Increase Elbow Recovery from straight arm work (NOT injured)

[Matthew Semegran]

Hello everyone!

I'm back to my old plateau of my elbow tendon endurance being a limiting factor on a lot of my training, so I'm just wondering if there's anything I can do speed up my recovery window. 

Couple of quick things that I'm already doing:

• I'm NOT injured, nor do I have any elbow injuries in the past (all the advice I found was about rehab)
• I'm not pushing past the sharp localized pain (learned this the hard way my first year of training) 
• I'm taking my time with my workouts now and not trying to rush (see point 2 about learning the hard way... lol)

 

I point these out so people don't just say search the forums as everything I found was more from an injury recovery perspective, where as I'm more looking at this from a recovery optimization. 

 

I'm just wanting to make sure there's nothing else I can do then just proper warm up, rest and not over doing things to speed up my elbow recovery.

 

Thanks everyone!

 

Matt

[Joaquin Malagon]

High rep low intensity curls can help to get nutrients via localized blood flow into the elbow to increase recovery. 

[Julian Aldag]

On 8/24/2018 at 12:33 PM, Matthew Semegran said:

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I'm back to my old plateau of my elbow tendon endurance being a limiting factor on a lot of my training,

Elbow tendon endurance.....? this is quite a specific statement. how did u come to this conclusion? what problems are you experiencing?

The more info you give, the better and more detailed answers we can give you!

 

[Alessandro Mainente]

When you begin the rings work your elbows should be already prepared so that they can recover from a 3 days a week rings work without problems.

[Thomas Hanssen]

10 hours ago, Joaquin Malagon said:

High rep low intensity curls can help to get nutrients via localized blood flow into the elbow to increase recovery. 

I thought tendons responded better to heavy slow eccentric reps?

[Matthew Semegran]

13 hours ago, Joaquin Malagon said:

High rep low intensity curls can help to get nutrients via localized blood flow into the elbow to increase recovery. 

Should I be doing this a couple times a week or just when in the middle of my sets when it they're sore?

 

10 hours ago, Julian Aldag said:

Elbow tendon endurance.....? this is quite a specific statement. how did u come to this conclusion? what problems are you experiencing?

The more info you give, the better and more detailed answers we can give you!

 

For example, I'm back to doing 60 second handstand holds, and the first 2-3 sets are pretty cake, but then by my 4th one my elbows get really tired, same for my planche work. I mainly feel in my inside elbow, I can post pictures if it'd help.  Also I used to be doing tuck planche, so the strength wasn't so much the issue, but the long holds. Though I restarted after I took a long break during 2017 due to some mental health issues and I'm damn glad I did, I missed a lot of subtle parts of the training and I'd rush through things before I was really ready.

 

Also, it doesn't hurt all the time, which is why I mentioned I have/had no injuries, they just get tired the quickest so I want to speed up their recovery. I've just always been more of explosive/power athlete, so endurance was never my strong suit, (I enjoyed sprinting a lot more then cross country for example) but I know a big portion of GST is endurance, so that's why I'm seeking tips on how to work on this.

 

5 hours ago, Alessandro Mainente said:

When you begin the rings work your elbows should be already prepared so that they can recover from a 3 days a week rings work without problems.

 

Great to know!!  I had to buy the ring course as the curiosity was killing me... (maybe I was a cat in a past life.. lol) but I know I've got a ways before I'm working on rings, as much I'd love to start...

 

 

 

Thank you everyone for your replies!! Please let me know what else I can do to help!

[Matthew Semegran]

Just dawned on me to help shed some light on this, that I should post the current steps I'm currently working on. I was working on higher level steps before, but I've since learned there were some subtle things I was missing, like on my sPL, I was NOT keeping my shoulder blades spread throughout all the steps, so when I got to SE3, that was a big limiting factor. I've since corrected this.

 

Currently on:

 

FL: PE 4 - Step 6 (no arm issues here)

SL: PE 4 - Step 1 (just got here, but on PE3, my elbows would get a little tired)

MN: PE 4 - Step 4 (no issues here)

HBP: PE 3 - Step 6 - just general fatigue from learning to do these properly, so no issues, also, at my peak, I was working on PE12. My elbows were fine on this as it was more of a strength factor then a pure endurance one. 

RC: PE 3 - Step 5 - No elbow issues, just endurance, slowly being worked on.

sPL: PE 3 - Step 9 - Elbows get pretty tired on this one for sure. Been working on it for a few weeks now.

HS 1: PE 9 - Step 8 - Again, by the 4th set, my elbows are smoked, otherwise no issues

[Alessandro Mainente]

2 hours ago, Matthew Semegran said:

Should I be doing this a couple times a week or just when in the middle of my sets when it they're sore?

 

For example, I'm back to doing 60 second handstand holds, and the first 2-3 sets are pretty cake, but then by my 4th one my elbows get really tired, same for my planche work. I mainly feel in my inside elbow, I can post pictures if it'd help.  Also I used to be doing tuck planche, so the strength wasn't so much the issue, but the long holds. Though I restarted after I took a long break during 2017 due to some mental health issues and I'm damn glad I did, I missed a lot of subtle parts of the training and I'd rush through things before I was really ready.

 

Also, it doesn't hurt all the time, which is why I mentioned I have/had no injuries, they just get tired the quickest so I want to speed up their recovery. I've just always been more of explosive/power athlete, so endurance was never my strong suit, (I enjoyed sprinting a lot more then cross country for example) but I know a big portion of GST is endurance, so that's why I'm seeking tips on how to work on this.

 

 

 

Great to know!!  I had to buy the ring course as the curiosity was killing me... (maybe I was a cat in a past life.. lol) but I know I've got a ways before I'm working on rings, as much I'd love to start...

 

 

 

Thank you everyone for your replies!! Please let me know what else I can do to help!

Personally, after completing F4 I was able to use a 3 days a week rings work....for a 86 kg people the elbows stress is a lot. but no problem in the recovery. actually i'm still training crosses, maltese and inverted cross, 3 times a week.