Isometric hangs for elbow tendonitis

This video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTPQEW1aTTI

The exercise at 4:40. After YEARS of trying everything under the sun for elbow rehab, I started doing this exercise exclusively and the elbow pain went away over a few weeks. I still do this exercise twice a week and the elbow pain hasn't returned. And yes, it'll hurt for a while during the exercise. Good luck!

One solution that works for me is isometric holds. I load at 30-40% of maximum, using a Tindeq for verification. I do 4 sets of 30 seconds to 2 minutes duration at various elbow angles and can do up to 2 sessions a day separated by 6-8 hours.

Eric Metzgar wrote:

This video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTPQEW1aTTI

The exercise at 4:40. After YEARS of trying everything under the sun for elbow rehab, I started doing this exercise exclusively and the elbow pain went away over a few weeks. I still do this exercise twice a week and the elbow pain hasn't returned. And yes, it'll hurt for a while during the exercise. Good luck!

Thanks. I'm going to check this video out as it looks like it has a few good suggestions.

It seems like several people on this thread swear by the Therabar/reverse Tyler twist protocol. I started doing that, but have become afraid to keep going because of how much it hurts, so I'm just wondering if that is normal. It's always tricky to separate good pain from bad pain. The videos I've found on the web don't seem to say either way. But it's good to know that what you were doing hurt, but you kept doing it and it improved and helped. Would you say that it hurt quite a bit at the beginning to where you considered stopping the exercise?

I had Golfers Elbow on and off for years. Tyler twists kept it at bay but it would always come back if I tried to increase climbing volume or intensity. The thing that got rid of it was an assessment with coach Jfire who suggested I actually start doing heavy bench press to balance out my musculature. I had done various pushup and ring exercises for years, but the heavy bench press (sets of 5 reps with high RPE) made symptoms disappear completely despite ramping volume of hard climbing significantly at the same time. Now I do a 6-8 week period of heavy bench every winter (make sure you do some easier bench press in the 6-8 weeks leading up to it). There has been one recurrence for me which was in the fall when I hadn't done hard pressing in months and tried a hard for me sport climb without a warm-up. I did some Tyler twists, some more press/bench and then started the heavy bench, it was gone real quick. If you haven't paid more than lip service to oppositional strength then maybe this will help you too.

Proper assessment is key since multiple tendons can show the same symptom and why someone’s golden ticket won’t work for you. I’ve done slow eccentrics for years now to stamp out my elbow pain whenever it rarely creeps up, it’s never progressed past a mild bother with this approach. I never really understood why it works, just that it does. Seeing this new video this week was validating of this.

Charles Vernon wrote:

I started doing that, but have become afraid to keep going because of how much it hurts, so I'm just wondering if that is normal. It's always tricky to separate good pain from bad pain. The videos I've found on the web don't seem to say either way. But it's good to know that what you were doing hurt, but you kept doing it and it improved and helped. Would you say that it hurt quite a bit at the beginning to where you considered stopping the exercise?

A good metric for good/bad pain in a rehab setting is whether the pain goes away within a few minutes of stopping the exercise. If it does you are good to go, if the pain lingers, you are pushing it too hard.

From what I understand pain is not a super accurate signal of damage being done to your tissues. Think about stubbing your toe-hurts like crazy but there’s generally no actual damage.

For rehabbing soft tissue you actually want to feel the pain. There’s a school of thought that part of the rehab process is as much about teaching your nervous system that that range of motion is safe again as much as it is rebuilding actual capacity in the tissue.

I have had good success using a hammer or frying pan (as a weight on a lever) to load the tissue into the painful range of motion (following the above guideline for pain).  A bit counterintuitive but it works. 

Charles Vernon wrote:

Thanks. I'm going to check this video out as it looks like it has a few good suggestions.

It seems like several people on this thread swear by the Therabar/reverse Tyler twist protocol. I started doing that, but have become afraid to keep going because of how much it hurts, so I'm just wondering if that is normal. It's always tricky to separate good pain from bad pain. The videos I've found on the web don't seem to say either way. But it's good to know that what you were doing hurt, but you kept doing it and it improved and helped. Would you say that it hurt quite a bit at the beginning to where you considered stopping the exercise?

Yeah, I tried the Therabar too, but it didn't seem to engage my muscles/tendons enough. Not sure how else to explain it. 

In terms of pain (in the exercise in the video I shared)... yeah, it hurt quite a bit. But everything hurt at that point. Cooking, doing dishes, putting shampoo in my hair. And in my deep dive/research into climbing injuries, I remember reading again and again that you had to STRENGTHEN your way out of pain... that rest wouldn't wasn't the answer (**depending on the injury, of course). Anyhow, I decided to try to strengthen my way out of elbow stuff, and the really heavy dumbbell (with weights on only one side) seemed to be the ticket. It certainly hurt, but it felt like good pain, for lack of a better way of putting it. And over a few weeks the pain went down, then went away completely. 

Everyone's bodies are different so it may not help you, but that's my experience. Good luck to you!

Thanks everyone. Lots of good thoughts and info. My elbow is still quite sore two days after doing the reverse Tyler twist sets, and I'm thinking it's "bad pain" at this point. The soreness is worse than what climbing (up to about a number grade below my max) or any daily activity triggers. 

I also think Adam makes a really underrated point that a lot of different issues tend to get lumped into the same golfer's elbow soup which is why there's so many different solutions. I probably need a better assessment in addition to trying out some of the other suggestions here. Unfortunately, my physical therapist is in Argentina until the end of the month. I was thinking of going to the Climb Clinic in the meantime.