Early Phase Elbow Rehab
Short post on elbow pain
Aside from a couple of traumatic injuries (triceps tear, UCL tear) most of the elbow injuries you will deal with are going to be chronic, overuse injuries. I will cover UCL tears in a future post
Golfer’s Elbow, Tennis Elbow, Triceps tendonitis. These are gonna be the bulk of your elbow issues
Here’s the skinny of it. If you have one of this issues, you are doing too much. Regardless of which of the above mentioned conditions you have, it’s time to sit back and assess your training program. If this is something you need our help on, hit the button below.
Tendon issues are fixed by loading the tendon to encourage proper collagen alignment AND removing/reducing the aggravating factor that led to your issues. You load the tendon by loading the muscle so we will be loading the elbow in every motion it is capable of for the treatment.
The best way to load a tendon to promote healing are with controlled eccentrics and heavy isometrics.
The rehab process doesn’t really change regardless of the injury. You may focus slightly on one muscle group over another but you’re gonna do basically the same thing.
The elbow is a simple joint, it does 4 things
Flexion
Extension
Pronation
Supination
As such, these movements will be the focus of this protocol. Really any joint follows the same path
Figure out what movements a joint is capable of, get full motion in those joints and then strengthen those movements once full ROM is established.
The table below will contain 5 days worth of exercises. Follow the progressions as written out as best as possible. Some exercises may be absurdly easy, some you are unable to do. Do the best you can
On days 1-3, you should perform the movements at least three times a day. Days 4-5, perform them daily. Some pain is fine and expected. Try and keep pain levels to 4/10 at most during the program.
I have no idea how strong you are. The weight should be heavy enough that hitting the target rep range is hard, not impossible. Easy rehab does nothing.