Elbow Pain From Pullups?

Hello,

 

My wife used to do a lot of pullups and never had a problem. She stopped doing them for a couple of years and recently started back up again and now she's getting elbow pain during pullups. It doesn't hurt when she's not doing pullups and I don't think it's overuse either because the volume is much lower than it used to be.

 

Is there anything to be done for that? I've heard that as people get older this kind of thing is more common but I have trouble accepting that older = no pullups. Is there some kind of joint prep or rehab/prehab that would be beneficial?

 

Thanks.

Arm curls and stretching the forearms. She may just need to switch to neutral grip, I notice that my girlfriend has issues with chin ups (as an example... her elbow catches and hurts at around 90 degrees) so we don't practice those right now. Neutral grip causes her zero problems... go figure!

 

For the arm curls, you want pronated, neutral, and supinated grips.

 

For the stretches, you want straight arm pronation and supination. This could be on the ground, like Coach's stretches, or standing with just your arms. Holding each one for several minutes will probably give her the adaptation she needs... it is likely that some of her muscles have shortened, and this will make them lengthen back out. I'm doing this for my right arm.

Thanks for the tips!

 

I'll have to do a bit of googling to find the stretches you mentioned, is there a good place to find them?

 

For the arm curls, do you mean like with dumbells?

 

I'll try to learn them myself first and then show my wife. I've found it works out better that way for her.

Yes, dumbbells.

Could you describe the straight arm stretches you mentioned?

 

I didn't want to have to be spoon fed everything but I looked around a bit and wasn't able to find it.

 

Thanks.

No, but they will be on a video soon

 

I haven't seen things done the way I do them, I had to make my modifications back in late 2002 because the standard stretch just didn't do what I needed it to do during physical therapy.

Ok, thanks.

 

Looking forward to the video.