your specific patterns, and it seems like your symptoms respond to certain loads and positions. Classically, chin/pull ups do seem to be a movement that can aggravate symptoms when you’re in more of a flare up episode. The important concept to understand is that you’re in control of the loads and movements to move this forward. You’re not inherently doing anything wrong when you’re ignoring the pain and working through it, but if you haven’t seen much progress with that and want to make a change, you can definitely adjust some variables to make some long term improvement. An easy substitution for chin/pull ups for now would be to work on some lighter pull downs, using a grip that’s tolerable, at sets of 10-12 to keep intensity low for now and then build back up to heavier loads. Using straps on deadlifts is also a great option for right now. You can also do something specific for the muscle grip, like wrist flexions, following a simple protocol of:
This can be a good start, it’s just important to remain patient and look at it as a process. Obviously it can get more in-depth, so if you find that you’re responding well to this I would suggest either a consult or we can try to find someone in your area that can help. Let me know if this makes sense and if you have other questions.
Mike. Thank you for the response. I’ll try the wrist flexion protocol as well as controlling load a little better I work out in my home gym and don’t have a pull down option Any suggestions on an alternate exercise for chins using barbell or dumbbells? Or maybe some bands to assist in reducing load on chins ?
You’re welcome! Band assist can definitely work if you have thick enough bands. You can also just sub in more horizontal pulling for now, i.e. different variations of rows; not quite the same plane of movement but it’ll get the job done.