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Golfer's Elbow (climber's elbow, really) - Triceps Exercises
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[deleted] |
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I do the skull crusher exercise for my triceps. It has fixed all of my elbow and shoulder pains! There's good videos out there that show how to exercise triceps without causing other damage. Dips can be strenuous to shoulders. Cheers |
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This is not what you're looking for, but I would resist the use of "climber's elbow," instead of golfer's elbow or medial epicondylitis. Climbers frequently get medial epicondylitis and also lateral epicondylitis. Apparently medial is more common, but lateral is also common and can be just as if not more debilitating. Since climbers get both, seems confusing to just pick one and call it "climber's" even though both are common, and we already have commonly used informal (tennis, golfer's) and formal terms (lateral, medial). More substantively, I'm one of the few climbers I know (or found about from Internet) that has had serious problems with triceps tendons. I tore left side climbing about 10 years ago and needed surgical repair. I developed bursitis and pain on my right side a few years ago, went to a doctor who told me to quit hard (for me) climbing. Of course I ignored him and am glad I did, having a done a lot of "hard-for-me" climbing since then, even though I believe there's a good chance I'll seriously injure the right one and either need surgery, or it will really end my hard climbing. I can't say I've really noticed a correlation between my triceps tendon issue and tennis or golfer's elbow (I've had both, tennis somewhat seriously and chronic, golfer's not so bad, and it generally correlates with periods of a lot of intense climbing and goes away when I back off). I don't think my triceps issue has been weakness per se as I was a semi-serious weightlifter (including bench press) before getting into climbing, it's possible heavy (for me) bench pressing maybe caused some long term tendon damage. |
adam Happensack wrote: Any recs on some exercises or videos? |
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When I started climbing 2 years ago, I got a really bad case of climbers/golfers elbow. I had no idea what it was, so I did a deep internet dive into as many blogs/videos/articles. The big takeaway was that you've gotta work your antagonistic muscles as much as you're working your 'climbing up' muscles. You can't 'rest' through this pain. You've gotta strengthen your way out of the pain. So I gave up doing pull ups (which were really exacerbating the pain) and started doing a bunch of push ups, and a few other things. And my pain has disappeared and hasn't come back. |
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Eric is correct- you need to get stronger to beat this. I only got this after climbing on plastic in the early days. I cured myself and the cure has lasted 25 years. Steve Ilig, a Boulder trainer, had a few paragraphs about it in one of his books. You do this. Do a total arm workout with weights, blast everything till failure -total failure - so you can’t lift your arms or squeeze with your hands or do a push up or a dip- this would take a few hours of lifting for me. Then grab the bar that is bent like a “M” small and light. Lie down on your back on a bench. Put your hands together on your forehead palms facing up, your upper arms should be perpendicular to the ground- they should stay that way during the lift- have your partner set the bar into your hands, push it toward the ceiling but don’t push your arms straight- don’t bend your elbows past 90 degrees- now do 30 reps. You should feel a warm feeling all around your elbows. Do about 3-4 sessions of 30. I guess it works by isolating some very small muscle groups and they don’t really get worked ever. Doing this makes them strong and keeps your elbows- the joint- from moving around under loads. Try it, I hope it helps you like it did me. |
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I've had medial epicondylitis. I was able to reduce it with slow lowers off a pull up bar holding at the end before elbows were straight, down climbing with focus on the lowering part of the arms, one arm static hangs off a pull up bar with elbow slightly bent, and slow lowering of a kettle bell (basically a reverse bicep curl). Also as part of my warm up before climbing I would do a good amount of very controlled slow down climbing. I did a combination of all of these (at least 1 or 2 a day) until the "nitis" was at bay. Now I keep it away with regular down climbing and slow lowers on a pull up bar a few times a week just to keep it away. I know I got some info from the " Camp4 human performance" PT fella, but I can't remember where I learned the other exercises from. Many swear by bench press/push ups and overhead press to help. I was already doing those when I got the -nitis. Do a solid internet dive into methods to reduce it. You'll find a lot of opinions and suggested movements out there and often there isn't a "correct" way to heal, you just have to trial and error to see what works for you. For most overuse tendon issues the key is to pick some exercises that help and be very consistent with them. It took awhile for your issue to develop and it will take awhile to heal it. I've dealt with numerous tendinitis issues over the years and the most important part of healing them was to be consistent with whatever PT exercises I chose to do. Consistency is key, work on it more days than not, every day if possible. Once you get it healed to an acceptable level you can probably keep it at bay with some focused attention a few times a week. Once I was hitting the PT hard I was able to continue climbing hard while simultaneously healing my elbow as long as I did focused PT every day. I found the eccentric and isometric exercises with high intensity every day worked WAY better and faster than any massaging and stretching, as long as I did them every day, even for only 10 minutes. YMMV. Tendonosis sucks! Good luck! |
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I too am going through another bout of medial epicondylitis... again. It's resurfaced at various intensities across the years. The worst being a total hiatus from climbing for at least a year or two, but that was many years ago when I wasn't nearly as privy to better training practices and antag exercises. However, here I am. Extremely frustrating when I do all "the stuff" that you can find out there in addition to rounds of PT in the past. Every time I finally get back to some try-hard it eventually flares up. A bit heart breaking when it happens just before breaking a grade or a long climbing trip, which it seems to always coincide with. After listening to some of the conversations with Dr. Jared Vagey, it seems the most successful approaches are more nuanced than simple push/antag exercises due to the various ways in which climbers succumb to this kind of pain. Regardless, it's great that people share their success stories and things that seemed to make a difference, even if just anecdotally. I've yet to really figure out what helps mine. |
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The eccentric exercise described in Jared Vagy's article "Dodgy Elbows" is essential in treating medial or lateral epicondylitis (in my opinion). |
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https://tomrandallclimbing.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/golfers-elbow-a-possible-solution/ |
Michael Lagueux wrote: Julian Saunders, not Vagy. |
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I've had on-and-off triceps tendon issues for the last few years. One thing to look at is your work setup, if you work at a computer. I had gotten in the habit of kind of slumping over my mouse hand and this put a lot of weight on that tendon over time. I moved my mousepad to a different location and it got better. Then the pandemic hit and I worked on a laptop for months and it's totally gone. But I built a desk for a home office setup a month or so ago and now I think my bad habit is coming back and I'm worried the pain might be too. I might need to change my positioning again. |
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Good eye, PortlandRob! |
