tendonitis

[grunt11]

It feels like I’m developing tendonitis in my elbows. I’ve read everything I can find on the internet and it seems the best course is to just stop the offending activities and let it heal, and then when restarting do so with low reps and weights. Any specific advice on this is welcome.

My main question is whether I’m better off just stopping my present cycle or finishing out the last 2 weeks doing mostly lower body work which seems unaffected?

I’m inclined to continue on with the lower body work and then SD which should give my arms a solid 3 weeks off from lifting. I can’t really avoid all arm activity since my work can be fairly physical though I can minimize some of what I do without going on light duty, something I wish to avoid.

I’m also assuming that since my tendons are going to be trying to repair themselves that I should continue to eat a little over maintenance even during the SD.

Also are there any suggestions on what I might be able to do to avoid losing any muscle if I do lay off for 3 weeks or longer from most upper body work?

 

[Totentanz]

How severe is it so far? When I had this happening to me back in September, it was the result of heavy arm work, so I dropped all that - no bicep exercises at all, and tricep pushdowns with very light weight for 25 reps or so, once or twice a week. I also had to temporarily drop rowing exercises. I spotted it before it was too bad but it was fairly painful at times doing normal activities. After a couple months, it went away but I still keep away from anything lower than an 8 RM load for arm exercises. I do a lot of work with my arms during the day too which might be why it took me a couple months to heal. I'm not sure how much my situation compares to yours, but I know mine was the result of doing heavy arm work along with experimenting with negatives on arm work.

I agree you will probably want to keep the calories a bit over maintenance. If you aren't already taking fish oil, you'll want to add that in. I took six caps in the morning or at lunch with a meal, and then six more at night. Glucosamine didn't seem to help any, but the fish oil did, and adding in a decent amount of fats into my diet along with that.

I would keep up with the lower body work for now and there is probably some upper body work you could continue doing. Does it mostly hurt when you bend the elbow such as in rowing, curls, chins? I was able to continue benching during my situation, for example, so maybe you could experiment with some lighter loads and see what you can do still. But it would probably best to just leave it alone. I don't know if I would recommend the high rep work that I did for mine, I'm not really sure whether it helped or not with me, but you could try it if you think it would help. I just did nice medium tempo reps, not fast, not super slow, to get a good lactic acid buildup in the area. But again, no idea if that helped me or if it would help you. I just did it because I thought it was worth a shot.

Edit: And if you didn't already see what I was talking about in the iso's during 5s thread, you might consider keeping anything that stresses the elbows a lot in a higher rep range and just doing them myoreps style. Either that or get stronger slower so your joints can keep up, heh. No seriously though, keeping my arm work in a lighter load range and doing them myoreps style seems to be working really well for me, and I think it would probably work well for you too once you get your elbows healed up, especially since you are already familiar with myoreps anyway.

 

[grunt11]

How severe is it so far?

That’s hard for me to gauge since I’ve never had it before. So far it hasn’t affected my workouts like the carpel tunnel from using the mouse did, but it is bad enough that I can feel some pain when I’m just sitting around not even moving my arms. I also started waking up feeling it in my right arm in the morning.

Does it mostly hurt when you bend the elbow such as in rowing, curls, chins?

The Chins, Rows and Curls going from most to least painful. I’m also starting to feel it a little with Incline bench and Shoulder presses but not with Dips so far, and I haven’t tried Flat or Decline Bench. However, like I said it’s not so painful that if prevents me from getting all my reps done.

I agree you will probably want to keep the calories a bit over maintenance. If you aren't already taking fish oil, you'll want to add that in. I took six caps in the morning or at lunch with a meal, and then six more at night. Glucosamine didn't seem to help any, but the fish oil did, and adding in a decent amount of fats into my diet along with that.

I am taking fish oil but only 3 caps a day so I can up that very easily since I bought a bunch on sale awhile back. I was also already planning to get some peanut butter when I went shopping to tonight to add to my shakes since I’ve stagnated at 166 lbs. and need more calories in my diet. Any other fats besides fish oils you would recommend?

I was wondering about the high rep stuff. Most of what I’ve been reading says to keep the reps down since it repetitive movement that causes it. The only arm Iso I’ve been doing is Biceps Curls but like I mentioned I feel that less than the Chins.

I’m probably going to skip tomorrow’s upper body workout and may try doing something like Dips on Monday which don’t seem to aggravate it. If that or other movements seem ok I might continue doing them at a lower maintenance volume. I’d hate to stop all chest and arm work but then I’d also rather deal with this now rather than have it become chronic.

 

[TunnelRat]

Tendonitis can be fairly serious, and often takes a very long time to heal. It might be worth a trip to your friendly neighborhood veterinarian for a checkup.

 

[grunt11]

Yeah TR I considered it but sort of want to avoid that. He’s already royally pissed off at me for gaining 26 lbs. in 26 weeks even though the physical I just had showed I’m in just as good shape as when I was running insane amounts about half a year ago. He said it’s more natural for me to weigh 140-150 lbs. To which I responded yeah, when I’m running 70-100 miles a week it is, how “natural” is that. He like so many doctors seems to think that weight training is somehow unnatural never mind that it’s gotten rid of all the back and leg pain I’ve suffered from for years because of a ruptured lumbar disk.

I’m looking at this like so many of the ailments/injures I’ve had over the years that all the doctor can do right now is say yep you got (fill in whatever you already knew you had) so you need to (fill in whatever you already knew you need to do) to get rid of it.

I will go to the doc if it doesn’t start getting better on its.

 

[BMeyer]

Tendonitis? Dude, you don't want to mess around with that. As for diet, I've heard that lots of fruits and veggies are good because the fiber helps keep swelling down by making sure your body is regularly flushing itself out. Plus all of the enzymes and vitamins in fruits/veggies are always good for you. Salt should be avoided because you retain more water, which doesn't help with the swelling. I see you've already tried glucosamine so I won't recommend that. I've heard that pineapple can be good for tendonitis because it has enzymes that break down injured tissue, but I couldn't say for certain if that's true.

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From fish oil to mesogold, I'll try just about any supplement.