UKC

I've been suffering with the curse of golfer elbow for about 8 months now. After many stop start approaches to rehab and bunging over £200 down useless physios (one of which was pointing lasers at it!) I am now committed to the routine of hard eccentric exercises in order to provoke healing in the tendon. After reading Dave McLeod's brilliant book Make Or Break, and hearing his own stories of golfers elbow, this approach appears to be pretty reliable.

I was wandering if there are any other climbers who have had a bad case of golfer elbow and have had success with the eccentric program? It feels so anti-intuitive to make the elbow hurt in order for it to get better.

I am meeting a lot of people these days with this issue but haven't heard of many recoveries. I'm hoping there are many success stories out there.

Thanks

Jules

In reply to Julesthe1st:

It worked for me. 100%. Stick with it, and then (this is the key) keep doing it after you feel like you've recovered.

That's good to know. I'm guessing it takes a while. I am going to stick with it. No pain no gain, as they say.

In reply to Julesthe1st:
I used 1 of these which certainly helped. http://www.thera-band.com/store/products.php?ProductID=20

In reply to Julesthe1st:

I think it's fairly frequent that correct physical therapy for rehabilitation of many kinds of injuries is definitely painful.

By the way, the evidence for Eccentric-only exercise working best for golfer's elbow rehab is not definitive (as MacLeod mentions in another part of his book). Some other authorities recommend Concentric-contraction exercise -- which as normally performed also includes one Eccentric contraction for each repetition. So unless you believe that Concentric contraction is actually bad for your rehab, could get "two contractions for the time expenditure of one".

One authority recommeds to start with Isometric (I guess for maximum control against unintended peak forces), then work to Eccentric, then to Concentric (which includes Eccentric).

Ken

Yes I got myself a Flexbar and am putting it to good use. I guess time will tell if I need to mix up the exercises to include concentric / isometrics etc. Cheers

In reply to Julesthe1st:

I had this problem last year, and completely stopped my climbing. Went to a good physio, got simple exercises, including forearm stretches, and the use of light weights,and most importantly rested for a considerable amount of time. As other have said continue with the exercises after to think you are cured.

This was worked for me, with no occurrence whatsoever.

In reply to Julesthe1st:

Theres a crucial balance between doing just enough but not not doing to much were you end up making it worse,that takes a bit of learning,as the other guy says you need to do it weekly for the rest of your climbing days,and stop crimping but it does work.it also helps if your under thirty.

Thanks. I hope I'm in the position to have to keep doing the exercises despite being healed. That seems a long way off at the moment. And spring is on the doorstep too. Time to re-evaluate my goals for the summer. But optimism must prevail.

In reply to Julesthe1st:

Wouldn't say I had a truly bad case, but I got elbow tendonosis in my first year or so as a climber, and the eccentric exercises fixed it like magic (in my case, the pronator exercises with a sledgehammer were especially useful -- obviously YMMV, depending on exactly what's affected).

Nowadays, I generally don't have any problems (and don't even do the exercises as maintenance), but if I'm doing a lot of training of pull-ups, for example, I'll sometimes get twinges, in which case exactly the same exercises will sort them out again.

Good luck, and I hope your elbows recover as well as mine have!

In reply to slab_happy:

i had golfers elbow for 2 years
in the end i had surgury.
they only give a 60-70 % chance
of this working .for me it worked
well had to take 6 weeks of work
tho . but now its 100%
i never paid a penny .

In reply to kwaidy:








Can you elaborate more on what the surgery entailed?

In reply to John Cooke:

I had this too, look up "Medial Epicondylitis Release". For me this worked 100% after nothing else had. 3 months and back to climbing.

In reply to Julesthe1st:

no pain no gain when it comes to rehab. The most painful point of my tennis elbow (and some slight golfers - self-diagnosed by moderate pain around the inside bony bit) was just before it got better dramatically.

I had tennis elbow for about a year, most of which it was around 6 or 7/10 on the pain scale pretty much all the time (pretty fkin painful!) and after really knuckling down and doing eccentric exercises + INTENSE massage (actually caused bruising the first time) with an armaid and the TE was gone in about 6 weeks of starting that.

