Preventing tennis elbow from getting worse

Anyone have any experience with noticing tennis elbow/tendonitis developing early stages and stopping it from progressing? Elbows were sore a few days after ice climbing towards the end of they season, didn't think much of it as I had no pre existing elbow conditions. Fast forward to now, they have been quite sore after the last few days of rock climbing. Stretched them out a bit and tried to just take a rest day, but then the next climb they were even more sore. Any recommendations? Also, is it surprising I am developing this after really only 2 years of serious/consistent climbing with no injuries? 

Also, if this is not the forum, let me know, thanks!

I also started getting bad tennis elbow about 2 years after starting to climb seriously.

Buy a Theraband flexbar (I've found the green one is a good resistance) and do Tyler Twists with it. You may need to back off of climbing for a while, but I found doing the exercises consistently managed to fix my tennis elbow in about a month.

Yes. Golfers elbow for me. I tried nearly everything to address it. The only things that worked were prolonged stretches of the wrist/forearm and long duration hangs on the jugs of my hangboard (30-40 seconds). I actually wouldn’t back off of climbing as much as learning what pain point is acceptable vs. aggravating/worsening the problem. Some pain is expected to heal.   Backing off too much will significantly lengthen recovery time. Your tendon needs to be loaded to get circulation and heal.

But make sure it isn’t a tear or something before embarking on a standard tennis elbow rehab protocol...

You may also want to go through the injuries forum, there are several threads about elbow tendinopathy. In general slow eccentric exercises seem to get good results. This protocol is helping me out:

http://drjuliansaunders.com/dodgy-elbows/

I've seen a few protocols that use isometric exercises as well, such as attaching a handle on a sling to a heavy weight and attempting to do a wrist curl, either reverse or normal depending on if it's golfers or tennis (medial or lateral).

Others have had success with using the TheraBand and doing the Tyler twist.

You should feel some pain when doing any exercise, if not you probably need to adjust the angle you're holding the weight, or possibly increase the resistance.

Almost any protocol will take at least four weeks to show results, doing them twice a day for about five days a week.

Edited to add:

Don't stop climbing, back off the intensity some, avoid campusing and some hard bouldering moves that cause sharp pain. You should also avoid NSAID's if possible.

Scott Smith wrote:

      This is the way.

Hey Pat, do you go to a gym in salt lake? I'm not a medical expert but if you go to the one of the Front gyms this weekend I could help you pick out the exercises that are doing what you need

I use a four-pound sledge hammer (which I happened to have in the tool box) and do the rotation exercise found in the dodgy elbows protocol.  I have the flexbar thingy as well, but I just find the hammer easier to use as I'm watching the news.  I also do wrist curls and reverse wrist curls with a light (5lb.) dumb-bell, but not as often.

Black diamond has some excellent resources for this from their in-house PT. Google it (sorry, on mobile)

Push-ups and dips have always held it at bay for me. 

How’s your shoulder mobility for overhead movement? I kept on having repeat golfers elbow until I learned to fully engage my scapula with overhead mobility. Root cause ended up being poor shoulder mobility resulting in excess strain on elbow. I was pulling at a non ideal angle due to my poor overhead mobility  

Theraband, hammer, push-ups, dips helped recover; but it wasn’t until I improved my overhead movement that it stopped for more than a few months. 

Thanks for the advice everyone! Lots of stuff here but I will try to boil it all down and figure something out!

helped me:

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/phys-ed-an-easy-fix-for-tennis-elbow/

Also I would highly suggest climb injury free by Dr. Jared Vagy. Here’s the link.

https://www.rockandsnow.com/93715/climb-injury-free/

Tons of good stuff for elbows and everything else. 

What worked best for me for climbers elbow was hold a frying pan at 10 o’clock over the edge of a table and slowly lowering it all the way down, then using other hand to bring it back to the starting position. Covered in the “dodgy elbows” climbing video I think. Google it. Typical 6-8 reps per set times 3 sets a day. It’s supposed to hurt a bit at first but will get better over time!

