The Lifters Guide to Fixing Elbow Pain

hey guys I'm dr. and horse aghh and today we're going to talk about fixing that nagging elbow pain when lifting all right guys thanks so much for stopping by the YouTube channel today is about all things elbow pain when lifting whether that's with a low bar back squat a front squat a deadlift or a press let's talk about how you can take the first steps to addressing and fixing that elbow pain now first a little anatomy we look at your elbow it's a combination of three bones your radius your ulna and then your humerus there's a lot of different muscles that cross the joint and a lot of different movements that is capable of so the first things first we need to understand the complexity of how pain is generated at the joint when most people talk about pain they try to figure out one specific area in the cause of pain so they'll say you have medial epicondylitis or lateral epicondylitis or a tricep tendon issue or a bicep tendon issue what I want you to do today is take a step back and understand the global approach to how pain is caused because that's usually how we complete a full fix of your elbow pain now if you ever remember the song that we had growing up the knee bones connected to the thigh bone that's the way that we need to understand elbow pain is the wrist in the shoulders connection to how pain is generated at the elbow now first things first wrist joint if you cannot have enough wrist extension specifically when lifting overhead it's going to place uneven forces on the elbow that eventually could lead to pain so what I want you to do is a simple test put your hands together and bring them down see if you have as much wrist extension on one side as you do on the other side now let's say on one side you just feel like this is not going to be moving back as much as you can on this side simple stretches just pulling that elbow back or that hand back should bring out a light nice light stretch in that form something like that five to ten seconds that's your first start now most the time I see a lot of people specifically when it comes to squatting they're gonna have pain related to what's going on all the way up with the shoulders we're gonna do a simple mobility screen first you're gonna lay down or sit down next to a wall and you're gonna do a simple lap screen no the lats are these big D shaped muscles that come all the way up and attach onto your humerus up here with your hand down we're in relative internal rotation you're going to raise your arm up as high as you can without letting your low back pop off the ground now from right there you can see I can get to about there and he further I'd have to let my low back pop off so from right here as high as I can go and then back down I'm now gonna place a small stretch on the lats by externally rotating let's take my palm and turn it straight up from here let's say I was able only to get to about right there it's a clear difference between internally rotated in extra and rotated which means that I have a relative stiffness in my lat muscles and I can contribute to placing excessive force on my elbow specifically when I'm trying to get into a good externally rotated position like when getting under a barbell so what we're gonna do to clear up that lat stiffness is with an exercise called SCAP pull-ups all you're gonna do is grab the barbell and what you're going to do is allow yourself to sink into good stretch of your lats and then pull your shoulder blades together and retract the same way in which you would pulling yourself under a barbell I'm going to do that for a couple rotations see what it looks like so from right here I'm going to let myself relax and do a good stretch take my shoulder blades out to the side and then in going to retract keep my elbows straight and just pull my shoulder blades back and down and then retract or relax back down of that stretch a couple seconds and feel the stretch and then back up again squeezing down feeling those muscles with my bid back contract we're just gonna go back and forth between this maybe ten times but it's stretch and then retract feel those muscles engage and then back down something like that always test and retest find out if that was right for your body we're going to come back down sit by the wall again down into a little bit of interpretation see how high you can get externally rotated member we just placed a good stretch on the lats we should be able to get a little bit further see how much higher you can now get your arm in that externally rotated position which means that when you get under the barbell and pull yourself down let's say you're doing a low bar back squat when you get down under that barbell you need to get into a good amount of external rotation so if you can't pull yourself down here it's going to place a good amount of stress on that inside part of your wrist so a lot of people will back squat and have that low bar back squat and because they have stiffness in their lat they have excessive pressure on their elbow joint eventually it's going to lead to pain so exposing it with that wall test and clearing it up with that skat pull-up can be very helpful for Steph now if you don't have a pull-up bar like that how do you stretch your let's grab the barbell put your hand under into external rotation hand on top lean back and stretch like that should bring out a really good stretch in your lats right here a couple seconds and then back up so that's again pulling down feeling a good stretch there those are ways in which you can improve lat rotation or lat flexibility now the second thing I said up at the shoulder not only mobility but often people will lack shoulder stability they'll have an imbalance in their ability to strengthen into external rotation because of that imbalance we get