Managing acute tendinopathy, ~6 weeks out from meet

Pain & Rehab Forum [Moderated]
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Hey guys,

A couple years ago, I developed some tendinopathy around my elbow from a mixture of poor load management ending an LP and a wonky squat grip. Not knowing jack shit about pain science or programming in general at the time, I just sort of sucked it up and tried to push through, which only made it worse. Ultimately, I “fixed” my squat grip and ended my LP, and the pain disappeared pretty quickly (a couple weeks maybe). It’s never “flared up” since then unless aggravated by quick/explosive movements like punches, plyometrics, arm wrestling, etc…not that I do these things often, just WHEN I have my elbow sort of tells me to go F*** myself.

Thats the backstory. Currently, I’m 6 weeks out from my meet, and just last week I was sort of forced against my will to arm wrestle R. J. Molinere (who I believe has won the Arnold in arm wrestling, twice) as a part of a joke at my research symposium; it’s not all upside looking semi-jacked it turns out. Oddly, I felt 0 pain at all immediately after and even later that night. It was only the next few days did it begin to light up.

Im currently running the PLII template, on week 7 (deload). I’m running the deload week as planned though modifying the bench movements to tempo. Slow eccentrics + the significantly decreased intensity seems to not piss it off, though it’s still around a 3 on the pain scale during training. For example, I struggle lifting up the plates to the load the bar. Squat and DL seem to be unaffected with a slight discomfort in the squat. Following some bedroom acrobatics last night, I was nearly in tears at how bad it was hurting.

I suppose I’m here to 1) get any tips on what I should be doing right now in my training, 2) manage my expectations regarding how much pain I should be expecting through the healing process, 3) anything else I can do outside of the gym to help.

Thanks guys,
Dylan

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Hey Dylan,
I know you have a good grasp on tendinopathy loading protocols. Six weeks out is still plenty of time for some simple modifications to keep you training leading up to the meet. The good news about training programs that emphasize more of a bottoms up approach is that there isn’t the need for as much pre meet oscillation of peaking and your overall foundation of training should more than carry you through. The racking weights complaint is pretty common and we can utilize 3 means with which to help work on the current issue. The typical, work within pain free range and emphasize tempo is normally the first line of defense. I also typically have my athletes run wrist curls/extension on a heavy slow protocol as well. I will normally run athletes on a 3 sets of 8 at RPE 8 3-0-3 protocol prior to training as this hits the heavy slow benchmark and tends to make training more tolerable. If that is not working I have also recommended some of my barbell athletes get a Captains of Crunch and work on a heavy slow (or if needed isometric) protocol from there. The good part of about these is the portability lets you get in some of the tendinopathy work outside of the gym if that is working better from a time constraint perspective.

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Thanks for the reply Derek. Everything you said was helpful and re-assuring. I’ll be mindful of those suggestions.