Elbow pain after ring workout

[wingspan]

Guys. I've been experiencing some pain in my inner elbow, no mind blanking pain just a bit sore.

I'm not entirely sure if its a muscular pain or tendon pain as the pain close to the insert at my elbow in my forearm. I've been treating it like a trigger point and massaging it and icing as well. It's still sore after a couple of weeks so I've decide to take a week off training. I have some friend visiting so we'll be down the beach and swimming and kicking a ball about and stuff so that will keep me active for the week, then I'll ease back into training and see how it goes.

does this seem like a sensible approach or is there anything else I should be doing?

Cheers in advance for any advice.

[Joshua Naterman]

It sounds exactly like what I am dealing with. You're not taking enough time to develop basic straight arm strength before trying harder stuff. Work on achieving the advanced frog a lot. No other planche training. If tuck BL isn't bothering you keep that up, but you may find you need to lay off of that for a month or two and slowly work into it. Take your time and build up your elbows, It's making my elbows feel incredible. They aren't perfect, but they don't hurt when I curl anymore, and I'm almost doing perfect advanced frog. Still a month away or so at least, but I am so close! It's easy, of course, but it is so worth it. Believe it or not you'll still be building strength for the tuck planche. I don't even work on it and I can hold it for a good 10 seconds on the floor. My elbows aren't ready for that, so I don't do it, but by the time my elbows are ready I'll be doing 20 second sets just like I am with the adv. frog! Outside of proper prehab, moist heat and nerve gliding work will help a lot. I forget where it is now, just search the forum for "nerve glide" and you should be able to find the link. They are helping me, perhaps they will help you too!

[wingspan]

Nice one Slizzard.

I'm trying to be patient. I'll be moving to a new house soon where I'll have more room to train and I'll be able to do ring supports without bashing into the door frame, so I'll be doing plenty of this for elbow conditioning. I've dropped Planche training for now till my back lever is stronger.

I'll look up nerve gliding. That's a new one on me.

[Joshua Naterman]

It was new to me before about 6 months ago, I don't think many people know or think about it. Basically, our nerves are like long wires and they can stretch to accomodate our motions. Sometimes they get stuck to muscles, tendons, who knows. This doesn't happen to people who are active throughout all ranges of motion every day, but for most of modern humanity it can be an issue. So, sometimes nerve glides help a lot. They are helping me for sure! I still do lots of prehab and stretching, but the nerve glides are a good addition.

[Coach Sommer]

This is the first time i've actually experienced pain doing any of the gymnastic moves. I know coach says to do the BL with palms down but I think I will just continue to do the movement with palms up or at least parallel this way I can include the BL in my training. I don't know if its worth driving my self nuts trying to figure out why that movement pattern hurts since i've been able to work on all the other FSP and FBE progressions without any pain. Maybe when I get further along on the other progressions I will revisit palms down.

Your biceps tendon is not yet ready for BL training. Attempting to avoid this issue by training the BL w/ a palms-up grip is only going to delay the inevitable and will probably lead to an unnecessary elbow injury down the road. It will also effectively curtail your progressing onward to more advanced ring strength elements in the future.

Blair's advice of first strengthening the biceps tendon by focusing more extensively on the basics (e.g. inverted hangs, german hangs, support holds) prior to returning to BL work is exactly right.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Philip Papandrea]

Thanks Coach. I will give this a try. I guess i just thought there was some merit in continuing to do it palms up but I guess not. I will start from the beggining and build up again.