excessive force this is specifically for those people that develop that pain on the inside part of the elbow so here's what's something that I want you to try to do before your next day of squatting we're going to take just a small plate here's the one and a half kilo play by aleyko so you really don't need a lot of weight for this but we're gonna do a side plank external rotation exercise to really warm up those lateral rotators of the shoulder so we're gonna get down into a side plank from right here we're gonna externally rotate and you're gonna go nice and slow with some pauses at the top make sure that shoulder is pulled back you're not rolling it forward and from right here we're gonna do 20 reps in a row now yes this is also increasing core activation and stability but we're warming up those lateral rotators in a way that's gonna carry over to their use during our lifting so 20 reps and then back down I promise you I can already feel that working really good and back in my shoulder that's gonna help you get into that proper back squat position and make sure that we're not placing excessive strain on the front side of the shoulder which is gonna lead to paint all the way down at the elbow so that is the other thing now for a number of people that have pain at the elbow specifically on the lateral side you will find that that pain is triggered when you're doing gripping exercises so these are gonna be people that when they're trying to clean perform a deadlift just gripping the barbell brings out that lateral pain that lateral epicondyle of the word or lob lateral epicondylitis on the side of that elbow here's something that you can also do besides those other exercises that I just showed and that's gonna be a banded joint mobilization now when you have pain and I'm gonna demonstrate on my left side when you have pain on that lateral elbow sometimes it will be due to a restriction in the way in which the joints of your are moving so by freeing up the joint restriction it can alleviate pain temporarily and sometimes completely in the long term here's how you're gonna go about doing that you're gonna lay down on the ground and you're gonna place that band just under your elbow crease want to get a lot of tension on it now test-retest here's how you're gonna know this is right for you if you can grip really really hard and that brings out that pain this is a great one for you you're gonna take that band place it on the elbow you're gonna lay on the ground get a lot of tension on that band and lay just like this now from here we're going to grip and then back down make a fist as hard as you can if this band is in the right position and with the right tension we're gonna have a little bit of gapping and that elbow right there and you're actually going to see that this is pain free right now or it's gonna be very very decreased in the amount of pain that you had compared to prior something like this you're gonna do 20 reps total you can also twist a little bit if you want but this is a lateral band of joint mobilization for those who are dealing with lateral elbow pain 20 or so of those and get back up grip again and you should notice if this is right for you that you no longer have that elbow pain on the side of your elbow so that right there are the mobility and stability fixes from a global and a local approach for elbow pain the last thing we need to consider is your technique especially when performing squats one of the reasons people develop specifically medial or inside elbow pain is because their way to overextend it with the wrist joint whenever they get on the barbell so I'm going to show you what that looks like when they get under the barbell because they lack so much mobility elsewhere in their body they're gonna have to be underneath almost right here so they're gonna have their elbows right underneath and very extended instead I want you to make sure you're pulling your elbows back still make sure you're in line with your torso but maintain more of a neutral wrist what that's gonna do by maintaining more of a neutral wrist position we're gonna be able to decrease the amount of stress placed on the elbow joint whenever your school so don't allow that risk to overextend and pull under the body too much now don't go opposite and just drive your elbows straight back that's not good on your shoulders but make sure that your elbows are pulled back and in line with your torso and then you have a neutral wrist as much as possible with your squat and that's again I'm gonna take stress off that inside part of the elbow so I hope you guys enjoy today's video I'm elbow painting some of the fixes if you want to go way more in depth into the stuff that I show today check out squat University com my blog the complete lifters guide I'll also have it linked below this video today if you're enjoying today's video and all the content that I'm putting out please subscribe to my channel like share with all your friends and family and comment below if you have any questions or anything that you would like me to see tackle in next week's video until next week guys happy squatting they say that and then she flows where attention goes so I pay no mind what waste my time with all these negative cat scratches so caught up in their egos these people

Channel: Squat University

Views: 60,004

Keywords: elbow pain, elbow pain exercises, elbow pain relief, elbow pain treatment, elbow pain pull ups, elbow pain stretch, elbow pain during push ups, elbow pain after workout, elbow pain squats, elbow pain after bench press, elbow pain bodybuilding, elbow pain powerlifting, elbow pain weightlifting, elbow pain crossfit, elbow pain bench press, elbow pain during dips, elbow pain low bar back squat, elbow pain fix

Id: 0uvHiInY5IA

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020