I am getting desperate brahs. I have been dealing with distal (near the elbow) bicep tendonitis / tendinopathy for the past year and it seems like no matter what I do the problem only gets worse. I have a physical therapy appointment for a month from now and I would like to make some progress before then if possible.

Any tips or techniques to help me get over this would be much appreciated.

Do light dumbbell exercises and stretching every day.

I have been fighting it for a year now. Have had some very good ups, but I think I've struggled with not addressing underlying issues.

Where are you at? What movements hurt? Do you have any limited range of motion? Pain while stationary? Mobility assynetries?

Yeah I got over it. Had it bad for years.

Went to physical therapy and they had me do high rep light DB curls, ART which is a form of physical therapy and then fascia stretches after high rep work when ur pumped.

Set a barbell up about where you would have it for squats, then turn the opposite way (looking away from barbell) and put your hands up on it with arms strait while leaning forward and you'll get a painful stretch in biceps after you've done the high rep work to get pump. Hold that for 60 seconds to 2 minutes for a few sets 2-3x a week.

It goes away if you keep trying to fix it usually, keep reading up on it.

When I played baseball when I was young I pitched and caught

Got elbow tendonitis multiples times. Was told to stop that and I don't think I ever had it again

Think I was told to stop and rest it and that's it

Curls seem to really aggravate it. Not sure why. Been stretching it every night before bed. Thanks brah.Afraid to do high rep curls because repetitive motions really piss it off. Did you just go through the pain or did you not have that issue?

Going to try that stretch, seems like it would be a good one. Thanks brah.How long to rest? I need to lift weights. Bicep is involved in all pulling and I must pull. I reduced the weight and volume a lot though. Thanks brah.

substitute curls for hammers. Avoid chin ups (underhand grip). Stretch before your lifts (look on youtube for stretches that target the elbow tendons)

Curls are a no-go. Pulling movements are iffy. Had to greatly reduce volume and weight on pull day and cut out curls entirely. Full ROM, can completely extend and flex elbow joint. Pain and tightness while stationary usually after pull day or any time where I use it more than it would like. I make the pain go away by getting rid of the tightness with releases and stretches. No asymmetries.

Connective tissue such as tendons don't get as much blood flow like muscles do so they require high rep movements to force more blood in for quicker recovery. A 10 pound DB was about the max I used for 50+ rep curls w/ supinated hands whole time. The trick is to get a pump then stretch. Then rest/recover/repeat and make sure you're giving your body all the vitamins/minerals etc it needs to heal.

You must go through some pain but not if its unbearable pain. I went through pain maybe a 3-4/10 on pain scale.

If you got health insurance just go to physical therapy, look up youtube vids and do research for an hour a day. You'll learn ALLOT.

I'm not sure man. It was so long ago its hard to remember. I think I had it a lot at 9,10,11, 12. I don't remember it older. Around 10 was when I was pitching and catching the same games

As I got older I never caught. Playing a position prolly helped rest my elbow

My guess would be a few weeks of no activity. Tendonitis is just inflammation right? Will look it up in a sec. Would make sense to rest it

Have you rested much during this process or habe you always tried to push it?

I always thought it was no good to stretch before lifting but if that worked for you I'll try it. Willing to try anything at this point.

I've always only done hammer curls when doing curls. Wrist mobility is not good enough to fully supinate after breaking it as a kid. Thanks for the tips brah.

Have wrestled with it myself since last year.

Really high rep curls with very light weight and full elbow lockout on every rep seems to work. Tried a lot of other stuff before that but this is the only thing that really made a big difference.

Starts with d and rhymes with hecka

Remember your body is made to adapt so you must continue to force the adaptation even if it means some pain and sometimes it just takes years to fix something (my knee, bicep, shoulder all examples). My left bicep hurt bad and I can take allot of pain but the physical therapist said if its less than a 4/10 keep going.

My knee surgery and physical therapy after that def hurt the most, but bicep was 2nd surprisingly, not sure why that area can hurt that much.

Obviously rest is a must as well. But you can't rest too much, its a fine balancing act to keep your goals moving forward.

ive had brachioradialis area tendonitis and patellar tendonitis both went away when i learned to use the proper muscles surrounding that joint better. The more you use muscles correctly the less damage is done to your joints. Proper movement patterns are the best healing to little injuries.

reverse curls with a zig zag bar or ez cable attachment to strengthen brachialis and brachioradialis muscles
proper bicep activation techniques, really dive into these
proper bracing for back and pressing movements, these will easily aggravate the bicep tendons if you are not bracing properly

That makes a lot of sense. I will try incorporating some very light weight high rep curls and then stretching right after and see how it goes.

My physical therapy appointment is in a month. I do research every day but have had no luck so far. My bicep tendon playlist on YouTube is probably 100+ videos at this point lol.I rest for a week or two and it feels okay then I come back and it hurts again. Not working out depresses the hell out of me so it would be hard to go for a few weeks.

Maybe you’ll find this useful OP in case you haven’t seen it already:

https://stevenlow.org/overcoming-tendonitis/

It all comes back to the alignment/balance of your whole body. If you're only looking just at the bicep you're completely missing the big picture and won't ever fix the root issue. I had tennis/golfer's elbow for 2+ years making this mistake. Every forearm stretch, curl, massage technique, glide technique, ice bath, epsom salt bath, cream, gel, etc you can imagine didn't solve the issue.

