Elbow and wrist pain/issues

I have no idea how to start this. I have been a member of GST for I don't know how long but still haven't passed foundation 1. I go for a while and make some progress, but I am having some serious issues with my wrists and my elbows. In the stretch series there is a movement you put your arms behind you straight and stretch the shoulders. The limiting factor is my elbows. My wrists I can't even lean on them to stretch them in the handstand stretch series. I feel like I am actually getting no-where, and fatter.

I would love some kind of insight on severe elbow tenderness, it is mainly on the inside of the elbow across the joint at the tendons. The wrists are both sides of the hand. For the palm facing up with the back of your hand on the ground stretch, I can barely put any weight on it to stretch.

Any advice or direction would be great. 

For wrist pain I have had success with wrist decompression, and not doing aggravating exercises. Push-up handles or parallettes are great . 

Consistensy over intensity has really helped me get over many injuries.

Perhaps get some professional medical advice.

Hi Johan,

The only sound advice that we can give you is to rest from all exercise that aggravates your injuries and to seek the opinion of a medical professional. If you search these forums you will find that we never give advice to exercise through pain and we also don't try and diagnose injuries from behind a keyboard. If you are serious about fixing your issues then consult an expert, it is only through an in-person diagnosis that you will be able to have your injury correctly assessed and the appropriate rehabilitation outlined.  

Hi all. I wanted to reply to this with an update.

I went to the doctor, had some x-rays and all came back negative, so no issues with those. She suggested that I have a lot of inflammation in my wrists, I am going to get a second opinion because I have had it on and off for a while, but only lately more, but I have been training less, so much so that I don't do any of the movements that involve me putting pressure on my hands when my wrists are bent.

Any thoughts on a next move? 

Hi @Bret Kennedy,

Its good to hear that it's nothing serious. I would avoid anything that will cause inflammation in the wrists and take time to rest. If you don't have Fundamentals Course, I would suggest you to get it. Fundamentals Course will help you train at a certain pace while allowing your body to get used to the movements. Also consider getting the Thrive Nutrition Course as it will help you with your weight management. I hope this helps.

Great suggestions from Darin and Leo, Bret.

I have had great success helping to rehabilitate injured strikers wrists (professional UFC fighters), by simply doing the simplest wall variations of the Handstand One course wrist series daily. Doing these simplest and lightest exercises (light as in leverage), should definitely help your wrists to get stronger if you have no pre-existing medical condition. (You will find these exercises and exercise descriptions in the GB Handstand One course).

Your elbow pain could also be related to weakness or excessive hyperextension, or even be related to your wrists, and believe it or not even a lack of lat mobility.

My recommendation as an exercise to help you strengthen and recover from your elbow ache would be simply to ... chin hang [fund in Foundations] (if it does not aggravate your elbows).

@Luke Searra I just looked through the exercises. Are you saying to use the chin hang form Rope climb ? I will give the lighter option of the wrist series a go and see if that helps to reduce pain and strengthen the wrists. 

Thanks again everyone for you assistance. 

 

bret

I'll use this thread for a quick issue of mine.

I have no history of elbow/shoulder problems, but yesterday I recognized shoulder and elbow (joint) pain in my right arm during certain movements which is still there today. I've had a Core + Lower Body + Front Split workout yesterday before and didn't recognize any pain whatsoever during training.

As I don't engage in any other sportive activities at the moment, I have to "blame" those issues on any of my GST activities. I guess the only GST elements which could provoke this elbow/shoulder pain are the TBS and the Upper Body workout (all PE1 at the moment). My guess would be that especially the Supine Shoulder Extension and the Shoulder Extension Walks caused my joint pain.

I'll just rest until the pain is gone, but it would be nice if somebody could provide any help/information on what movement (especially what mistakes in training) must have provoked these issues for me. I try to be careful during all of GST and especially the stretching and I never trained through pain. I'm encountering some issues like that at the moment beginning GST and want to make sure to do it right;)

 

One last minor injury-related thing: As a long time (low-level) basketball player I've got a history of smaller finger injuries, mainly ruptures of the finger capsule. After one of my H1 workouts I felt some pain in my right hand, especially on the finger joints of my index finger (I think it's the extensor tendon or the collateral ligament, looking on anatomy pictures). I've actually been to my orthopedist because of an older issue and asked him to look at my hand, he tested several finger stretches and said it's probably a muscular overload problem, nothing severe. It's two or three weeks from then and this finger pain is still there (especially when touching stuff/applying force, for example when typing on the laptop). I mean it's nothing super-severe, but it's not normal either and I don't feel comfortable doing the wrist exercises of H1 with this hand. Any idea what that might be?

Sorry for the wall of text, just trying to make sure to train safe and these injury-type issues are a little confusing as I'm really going slowly with all of GST.