Bicep tendon pain

[eighty]

@sugarcookies for nagging tendon pain? nah nothing they can do, they will tell you to rest it and do light movements for blood flow

 

[harpazo777]

@eighty Sounds like good advice to me.

 

[eighty]

@harpazo777 not wrong

 

[brothermaurice]

@jbreyes777 Possibly tendonitis? Maybe try to momentarily drop your volume to allow it to heal before aggravating it more, and if you’re for some reason not using a full range of motion, that can help. Kinda like how people get knee pain on leg Press/squat patterns as the naive result of shitty range of motion/ego lifting. Again only if you’re not already doing this, haven’t had tendon pain in ages since incorporating this thought process. The only recent time I’ve felt minor bicep tendon pain is when doing a one arm Chinup (no holding my wrist bullshit) but that’s because I was essentially supporting my entire bodyweight through my bicep tendon

 

[ricky777]

@jbreyes777 I had issues last year for about 3 months very similar to what you seem to be experiencing. Went to see a dr and he suggested an elbow brace and prescribed a heavy dose of anti-inflammatory. I avoided painful exercises and eventually it went away.

 

[justintime25]

@jbreyes777 My bicep tendon pain ended up being a severe slap tear in my shoulder along with other issues. Pretty much everything was hanging on by a thread. Gonna save you some time, if you have decent medical coverage get an mri to make sure you don't have any major damage. If you don't then proceed with physical therapy and rehab.

 

[bonnie99]

@jbreyes777 Could be related to some sort of mobility issue

 

[caseydamon]

@jbreyes777 It's inflamed so you need to ice, anti-inflammatory ie Advil, and stretching the biceps.

I had these issues plague me for well over a year. Not 100% but I no longer do spider curls as a result.

If you can do cold plunge, that's good for whole body recovery.

 

[zaphod1983]

@caseydamon Ice will hinder recovery its generally not good to ice things

 

[caroline01]

@jbreyes777 If you said left, I could have written this, that's exactly when I had/have. Been on and off the last 3 years, 2 ultrasounds, nothing to see there.

Recently I stepped up my working out and it got a lot worse, after lots of googling and reading and watching my form I realized everything I did with my left arm (the sore one) I had my hand tilted with index finger on the high side.

Switched everything possible to either a barbell or something where my hand has to be flat, reduced weight way down on hammer curls and now it is getting a lot better. Didn't stop working out, but it still feels a lot better. I suspect that having my hand tilted was the deal.

Of course I'm no doctor, so get that thing checked make sure nothing is messed up!

 

[miles44]

@jbreyes777 The majority of the time, a pain in a biceps tendon has NOTHING to do with the biceps or biceps movements. It's usually an issue with the connecting tissue of the biceps long head and the shoulder. This can be caused by inflammation, both from illness or diet. It may also be from posture, tightness in the front (supraspinatus from rounding shoulder), or the middle trap / upper lat area.

A quick fix for the pain may be as simple as leaning down, think of a hinge for a barbell row but just let your shoulders hang with gravity, slowly swinging them until you can feel some relief. If that doesn't help, you can try massaging with a ball, roller, or electronic massage. Go deep in the middle/upper back on the side towards the shoulder pain, stretching it (specifically up and out, like you're reaching forwards) and the same thing while massaging the front except reaching back.

This is only going to cause relief in the short term, the real issue is something like this: posture from daily life or sleep causes a tightness, when doing shoulder-reliant lifts (the majority of compounds) things need to take over, and can cause pain in those tendons.

You mentioned hammer curls and neutral pull ups, this was something I noticed gets relief very quickly if you do a deep cable row, leaning and stretching all the way forward completely rounding your shoulder (keep applying constant tension to the trap area) then slowly contracting all the way back, arching your back and squeezing as much as possible. I would recommend you starting with this as a warmup to prep you for the other exercises.

(I'm not a doctor so don't take this as medical advice, but I noticed this to be very helpful and have spent a long time researching and testing every rehab for shoulder issues, pain, tendonitis, and dislocations.)

 

[savedsoul2010]

@miles44 Great knowledge. Do you know where elbow tendonitis related to triceps (i.e. pain inside the elbow when locking out the tricep quickly or when the tricep is bent at 90° under load) comes from?

 

[frustratedhusband]

@jbreyes777 How is your warmup? Also try for high reps by doing jack knife pullups instead of regular ones and don't go to failure. Any pain at all means you're doing too much right now.

 

[greyowl]

@jbreyes777 I have a lot less experience than you, but had this issue last year. Resolved when I started really controlling those eccentrics.

 

[stickywicket]

@jbreyes777 Yes, I’ve been having issues with it lately in my old age. But mine is the exact opposite- I can do hammer curls and reverse curls fine, and neutral grip or pronated pull downs/pull ups. But if I do ANYTHING supinated, my right bicep tendon will scream bloody murder, and my left will definitely be unhappy. Idk why

 

[sophiawilliam]

@jbreyes777 One thing to remember is that tendon remodeling takes a long time - Like, months. So if you make a change and feel pain free in a week or two, don't immediately go back to normal.

Commit to a period of at least say 8 weeks (possibly longer), where your goal is experience no / extremely minimal tendon discomfort.

The slow eccentrics are great, I'd also recommend slow concentric contractions as well to reduce the force on the tendons. If you are say pressing a 50 lb dumbell, and you move it back up very quickly, you are producing much more than 50 lbs of force, vs if you to a 3 second contraction, you are much closer to 50 lbs total.

The added benefit of a slow eccentric AND concentric is you will still get a good workout with much lighter weights.

Start very light, slowly increase the weights. If you experience prolonged discomfort in the tendon (anything that lasts for more than a minute or so after the set), back off.

After 8 weeks, if you are seeing improvements, I'd start speeding up your reps - not all at once, but gradually, and monitoring for any discomfort.

Another thing is sometimes you can't reach to full ROM that you really want to reach.

I had to limit my barbell overhead presses to stopping around my adams apple instead of touching my clavicle, I had to modify my dips so my torso is a bit less vertical, and I had to stop my close grip bench presses an inch or so above my chest / sternum.

It felt really wrong to "not do a full rep, bro", and I know emphasizing full ROM is really popular right now for hypertrophy, but you're going to miss out on a lot more hypertrophy when you can't do some lifts at all vs cutting out the last half inch of ROM.

Finally, I've had a lot of success with cross friction massage :

Manually and with a massage gun with a paddle bit.