Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I’ve been doing a basic kettlebell routine for about a year now and it’s been pretty good. Prior to that I only ever cycled for exercise.

Over the last few weeks I’ve slowly developed (self diagnosis) tendonitis on my forearm close to my elbow. I’ve tried Ibuprofen, massage and a weeks rest but it still hurts as much as it ever did. I’ve had assorted joint aches over the last year that mostly cleared themselves up as I got stronger, but I’m not sure this is going to do the same.

Anybody have any experience with this ? or suggest alternative exercise ?

I got that from swings and cleans. Rest made the pain go away and fixing my form fixed the issue going forward. If you do NOT extend your elbow during the backswing in particular, you'll stress the elbow quite a lot more than if you stretch your arm. Then you have to gauge how close to your groin the bell moves on the backswing. Try to see some videos of people doing swings and cleans for reps and notice the exact trajectory of the bell coming down from the top position to the furthest position on the backswing. My trajectory was too close to the ground compared to optimum.

Rest, straight arms and fixing the trajectory thus helped, ME, when I had a similar problem about one year ago. I cannot say if you're doing the same thing wrong as me, but it's a place to start.

Also, with overuse injuries switching to other types of exercises for a month or so can be helpful. As with everything, too much of any one thing can be bad.

If there's swelling, redness or soreness, that's your body asking for rest so it can repair the damage. Don't stress injured joints or tendons with excessive movement, but at the same time don't become inactive. As other's have mentioned use proper form, and ensure your not working with too heavy weights? Did you recently up your weight at all?

Ibuprofen and icing/heating can actually be counter-productive to the healing process. The inflammation actually protects your tendon from further damage, only take pain killers or apply ice/heat relief if the pain is unbearable.

Did something change?

Are you staying loose whenever possible? Some people just crush the handle the entire time, that could be a problem. You could try a sock sleeve to help get used to this idea:

http://tracyrif.blogspot.com/2007/07/tr ... ining.html

Or maybe play with using some chalk.

Do you have any sudden jerking, especially at the bottom or top of the movements? A hard catch after the drop, or maybe too much power, causing the bell to flip straight over your hand instead of roll.

Thanks all,

A few minutes on Onnit Academy does show me that my form has got sloppy, I also think my warmup routine has too many largely pointless rapid grip changes and I've been slowly transitioning from 16kg to 24kg.

I'm going to ease off for a bit, change my routine, try a sock sleeve. If that doesn't work maybe join a gym (groan) for a couple of months to do something different.

For working form, this is tedious, but video yourself with your phone, and review between sets.

Whenever I do it, there's always a what the hell moment, when I realize I look nothing like the instructional videos online. In my head, I'm Pavel!

But then I'm able to tweak things and see what looks or feels better. At this point, I've actual got a tripod sitting out in my home gym, specifically to hold my phone.