Last Friday I felt a sharp pain at the point left forearm muscle attaches to my inner elbow when I was racking a dumbbell. My next exercise that day was chinups. I could only do 1.5 due to pain at that point (compared to my usual 10+).
The next two days I did a few sets of chinups at home to tolerance, working up very slowly from a 4 rep set to a 10 rep set. Monday I couldn’t do machine rows due to pain in the area.
The skin from my inner elbow to a few inches closer to the hand was slightly discolored, then turned yellowish (as in a fading black and blue mark) then cleared. Because there was no impact injury, I guess this was due to a muscle tear.
Since then I’ve done chinups at home (a few sets a day), but can’t get beyond sets of 5. I feel some discomfort, but not pain. The discomfort tends to lessen after the sets, then comes back later. I’ve been doing chinups because that’s the home exercise I can do that stresses the area a bit. I’m only doing 2-4 sets per day. I’m going to try very conservative DB curls at the gym today.
Should I keep trying to exercise the left forearm muscle to tolerance? Just let it rest for a while (if so, how long)? Are there better exercises for this purpose?
What you’re doing so far sounds like a very reasonable plan. That the discomfort tends to lessen after the sets would be reassuring, and specifically makes me not inclined to recommend rest.
If you need to “scale”/regress the chin-ups a bit further, you could do something like an inverted row (adjusting height/angle to tolerance), dumbbell rows, cable rows, lever rows, etc., and could use tempo with these movements to further adjust the loading.
The forearm area is still yellowish, from about the elbow attachment down a few inches on the pinky side. For the most part I don’t have pain, but some movements are noticeable, although the feeling fades quickly. When I’m not training, I hardly notice anything .I’ve adjusted movements and loading so as not to have more than discomfort.
Should I be concerned that this is continuing after more than two weeks without any real change?
Yes. The only real symptom is pain/discomfort when doing some curling type movements, plus a persistent yellowish patch. Would the right approach be to see how things progress and if they get worse or I become sufficiently annoyed, then see about setting up a consultation?