Guess what? My shoulder on the same side was rounded forward and internally rotated. My thoracic spine was locked up. The rest of my body was quite out of balance as well. When I started to address THAT, the root issue, the symptom went away.

Same with my IT band syndrome, low back pain, and jacked up knees.

Do this routine here and tell me if it's better, worse, or the same afterward:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09mSftU9oXU&t=1s

More than likely, it will have improved. From there, do daily every morning until 100% and then continue to stay pain free.

Yeah there is allot of bullchit info to sort through online no doubt, I tried to find the barbell fascia stretch example and this is the closest to it I can get, skip to 4:35 in the vid below and do that same stretch position the guy is helping him with except use a barbell to hold with your hands and lean forward. Remember to get a massive pump before you go for a 1-2 min strait fascia stretch hold. It WILL be painful AF and difficult to fight through it. But this is what fixes many people. It will also get your muscle bellies larger as well if you're eating enough. There's good fascia stretches for every large muscle group.



What Jastbrah said about proper movement/form is very true also but tough to explain to the average person until they've fuked around for a while. My left knee for example hurt because I was somehow externally rotating my tibia too much on squat movements. I had to go back to square one and do split squats while forcing my left tibia to not rotate too much outward and stay in. Then my CNS got used to the movement as well as all the other stabilizer muscles and I started adding weight with no knee pain.

Only reason I'm posting so much in here is because I know how difficult this can be but you CAN fix it. That's a fact so keep your head up bro.

This won't fix the root issue.

It sucks it seems like once you start feeling pain in the bicep it never wants to phuck off. I'll push through the pain though. Hard to know if you're making things worse when it hurts, especially considering how much lighter I go now.

From what I've read you need 72+ hours to reach net collagen synthesis after stressing a tendon so I've been waiting exactly 96 hours between light pull days.You mean by having perfect form or is it about something else? I've always gone for form over weight but I'm somehow still hurting myself.

Do you have and tips on how to go about learning how to do that? Thanks brah.

Rest is a waste of time unless there is an acute tear - and even then you should try to move it in a pain free range to stimulate blood flow/healing.

Rest will do nothing for solving chronic pain/tendinitis.

I guarantee if I functionally tested you in different positions and/or looked at pics of you I would find numerous asymmetries driving this bicep issue. I do this for a living.

Form is a very complex thing, if you are only looking at what you are doing externally that is only half of the equation of form. Also the more you advance your knowledge the more you pick up on little nuances in what is actually proper form.

I.e. for legs the most advanced form of "proper form" would be learning to root and how to emphasize muscle activation based on where you put tension on your foot while still rooting properly. Then keeping complete stability in the lower leg while finding proper ankle and knee mobility and angled for the target muscles, i.e. feet slightly out for adductors and more out for more adductors, having proper knee tracking and extension and flexion, having proper internal activation of the proper muscles i.e. adductors, hamstrings, glutes, quads. Knowing exactly where the end point of the range of motion of the MUSCLE is and not where the lift is. People say squat to parallel or ass to grass but neither of those are describing a muscles end point of range of motion.

This is barely touching the surface of what proper "form" would be for 1 leg movement. So see how it gets more complicated but the more advanced you get the lower the amount of injury and stress on joints.

Took me a long time to learn when to push and when to rest
This was about the point I was trying to make. However after you do the work in the gym you need to rest it a day or two then get back at it. People might get confused by how you worded that and work themselves into the ground like I did. I think wording this information depends on which type of person you're talking to, the one who overdoes things or the type who never does enough work and is lazy. I've trained both.

Some people need to be told to stfu and push through the pain/stop being a pussy while others will do the complete opposite not resting and making their injuries worse.

Oh dam*, didn't know tendinopathy and tendonitis were different

Tendinopathy is a degeneration of the collagen protein that forms the tendon. Tendonitis, on the other hand, is just inflammation of the tendon

peptides

I've seen it and reference it so much that it's on my bookmarks bar. Great website for sure. Thanks brah.Thanks man it's nice to be having guidance from people who overcame this bullchit. Appreciate the heads up that the stretch is going to hurt that probably would've made me immediately stop. Seems like I need to study up on kinesiology a bit more to make sure my positioning is spot on during any movement.I've got a career where I sit pretty much all the time and it's given me lower crossed syndrome and a slight rounding of the shoulders (internal rotation, impingement, relaxing of the shoulder blades) so this could definitely be what is wrong with me and would explain why the problem has worsened as I've aged and began to sit more and more. I'm watching the video. I'll try it right now and then incorporate it into my morning routine. Thanks brah.

the problem with telling people to push through the pain is most people's movement patterns are what caused the injury and unless they fix them it will be a repeat thing, not because of the injury but because of their movement patterns. But ego prevents people from looking at themselves and blaming themselves and they would rather place all emphasis on the injury and "fixing it"

theres also a lot more money to be made in telling people you will fix their injuries for them.

Nothing helped me until I tried snake oil acupuncture. Now I'm a believer and go see the poke lady for all sorts of stuff.