Understanding Elbow Pain


Oct 16, 2020

 by Karina Wait
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Have you been suffering from annoying elbow pain? Read below to learn how to fix it.

Doing any sort of exercise will make you sore, especially if it's something new. Furthermore, injuries can occur- no matter the sport or exercise. There is an inherent risk in any physical endeavor you undertake. These words hold true for CrossFit. Nevertheless, it's not expected or okay that you should or will get hurt. But, with the combined responsibility of your coaches and you as an athlete, you can mitigate the risks. To do this, it's done through proper programming and you being aware of how you're feeling and telling the coaches of anything bothering you.


Now it's time to talk about injuries. Injuries fall into two main categories:

  1. Acute – scrape your shin doing box jumps? Trip over a barbell? These are examples of acute injuries – the symptoms are immediate and they hurt right away.
  2. Chronic – Knees always ache? Are shoulders constantly stiff? Are elbows tender? These are examples of chronic, or ‘overuse,’ injuries – they are characterized by pain that develops over time.

This blog will be covering chronic elbow pain. These injuries occur over time and eventually, the pain becomes too unbearable and interferes with daily living.
Elbow tendonitis means your tendons are inflamed. There are different grades of tendonitis but essentially, this injury occurs because the elbow tendons aren't to recover from the amount of stress put on them and over time, repairing the tendon takes longer. Keep that in mind when you're repping out those pull-ups. Tendons take longer to recover and repair than muscles.

How do these injuries occur?

  1. Pulling with the arms too early in the clean or snatch. When you do this, you take the bulk of the lifting off of your legs and put the strain on your arms. On top of that, when you pull with the arms, there is often a rapid re-straightening (a heavy eccentric load/tear) of them as the bar passes the hips and when it doesn't occur, the arms are supporting a heavy load longer.
  2. Using the elbows to control a rapid descent from the top of a pull-up, muscle-up, or from lowering the barbell from the shoulders rather than relying on the shoulders.
  3. Slowing your descent too much from a pull-up, muscle-up, or barbell coming from shoulder height. Show control on the way down through an active shoulder complex.
  4. Doing more than what your body and training is ready for.
  5. DOING TOO MUCH

Numbers 1-3 are things that coaches can help with from a coaching technique standpoint. Number 4 is one that is controlled through programming and progressions. Number 5 is controlled through very deliberate programming –It's a very systematic and strategic way to control your progress in a manageable fashion and is one that favors long-term results, not shortcuts. Your body needs time to adjust to greater intensities and higher loads across all movements. This even occurs when achieving a new skill. Yes, you want to show off but, many lose sight of the long-term goal: maintaining health and fitness.
Be patient and trust your coaches.
Volume (more reps, more sets) is earned after intensity.
Intensity (doing more work in less time) is earned after consistency.
Consistency (does rep 100 look as good as rep 1?) is earned after basic mechanics (how good is your air squat technique vs your 1rm squat?).

How to treat these injuries

Step 1 – Rest: Rest the injured area for at least two weeks. But if you've been working out through a good amount of pain, you probably need to double that and give the problematic area at least four weeks. Don’t fret, there is still plenty you can do!
Step 2 – Build Static Strength:  Static meaning no movement. This gives your tendons a chance to catch up in strength to your muscles. It also allows for the development of the small intrinsic muscles that are responsible for stability. Since we are talking about elbow injuries, we’re looking at holds and carries. Think farmers carry, waiters walks, single and double arm carries, holds on the pull-up bar, scapular pull-ups, etc. These are things that you can do every day, squeezed into your warm-ups, in between sets of weightlifting movements, or as part of your cool-down. As with anything, you want to start with something that is easy – not just from a weight standpoint, but also a time domain. Over time, you can increase the duration of movement and loading.

Step 3 – Build Dynamic Strength: Dynamic meaning movement. This is where you’ll start to rebuild the correct movement patterning for your body, so take time to move correctly – make sure that your good reps far outweigh any bad reps you may perform. Strict pull-ups, push-ups, strict dips (start with parallel bars, not rings) are a few options. Change your grip between supinated (palms facing you) and pronated (palms facing away) to insert some variety and give your tendons different workloads. I would also recommend staying away from kipping movements for at least another 3-5 weeks after you have resumed normal movement. If the form isn't there, refer back to why these injuries happen. Poor form over long periods can lead to injury.
Step 4 – Rehab and mobility:  When something is injured, scar tissue forms as part of the healing process. When you begin to reintroduce movement, there will be pain as the scar tissue breaks apart but this is normal. Taking some extra time to warm-up the recovering area, perform some self-massage, mobility will go a long way toward furthering the recovery process. There are a TON of great resources on how to perform these things- check our page or app for more.

Step 5- Looking at the shoulder and wrist. If there are weakness or mobility issues in these places, it can cause havoc to the elbow joint. To fix this, performing wrist extensions, flexions, static holds are wonderful for the elbow. For the shoulder, strengthening the upper back and focusing on proper scapular movement is key. Ask a coach for more information!

Elbow injuries are frustrating. They vary in pain, area, and can affect your life. Be patient with the recovery and movement, take time to mobilize, strengthen the wrist and shoulder, and progress as needed.

~Coach Karina, BS-Kinesiology, CF L1 Trainer, USAW Sports Performance Coach