In kettlebell lifter’s elbow, the initial lift from the floor may feel fine, but pain is felt in the catch.

Kettlebell sport involves high repetition sets of repeated pronation and supination that place powerful loads onto the forearm tendons. With careful and progressive development in a kettlebell lifter’s training, this repeated pronation and supination isn’t a problem. But too frequent contact between bones and tendons can even eventually irritate and inflame the contact points.

In this series of articles, we’re going to look at the common kettlebell injuries this inflammation causes and their methods of treatment. We’ll start today with focusing on the elbow.

What Is Kettlebell Lifter’s Elbow?

Inflammation in the bone and tendons in the elbow area is commonly known as tennis or golfer’s elbow. Tennis elbow is felt as pain on the outer side of the elbow, over the lateral epicondyle bone. Golfer’s elbow is felt on the medial epicondyle bone on the inner side of the elbow. Both are a form of tendinitis and can take up to six weeks to develop and heal. If untreated, tendinosis can develop, which can last up to six months.

Both are a frequent affliction I see in kettlebell lifters, so for the purposes of this article let’s call it kettlebell lifter’s elbow.

Kettlebell lifter’s elbow feels sore, hot, and sensitive. A sharp tap over the lateral or medial epicondyle will elicit a sharp, ringing pain and you’ll likely hop about clutching your arm. Oddly, you might be able to pick up something like a kettlebell, but if you go to do up a button or pick up a mug you’ll feel like dropping it. Equally, taking a wider grip when picking up something like a brick can be agonising. For kettlebell sport athletes, the initial lift from the floor may feel fine, but the twist of the elbow in the catch is a real issue.

How to Treat Kettlebell Lifter’s Elbow

The best prescription for kettlebell lifter’s elbow is rest, but when I suggest that to an athlete I’m usually met with withering looks and comments on my sanity. The good news is we can also reduce the use of the elbow and manage the symptoms with some solid treatment techniques.

I’ve outlined the best of these treatment techniques below.

1. Wear a Brace

Braces are a cheat of sorts, as rest should be the primary method of management. They rely partly on reducing the ‘pull’ at the tendon to bone attachment and partly by moving the point of pressure down the forearm. Many people wear a brace the wrong way round, so make sure you get the correct size brace and wear it correctly.

I’ve shown the correct way below, with the larger bulge on the outer side of the arm.

• Put the brace in place and then rest your arm on your thigh to steady the band.
• Apply a comfortable stretch to attach the Velcro.
• Work on the principle that if it falls off, it’s too loose, and if your hand goes blue, it’s too tight.

Wear the brace for about three to four hours at a time as a maximum. Use them while driving and doing desk work, but mainly when you are lifting. Don’t wear them at night, and if your elbow issue isn’t resolved after two weeks, seek appropriate advice from a qualified health professional.

2. Apply Localised Icing

Localised icing can be very effective in the first few days of kettlebell lifter’s elbow coming on. Apply the ice for a maximum of five minutes and follow up by massaging your arm from your elbow to your wrist. The direction of the massage may seem strange, particularly for me as we’re always told to move fluid towards the heart. However, there is evidence that massage with the direction of venous drainage is very remedial. It certainly is in my experience.

3. Perform Simple Mobility Stretches

Icing is best followed by wrist and forearm stretches like those I’ve given below. These are mobility drills that work the wrist extensors to alleviate the pain of kettlebell lifter’s elbow.

Elbow Mobility Stretch #1:

• Bend the elbow.
• Bend the wrist, using the other hand.

Elbow Mobility Stretch #2:

• Once you reach a point of strong pull, but not pain, hold for twenty seconds.
• Release and repeat five times.

To refine the movement, try twisting the wrist in various directions. You will find a sweet spot that is most effective for you. Remember every case is different, even between your left and right side.

Elbow Mobility Stretch #3:

• Bend the elbow fully.
• Using the other hand held across the palm, bend the fingers and wrist back as far as is comfortable.
• Make sure you start with the little finger fully extended.

Elbow Mobility Stretch #4:

• Keeping fingers and wrist extended, extend the elbow until the arm is straight or until it is too uncomfortable.
• Hold for twenty seconds.
• Release and repeat five times.

All of these stretches should be held for at least ten seconds, but not much longer than thirty seconds. I don’t fuss with the idea of a perfect time for holding these stretches. If you feel a longer hold is better for you, go for it.

Keep the Rest of Your Body Healthy

Specific mobility and recovery drills sometimes miss the wider issues of overall function in the body, so don’t get too hung up on mobilising the afflicted area. Look to increase your overall mobility to prevent further injury. Indian clubs, meels, yoga, and tai chi drills are excellent for this.

Later in this series, we will look at the common thoracic spine, thumb grip, lower back, and shoulder injuries I see in kettlebell lifters. Hopefully, once we have looked at the components, we can then pull it all together into a comprehensive approach that will help you lift without injury.

 The best prevention for injury? Perfecting your technique:

How to Master the Kettlebell Jerk

The post How to Treat Kettlebell Lifter’s Elbow appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Let’s think about it for a minute. Strength and power are pretty much the crux of every sport on the planet aside from darts (which isn’t a sport, but that’s a rant for another day). If you don’t have strength and power, then you’re at nothing. Make sense? Good.

