UKC

Hello,

I am back to bouldering regularly, Including lots of indoor 'power accumulation.'

Unfortunately, I'm experiencing a new type of niggle that I want to nip in the bud as my training philosophy is now firmly DFYU. 

I'm feeling a bit of elbow discomfort and occasional pain, on the medial side at the joint. 

Has anyone got some good tips for staving off this sort of injury? 

Thanks all,

BB,

Loving being older....

In reply to bouldery bits:

I've recently experienced the same... diagnosed myself with medial epicondylitis (golfers elbow). There's some good info on some old threads on ukc if you search for golfers elbow. I've also been doing the exercises in this video.

youtube.com/watch?v=e1paaLpSeR4&

I haven't tested it in anger at the wall yet, but I'm not getting pain on minor exertion (such as pulling doors closed) like I was a few weeks ago, and I've done some very light pull up work (assisted) and no pain notable. I view that as progress!

Let me know if you find any other good info, as I'm still trying to figure out what's best.

In reply to bouldery bits:

I've had various episodes of Tennis and golfers elbow over time.

When doing the "hammer"/weighted stick exercise, try adjusting the angle of your elbow. For me having the elbow near closed at a more acute angle worked into the sore/sweet spot better than a more open angle. Eccentric stretching exercises are the way forward to my mind.

Also had some joy  with an armaid to release tension/trigger points in forearm. As the muscles relax and lengthen it eased  pressure on afflicted tendons. Seemingly provided both immediate relief and worked as remedial prehab once golfers elbow cleared up.

Other people I know, seem to not have got on with armaid at all, so perhaps try before you buy? Good luck with it. Perseverance is key. The exercises did cause a degree of discomfort before benefits achieved.

Aging sucks when you're into anything sporty... I've found downwardly adjusting expectations of defined success helpful! 😁

In reply to bouldery bits:

I've suffered a lot with Tennis and Golfer's Elbow after the past few years, which is what your symptoms suggest you have. It's always worse for me after I ramp up the training after a break from climbing, even if I've only had a week off for a holiday. The three things that have worked well for me and helped me manage the pain (and reduce the number of occurrences) are:

1. Progressively ramp up the intensity of training over a period of weeks to get your body used to pulling hard again.
2. Always warm up thoroughly. Include lots of upper body mobility work and progressively harder hangs on the fingerboard. I start with 3 x 3:7 repeaters, then 3 x 5:5 repeaters, then 3 x 7:3 repeaters to get my fingers and elbow really going.
3. Buy a Theraband Bar and do twisting exercises (good video demonstartaing this on a UKC article) several times a week. 

Provided I stick to the above, it's rare now for me to get episodes of Tennis Elbow and even rare to get instances that stop me climbing at my limit.

Hope that helps!  

In reply to bouldery bits:

The stretch in this video works for a significant percentage of people struggling with golfer's I think... When I had really bad elbows (probably about a decade ago now) none of the weights or twisty rehab exercises felt like they were doing anything but this stretch felt miraculously effective:
youtube.com/watch?v=XphfEu8y9oY&

In reply to bouldery bits:

Thanks for a the replies.

I'm going to try the hammer twists and the stretch posted by Ram MkiV.

Thank you all! 

In reply to bouldery bits:

The current thought from people who have skin in the game (physios, coaches) seems to be that many of the popularised exercises such as the twisting blocks are ineffective at achieving long-term elbow health because they don't represent a sufficient loading to produce strength improvements. 

The recent spate of opinion tends to lean towards higher intensity isometric loading as the best route to long-term recovery once initial inflammation has subsided after 1-2 weeks of rest and stretching/massage. This isometric loading can be done easily enough by hanging in a neutral grip (palms facing each other) from a bar at a 90 degree elbow angle for 15-20 seconds at a time. Initially this can be assisted by elastic bands if too intense or moved to height offset (one hand lower holding a sling), assisted one arm or simply one arm if strong enough. 

This kind of progressive loading seems to be very effective for rehabiliting tendonitis and building the strength to subsequently avoid it. Annecdotally speaking I've used it myself to good effect.

In terms of massage I've found using a foam roller to be effective when combined with stretching.  

Hope this is useful  

In reply to MischaHY:

Palms facing each other on a bar sounds tricky! 