In reply to Julesthe1st:

I had golfer's elbow for about 9 years. I saw a physio and tried the exercises but didn't do anything. After 4 years off and then six months climbing it came back and so I went to a different physio. It turned out it wasn't golfer's elbow at all. It was an ulna nerve problem. The tenderness and soreness is in exactly the same spot as golfer's elbow and I've since found out that unla nerve problems are very common amongst climbers. The exercises for this are completely different than for golfer's elbow (stretching and for me overhead press).

So I'd just say make sure you've got the right diagnosis first. Professional physios can still get things wrong and if you've got the wrong diagnosis then doing the wrong set of exercises is never going to help.

In reply to stp:

^ what this guy said. Misdiagnosis of climbing related overuse injuries must be rife. I suspect alot of the time when people aren't having any luck with the proscribed rehab exercises, it's because they actually have a different condition.

In reply to Julesthe1st:

I had serious problem with my elbows about 6 years ago. I don't think the exercises helped me greatly as I wasn't as conscientious as I should have been. What seemed to help was completely stopping climbing for a few months, then easing back very slowly (over a year or two). I now train 5 days a week, with barely any problems. However, I do structure my climbing so that I have an easy week every 3-4 weeks and I write everything down, so that I can make sure I'm not over training. I never had a satisfactory diagnosis, so I don't categorically know if what I had was golfers' elbow. But for me the building up the climbing very gradually was probably the key. I really was meticulous as I made sure that each week was only ever so marginally more than the week before.

Tony

In reply to Julesthe1st:

Try everything else first, if all else fails.......

I first developed Golfer's Elbow - Medial Epicondylitis in 1997, (right elbow). Very sudden onset, no warning and went from very strong, to not carrying a briefcase in about a week! after a couple of years of failed treatments ranging from physiotherapy, through to acupuncture and ultimately Cortisone (which worked like a miracle for six months or so, then stopped) I opted for surgery. At this point when I woke up in the morning my arm would be locked across my chest and I would have to use my other arm to get it going, which would take about 40 minutes! It was very painful.

In the procedure the Epicondylite was shaved down as it had grown into a pronounced fin and punctured some connective tissue, and a number of old tears in the muscle/tendon junction were debraded and stitched up. It took about six months to get back to serious activity. But for me it was a great outcome.

I ended up having a very similar procedure on my left elbow about twelve years later. Same outcome.

I have not had any problems with my elbows since and I'm pretty active. My understanding is that the success rate for the operation is high (higher than the 60/70% kwiady mentions) but that could have changed since my procedures.

Good luck,

Steve

Hmmm, some interesting stories. This came on very quick for me too. I had no problems with either elbow before (seems such a long time ago now).

Action plan....
REST
REHAB
MORE REST
MORE REHAB
If no improvement....
FIND OUT ABOUT GETTING THE OP

I might actually be pulling on rock in 2016.

Cheers

Jules

In reply to Julesthe1st:

I had this problem after working a really hard sport route with Ian at Cave Crag, Dunkeld.
Should have known better, don't play with the big lads. Had acupuncture after seeing several physio's and a s--t load of pain. No more pain. Magic.

In reply to Julesthe1st:
Yeah the eccentric exercises worked for me but took about 10 weeks doing them twice a day on non climbing days so you do need persistence and patience! I also did the rotation exercises with a top heavy dumbbell as well at the same time. Good luck.

In reply to Julesthe1st:

Concentric weight wiggles (as shown by Dutch? Climber with broom handle) worked miracles for me. Went from not being able to tie shoe laces without serious wincing to climbing in a few weeks. Flares up occasionally but a little rehab sorts it back out.

For me, still climbing but easy I think was helpful versus total rest.

I also had an amazing experience with acupuncture but have tried it since for various things with zero success. So a total anomaly but an incredible one

In reply to Julesthe1st:

I summered from this a couple of years ago and I did the usual eccentrics rehab and Flexbar therapy. This coincided with some other injuries I'd picked up and this, combined with a very busy period at work, meant my climbing hours per week plummeted for several months. As a consequence of all or some of the above, it seems to have fixed the problem. *touch wood*