Slow Reps Will Not Make You Slow

Here’s how it works: you need to get strong to have any hope of dominating your sport or event. Of course, it goes without saying for most playing positions in most sports you need some sort of explosive power, too. Do we agree on that? Of course we do.

But won’t slow, grinding reps make you slow? Not necessarily. You just have to be smart about it. 

I’m going to talk about muscle growth a lot so remember you’re not thinking of muscle growth as the potential for bigger muscles. Rather, you’re thinking of it as the potential for huge increases in your strength and power. With that, here are six benefits of eccentric reps:

1. Strength is Important For Everything

Studies have shown that your body can tolerate up to 1.75 times more weight eccentrically than it can concentrically. Eccentrics are the downward portion of the exercise, such as lowering yourself in a squat or lowering the bar to your chest in a bench press. It only makes sense to take advantage of this, doesn’t it?

Some sports or events require more size than others, but that’s not for today’s article. If you emphasise the eccentric portion of your lifts, then you’re certain to increase muscle growth. Guess what more muscle growth is going to get you? That’s right, more strength and that means greater potential for hypertrophy (which is always a bonus) and greater potential to develop power. Again, as we talked about at the beginning of this article, power is essential to the vast majority of sports.

I’m not suggesting you do eccentric only training, though. I’m suggesting you take advantage of your body’s potential to handle more weight while still doing the full movement. We’ll get on to how you’re going to do this later, but note that combining the two has been proven to have significant effects on muscle growth.

As you know by now with eccentric training you can lift a hell of a lot more weight than you would normally. The great thing about this is it allows you to workout at a higher intensity. Higher intensity means greater stress, which means greater adaptation. Here’s the beauty of that – the anabolic response from the heavy loads forces greater recruitment of muscle fibres, which by default will allow you to move more weight on the concentric (upward) portion of the lift.

You don’t need to be told what that means, but I’m going to tell you anyway: you get much stronger than you ever would with normal lifting. It’s possible you’ll be moving weight between 20-50% heavier than your regular 1RM. Not too shabby, huh?

2. Greater Muscle Damage

This is why bodybuilders tend to take advantage of slow, grinding reps with moderate weights. It tears their muscles apart and the hope is they will repair and grow even further.

The difference is you are going to use heavy weight and you’re not going to grind out the concentric portion of the lift. In fact, more often than not the concentric portion will be easier than the heavy eccentric.

How you ask? You have two options:

1. Have a spotter (sometimes two) on hand to aid you after the heavy eccentric.
2. Use lifting aids such as elastic bands, chains or eccentric hooks.

Emphasizing the lowering portion of your lift while still doing the full lift will lead to even greater muscle growth and in turn strength, power and connective tissue development.

3. Stronger Connective Tissue

The stronger your connective tissue (ligaments and tendons), the greater your immunity to injury. Are you under heavy loads all the time in your sport? Do you get hit hard? You need to strengthen your body, not just your muscles. Taking advantage of eccentrics is a great way to do this.

4. You Use Less Energy

Heavier weight uses less energy? That’s nonsense. Again, there is beauty in training eccentric portions of the lift. Most of your energy is used when you’re pushing or lifting a weight. This becomes useful because you are going to be able to do more work, which means your body will improve, your strength will improve, your size will improve, and your power will improve.

5. Greater Flexibility

This one is hard to believe, but there has been a ton of research to show eccentric training actually increases your flexibility. No way, right?

Here’s how it works. The negative portion of the lift causes growth of your muscle fibers, which increases the length of your muscles by increasing the sarcomeres in series within the muscle. Too technical? No problem. Just take my word for it – heavy negatives have been show to promote greater flexibility.

Don’t just take my word for it though. Try it for yourself. Finally, we can dispel the myth that when you lift weights you get less flexible.

6. Greater Power

I’ve already told you that the stronger you are the more potential there is for greater power development. That just makes sense, doesn’t it?

Usually when you are training for power, you will significantly drop your weights to between 30-60% of your 1RM. With heavy negatives you’re going to increase your 1RM, right? So again, by default, you will use heavier weights during your power training, which can only lead to one thing – you being more explosive.

A great way to ensure you remain explosive is to superset your heavy negatives with something fast. Here are two examples:

1. Heavy eccentric squat with low rep box jumps.
2. Heavy eccentric bench press with low rep explosive push ups or med ball tosses.

Closing Thoughts

This type of training shouldn’t be used year round. Incorporate it into your program periodically to stimulate modest increases in your strength. I highly recommend you do it during your off season. Remember, although you save energy during eccentrics, you are still doing huge amounts of damage to your muscle fibers. Doing this in season will upset your ability to recover. Done correctly, you should expect to get stronger and faster.

Check out these related articles:

• The Expression of Strength, Part 1 – Absolute Strength
• 3 Ways to Use the Kettlebell Swing for Overspeed Eccentric Training
• An Analysis of Muscle Fiber Responses to Eccentric Exercise
• What’s New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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