I have been dealing with tennis elbow(from climbing) for a little over a year now.  The elbow is ~90% better and I tried all kind of different things(PT, exercises....)  I think the most helpful was climbing PT Esther Smith's advice(she has cheap videos you can buy) to do multiple sets of 5 reps of the Tyler Twist throughout the day, and one set of weighted pronators.  I also think training my shoulder rotator cuff muscle, and doing some scraping of the forearms/elbows/upper arms helped.

I just found this yesterday and haven't watched it yet but it might be of interest to you :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZtv6hHvfPQ

I had a bad case of "tennis elbow" that ended up becoming tendinosis so bad shaking someone's hand or opening a car door would bring tears to my eyes, what's worse it took months to fully recover from; lesson don't let it get that bad. 

The rehab process that really helped me was eccentric loading using dumbbells (reverse wrist curl), just lowering the weight, the key for me was finding the "right" angle for my arm to be in that would elicit the most pain response, until I figured this out I made little progress. If my arm was straight I felt very little, but if my arm was bent to a less than 90 angle while performing the lowering part of a reverse wrist curl, I got the pain response from the exercise I needed to start the repair of the tendon. Try different angles (find the ones that hurt the most), go heavy on the weight, 8 reps max, lower weight slow and controlled and progressively load as it gets stronger.

Today I use the thera-band, finger extensor rubber bands and arm aid regularly as pre-hab. 

Eccentric exercises in forearm, arm aid, scraping  tool and rest

PTR wrote:

I use a four-pound sledge hammer (which I happened to have in the tool box) and do the rotation exercise found in the dodgy elbows protocol.

This!

After trying a number of different things including a lot of physio, this improved my symptoms almost immediately and completely got rid of them within two weeks. I did have to play with the angle of my elbow to target where I was effected. I found having my elbow at 180 degrees flat on a table with my hand off the edge worked best for me.

I use a dumbbell where you can remove one of the weights, but have definitely used a mini-sledge borrowed from a job site in a pinch when travelling for work.  

I tried the dumbbells and the cast iron skillet.  Mini sledge just worked out better for me because I use the weights and skillet for other stuff more often than the sledge.  And, yes, finding the right elbow angle was the key piece of advice.  For me that is a quite flexed position, like 45 degrees.  I also stay away from regular bicep curls. Hammer curls only.

I'm going to go in a different direction and recommend you try deep massage and also start paying attention to your sleep position. After climbing, massage the living hell out of all the muscles in your arm especially those in the forearm. If it isn't bringing tears to your eyes or causing you to gasp its not hard enough. A Theragun works super well but the Armaid is also an option. Theoretically you could just use your other hand or those little pressure release devices like the wave tool but nothing beats power tools IMO. The idea is you want to get tight muscles to relax allowing your connective tissue to recover.

Also, make sure you are sleeping with straight elbows (extended), you could even go as far as to use a brace to force your arms straight. The idea here is if you have a tight bend at the elbow it reduces blood flow.

These things made a huge difference for me after years of marginal improvement trying all the eccentric exercises. Probably, the best treatment would be the above PLUS the eccentric exercises but not many people would actually keep up with that much rehab work.

I tried everything... Suffered for two years. For me these three things did the trick:
1) Take the thumb of your opposite hand, find the pain point of your tendon and massage away - hard! Make it burn!

2) push ups every other day - especially if you're doing pull ups that day

3) (Go ahead - flame away). Collagen supplements - I use the Physivantage stuff. 

Pain free since.  Not sure if it's one or all three that did it but I ain't quittin' any of 'em.

Armwrestlers- at least many of them, swear by the JM press which is basically half a push-up and half a skull-crusher. Should allow blood to pool in the elbows, and as we all know blood is required for healing. 

Hope that helps! 

D T wrote:

Armwrestlers- at least many of them, swear by the JM press which is basically half a push-up and half a skull-crusher. Should allow blood to pool in the elbows, and as we all know blood is required for healing. 

Hope that helps! 

That's very interesting, actually. Thanks