Hitting the gym is a great way to get strong and healthy, and most people at the gym are used to a bit of muscle soreness. Like most things, if you get carried away, you can pick up a few injuries, and the elbow is one area that may become a bit unhappy.
In today’s video, I’ll take you through 3 common exercises in the gym that can cause elbow pain. You’ll discover why your patient’s elbows can get sore with these exercises, and how you can make changes to help speed up their recovery.
1. Low bar squat - You may not have expected this one, but in powerlifters and weightlifters it’s a common cause of medial elbow pain. There can be a significant amount of valgus stress on the elbow with this exercise, and I’ll take you through strategies you can use to change the elbow load and settle pain.
2. Chinups - they're awesome, and also quite a high load exercise. If your patients haven’t taken their time to build their strength for full chinups, they can place a lot of load on all the structures around the elbow and shoulder. I’ll show you how to alter chinups in your elbow pain patients, so the exercise becomes painfree and you can use these in your rehab.
3. Barbell curls - “Sun’s out, guns out” is the gym motto, and most gym goers will hit the bicep curls regularly. It’s pretty unlikely you can convince anyone to give these up, so here are some strategies you can use when your patient has pain with barbell curls.
These are all great exercises, and we want to help return our patients to these exercises after an injury. Find out how in this free video.
If you’d like to improve your treatment of elbow pain, dive into the new series of online courses on elbow pain, available to you with a free trial Clinical Edge membership now.
