Elbow injuries in gymnastics - any advice? Would appreciate it sooo much!

[Katharina Huemer]

Hello!

I have been to several doctors, but no one has an answer to my strange problem and all of them sent me away saying "rest 3-5 weeks and then start training slowly and carefully."

So I first felt the pain a year ago. After doing chin-ups and pull-ups, I felt a light sharp pain on the inside of my upper right arm, somewhere near the bone but it was not too bad.

After some weeks I experienced the same in the other arm. After some rest it came again in the right one, but this time it didn't get better. With each training session it got worse, a pulling pain radiating down my arm. I had the feeling that it originated from the inner elbow, radiating down the forearm and up to my biceps. It got especially bad when I supported myself on the bars, did handstand snapdowns (overstretch the shoulders) and felt very uncomfortable at walkovers.

So there was this sharp pain like small needles in the biceps, a pulling and tearing pain in the whole arm and an uncomfortable, pushing-like dull pain on the inner side of my elbow.

When supinating it got worse, and when I bent my arm I got very sharp, unbearable pain in my bicep.

Extending the arm was ok, there was no swelling, bruising, tingling, loss of strength or numbness and it didn't got worse when touching it.

I stopped training for 10 weeks, doing some light work every now and then.

I started training 2 months ago and the light sharp pain is there again.

Not always, it kind of flares up, giving me small pain in my upper arm and sometimes the dull pain on the inner side of my elbow flares up.

Has anybody got an idea what it could be?

I really hope someone has any advice, I am totally sad, angry and desperate because I can't improve sine last year and gymnastics is my biggest hobby and even job! (I study sports here in Austria!)

[DiTi]

i did some searching on this subject here is what i found:

http://www.coreperformance.com/knowledge/injury-pain/the-complete-guide-to-torn-biceps.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS3aa69-3Jg

i hope this helps

 

can u give me some more information about ur pain 

and do u feel it when ur arm is straight or only when u bend it

and do u do any warm up before pull ups becasue if ur a beginer pull ups can be a hard exercise for ur muscles so its better to get the blood flow in the muscle before u train them

[Daniel Burnham]

I would say that you need to find a physical therapist and someone to do manual therapy on it. Seems you have a chronic injury from not taking time off when you first got the pain.

Try visiting a non-operative orthopedist first and see if they have any advice or prescription for therapy.

For any real answer you need to get someone to do some imaging for tears

[Katharina Huemer]

i did some searching on this subject here is what i found:

http://www.coreperformance.com/knowledge/injury-pain/the-complete-guide-to-torn-biceps.html

i hope this helps

 

can u give me some more information about ur pain 

and do u feel it when ur arm is straight or only when u bend it

and do u do any warm up before pull ups becasue if ur a beginer pull ups can be a hard exercise for ur muscles so its better to get the blood flow in the muscle before u train them

Yes we always warm up in training. And it developed gradually, so after 20 minutes it got worse and at the end of training it hurt so much I even felt sick. It has always hurt during training, like this pulling pain through the arm, but bending the arm made it worse, straightening didn't.

[Jake Lawrance]

Despite some claims of a bicep tear, I doubt it would be that as it would definitely look deformed, my Dad has a tear along the long head tendon and his arm looks completely ruined. Never got it fixed either to mention 

 

The tendons are very very tough and are most likely only torn from great forces with minimal warm - up. My Dads bicep tear was from throwing a football as a goalkeeper, didn't warm up (winter too)  and wham.

 

Your injury sounds more on the lines of overuse. Maybe the all too common tendinitis. <-- Don't take my word for it.

 

But don't ask for solid tips here, injuries are for the professionals. If you love training you'll be willing to spend money to see a decent physio or practitioner. Forget the doctors, you know, I know and we all know they'll say the same thing 

 

Good luck. 

[Mikkel Ravn]

The pain on the inside of your elbow sounds very much like medial epicondylitis, aka. golfer's elbow. This is a very common injury in conjunction with pulling work, and it can seriously hurt like a *****, and the pain can also radiate outwards. Try massaging your scalp with your fingertips as if you were washing your hair. If it is golfer's elbow, this should make you feel pain.

When you've had it for as long as you describe, it has almost certainly gone chronic. Chronic means that the tissue has been altered by your injury, to the extent that it is weaker than before, and riddled with scar tissue. The solution to this sounds counterintuitive, bit it is to induce inflammation. Inflammation swells the injured spot, and initiates the repair processes necessary to revert the damage done. Because tendons heal very slowly compared to muscle, this proces takes a long time - six to eighteen months is not unlikely in bad cases. I experienced golfer's elbow, where the tendon was suddenly injured (too much OAC training too soon). I rested for two months and spent 9-12 months recovering back to my full strength, and I always get a reminder in my elbow if I'm progressing too fast on an exercise - the injury will never fully disappear.

Anyway, how do you induce inflammation, and how much? First of all, rest until there is almost no pain in everyday use, this ensures that there is no acute injury. Then you slowly introduce exercises that elicits a pain response during or after the exercise. Here comes the important bit. On a scale of ten, you must not experience more pain than a one or two. If your injury gave intense pain, these rehab exercises should only produce a very dull, faint pain. A bit of soreness afterward is great, 'Ouch' is a no go. As time goes by the exercise will cease to produce pain. Then you increase the intensity a tiny bit by increasing weight or picking a harder exercise, so that you're back to one or two on the pain scale. Proceed this way until you are back at your former strength level. This WILL take a long time, and you are at no time, under no circumstances, allowed to feel pain greater than what I described.

[Coach Sommer]

The issue is simple; you keep trying to train strength elements that are too advanced for your elbows.

My advice is to Stop. Reset. And begin from the beginning and this time follow the correct progressions and programming.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Randeep Walia]

Coach: I would not normally think of pull ups and chin ups as too advanced as the OP has indicated. What are the right progressions one should follow before starting those movements

[Coach Sommer]

They appear to not be too advanced; however his elbows disagree.

Foundation is the progression I recommend for preparing the entire body; elbows included.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Afiya Zia]

Rows before pull-ups, and bicep and forearm flexibility wouldn't hurt. Try doing dumbbell pronations to supinations with your Tv remote, and progressing from there. That exercise is magic.