Triceps tendonitis/tendopathy for over 1,5yrs

J

jonojim1337

New member
Hi there,

1,5yrs ago I discovered strength training/bodybuilding and fell in love with it. Pretty quickly I got a sore elbow but the pain was very manageable so I kept on training. When the pain didn't go away I visited a physiotherapist and an Echo and x-ray was made. Diagnosis: triceps tendonitis/tendopathy due to overtraining.

Looking back this made sense, because I went from zero to training 4 times a week.

Now one year later the pain is still the same: on a scale of 1 to 10: level 3 (so very low pain). I only feel the pain when I use my triceps (e.g. when pushing up from a chair or doing pushups) or sleep with my elbow in the same angle for a long time.

Because the pain is so low i tend to keep on training. On the other hand I know I should do something with this injury to prevent it getting worse.

I did try the following 2 things:

Keeping rest for 2 weeks (the pain got slightly less during these 2 weeks but when I started training it came back very quickly)

Made a training schedule without any triceps exercises. But because i like to train heavy i think it's very hard to not activate/aggravate the triceps a bit. I did try this for 3 months, the pain went less but remained (pain level 1 or 2).

I am kind of loss what to do next. My physiotherapist recommended to stop training completely for 1 or 2 months (or only do leg workouts) to make sure the triceps can rest/heal completely.

Does anyone have any recommendations about this? It feels so shitty that I fell in love with this beautiful sport but getting pulled back by this annoying injury.

All advice/feedback is very welcome!!
*Sorry for any grammar mistakes, English is not my first language:)
 
@jonojim1337 I had tendinosis in both elbows, as well as in one knee that persisted for years. All because I was too stubborn to just take that month off. Most of the time I would say my pain was around a 3, like yours, especially if I was choosing the right exercises. But some times, regardless how I trained the pain would flair up to at worst a 7.

I went and saw an osteopath and he prescribed me an anti inflammatory and told me to take a month off. I did it. After that he told me a month of very light work. Basically 2-3 training sessions per week, body weight exercises, RPE 3ish(?) Really boring training lol.

But my pain is finally gone after years of dealing with it. That 2 months were long in the moment. But in hindsight, it wasn’t terrible and so worth it to no longer have pain. Now I’m back to 5-7 days of full body training without issue!

TL;DR take the time off. It’s worth it to be pain free.
 
@cornesmit This. I had the same issue. I tried everything except taking time off, and never got rid of it. Then I took time off, and it finally went away. It was excruciating to take time off, but it worked.

I’ll also add that I needed to become very mindful of resting my elbows on things (chair arms, desks, tables, counters, etc.) because that was aggravating the injury. I also started sleeping with my arms straight to take pressure off of the affected areas. All of that helped to accelerate the healing.
 
@bananaz Did warm things or cold help or just let it heal. Cuz I had very bad pain after a workout on 30th January. Then It got slowly better. Then It stopped to get better then It got better again and now it stopped again and I wanna ask is this normal? Cuz I still do Core exercises ,Stretching and sometimes light biceps exercises. Im scared that its chronic and Im omly 17 and fcked up both my ellbows and also a tendon betewenn my chest and front delt....
 
@cecilddunn2572 I can only speak from my experience, and the feedback I got from a sports medicine doc. For me, it was rest only - and I needed to rest longer than I thought. Eventually, when the pain had mostly subsided, I started lifting with very light weights…not to push my muscles, only to give the tendon some stimulation.
 
@davidricca Oh yeah, time off definitely helped. It’s doing just fine. It acts up occasionally, but not from tendonitis. Probably just from old injuries and getting older lol
 
@mmayfield It was 2 months. One month of being basically completely sedentary and taking anti inflammatories. Then another month of super light work (basically like 30-60 minute long warm up) 2-3 days per week, and still taking anti inflammatories.
 
@cornesmit Ok cool

But it eventually went? You're back to training?

How did you manage your time off... what did you do

Did you train legs? Cycle? What else did you do
 
@mmayfield Yep, back to training. Everything’s basically good. Occasional pain but that’s related to old injuries and probably just getting older.

First month of being completely sedentary was spent working, school, video games, and other relaxing hobbies. Because I had tendinosis in my knee too, the doctor told me to walk/cycle/etc as little as possible. Luckily I’m fully remote for work and school, so made being sedentary pretty easy.

Second month was 2-3 workouts per week that were basically long warm ups. Like, doing sets of 10-20 and would pyramid up until I was using a weight that was around a 20 rep max, then be done with that exercise. Started going for short and easy walks around my neighborhood everyday. Most of my time was spent being sedentary though. So still work, school, and other hobbies.

At the start of the 3rd month started back on my routine at about 2/3rds of what I was doing before the time off. So 2/3rds the volume and intensity. Then just ramped it back up over the month until I was back to normal.
 
@cornesmit All seems pretty logical and reasonable

I can't wait to see what the doc tells me and just get this done and out the way

A playstation and guitar might come in handy for a month

My legs are 100% so I'm thinking:
- cycling
- running
- playstation
- guitar
- singing
Maybe even piano haha
 
@gracer This article is great advice.

Personally, I've just found the best strategy is:
  1. Find out what exercise is causing the tendon to get inflamed/painful/injured.
  2. Stop doing that exercise or change the exercise so it doesn't cause any pain (switch from low bar squats to high bar for example, do machine bench press instead of barbell, whatever the switch that needs to be made).
  3. Allow the tendon to get back to pain-free or near pain free without trying to resume what got it hurt in the first place.
  4. Diversify your training so you do more exercises, and incorporate deload weeks into your training so you don't get too much load on your joints and connective tissues.
 
@pinetowntree Yep there's usually something about your technique that leads to the overuse issues.

Also light work for giga reps is invaluable, just getting a ton of blood into the tendons helps the healing process a lot and it enhances tendon strength. I remember Louie Simmons saying that he had some of his trainees do hundreds of light triceps extensions every week.
 
@gracer Right. It can also just be your anatomy and flexibility. Some people are limited by those factors and they put more load onto delicate structures because they're at the end range of their flexibility.

I used to try to low bar squat with terrible shoulder flexibility so I had to really put my elbows/wrists in a compromised position. Horrible tendonitis. Switched to high bar and I'm pain free.
 
@pinetowntree Yeah dealing with similar problems on low bar, I can tolerate low volume regardless of weight but doing high volume doesn't feel good for a couple of days. Warming up with pulldowns helps a bit. But yeah I can see how flexibility could be a factor in some cases
 
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