There was no acute event that I can point to that caused the forearm flexor and extensor tendon tears / golfer’s elbow and tennis elbow positions respectively (it’s not like I got arm bar’d or something), it’s just developed over time. I know the problematic exercises that most likely contributed to the tearing over time. I also think altered bar path / technique on a bunch of excercises due to triceps tendonitis probably played a contributing role too
So I think it all started from developing triceps tendonitis in both arms. This happened before I even jumped on juice so over a year ago (got on juice around July and this injury prob started 3 months or so before I’d say). I was programming constant tricep specialisation work in training blocks, aiming to make the triceps do more work in bench press and take work off the delts and pecs. It was working well, but I wasn’t rotating tricep excercises enough between training blocks, so the triceps were constantly getting punished from similarly angles. Then pain started to develop in the triceps tendons which I hadn’t got before. That’s the point I should’ve started having breaks from tricep specialisation work in training blocks, but I was stubborn, and I didn't, and the pain just set in strongly. By the time I started to address it and take triceps work out, regress weight on compound movements and rehab it was already really established. Got it to a good place over a long period, but while it was getting better it was probably effecting bar path / technique on other lifts, and more stress was probably being out on the forearm side of my elbow due to this. Obviously jiu jitsu with a lot of gripping and dynamic work doesn’t help.
Then the particular exercises I think really kept tearing the tendons would be:
Forearm extensors: reverse curls
(I’m usually pretty careful at keeping weight low on these as I know they can be problematic, but I had a few session where I got complacent and pushed up weight)
Forearm flexors: weighted chin-ups
(I need to be careful in jumping up weight to quickly on these when I haven’t had them in training blocks for ages. I find them easy, as I’ve done 50 to 60kg added to bodyweight in the past, but when I’ve had time off from them it’s always a temptation to push weight too fast - of which the tendons may no longer be used too)
But I’m used to training through pain, I have a high pain tolerance so it’s hard to tell the more serious injuries from something minor at times. For example I’ve had tennis and golfers elbow come and go over the years. They just go away themselves, and the pain level was similar to the tears I currently have. The only difference is this pain has hung around for longer.
If I was to stop training for every niggle and pain I’d never train. So it can be hard to tell where the line to stop is at times if it’s not a clear acute injury (like a disc injury on a deadlift or something like that - you know it’s time to pull up straight away when that happens). In fact I wouldn’t have even got this ultrasound if I didn’t have an acute injury to my tricep tendon at jj, and I asked them to scan every painful area while they were scanning my tricep tendon.
Anyway, I know now so I’m doing something about it, which is awesome
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