In reply to bouldery bits:

Lots of people have mentioned that it's golfers elbow. The easy fix I did to my training to stop it coming back was adding in press-ups to my warm up routine 

In reply to bouldery bits:

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/11286354/dodgy-elbows-dr-julian-saun...

This article is the best there is (in my opinion). You need to understand the issues, causes and side effects.

It's a long haul I'm afraid and treating like a muscle will make matters worse (probably)

In reply to MischaHY:

I second this, ISO's are the way forward for elbows. I spent three year trying everything under sun to sort my chronic tennis elbow and it was the humble isometrics that sort it out. 

In reply to MischaHY

Do you have any links/videos regarding this?

In reply to bouldery bits:

I used to get periodic episodes of it in both elbows (golfers/medial epi), but strangely seems to have troubled me less over last few years, despite doing more bouldering (which I thought would make me more prone to it). 

In the past I had some success with internal/external rotation using a TheraBand, and also eccentrics using hammer or dumbell with weight on one end. Plus a bit of self massage.

I have generally done less finger boarding and I tend to spend longer warming over last couple of years (but more bouldering??), both of which might have helped with it not reoccurring. I'm thinking of diving back into a block of more structured training and finger boarding over the winter so will be interesting to see what happens.

Push ups seem to really help also, I think doing them on a regular basis has help balance out my push and pull strength, and generally helped with antagonistics.

Dave Macleod Make or Break book is good for detailed info.

In reply to bouldery bits:
Do you get any pins and needles in your pinky / ring finger? If you do it could be medial nerve compression at the elbow. That won’t respond to the training stated above and it would be best to see a professional 

In reply to David Bennett:

Thank you for that.

Fortunately, nothing noticed in my fingers as yet but I will keep a close eye. 

In reply to bouldery bits:

Similar story to you. Ramped up my training for bouldering a couple of years back and hurt both my elbows. Golfer’s on one side Tennis on the other. Even opening a door handle was painful to start. My physio helped me no end and both are now fine. 

he basis is that tendons like heavy weights with low reps so no matter what weight exercises you are doing if you can do more that 3 sets of 12 it is not heavy enough and if you can’t do 3 set of 8 it is to heavy. Always working witThin a pain threshold of 4 out of 10. He had me continue climbing throughout, within the same pain threshold. If my elbows were really sore the next day then it was an indication that I had climbed to much but you just need to build back up slowly.

My physio had me strengthen the whole sstem. I did the weighted stick exercise as others have mentioned, I did wrist curls in both directions (knuckles up and knuckles down) and also used the weighted stick to strengthen the lateral movement of the wrist (straight arm by you side weight by your thumb and lift/ lower. Repeat with the weight by your little finger and increase the gap as your get stronger), single arm rows ywith a dub bell and press ups with hands close together to target the triceps. Concentrate on making the exercises eccentric, lower the weight slowly essentially.

It not a quick fix but it workes, both are now fine and if they do flare up I just go back to the rehab and it sorts them out. His mantra was to get your condition above your level and keep it there as you progress. Hope that all makes sense. Patients and consistency are the key.

In reply to Big_C1:

What your physio said makes complete sense however if you are having flare ups you need to just continue to treat the root cause (and not the symptoms) and then the elbow problem will not come back…

At the end of last year I had terrible golfers elbow to the point where I wasn’t climbing. I started the elbow rehab but it was slow.

The root cause of my problem was a ground fall earlier in the year resulting in a broken back.  The months spent in a brace meant I came back with a muscle imbalance in my shoulders and arms.

the key for me is to keep working my triceps with narrow press-ups (as you mention above) and I’ve never had an issue since…the continued strengthening of my triceps offsets the increase load I’m placing on my elbows as my strength increases…

In reply to Anoetic:

Thankfully I didn't have as serious a root cause as you, glad you are alright after your fall.

My root cause was that my conditioning was lower than my level. I’d hazard a guess that unless something serious happens like in your case then that’s the root cause for most people. Overtraining on the wall essentially as would seem to be the case in the original post. Muscles stronger than tendons. If my level goes above my conditioning (if I overtrain on the wall/board) then there is a flare up and so the root cause is treated again.

  

In reply to Big_C1:

I followed a Neil gresham training plan coming back and that advocated alternating conditioning/ stretching with climbing so both continually improve….I would definitively recommend….