Well, after a good month of only doing minimal upper body work my elbow is still giving me hell. So, I headed off to the ortho yesterday just to make sure I didn't have a torn ligament or misplaced vagina. Thankfully I don't suffer from either ailment.
What I do suffer from is what I suspected: tendinitis, or tendinopathy. Whichever floats your boat. He better explained to me that I'm constantly exacerbating the injury by allowing my wrist to bend every which way. He asked if I'm in the most pain first thing in the morning, and of course I answered yes. He explained that throughout the night we have a tendency to sleep in funky positions (I hang upside down from the rafters...don't judge my condo) and the wrist often times gets bent forward or backward for extended periods of time. This places incredible amounts of stress on the affected area. How do I rectumify that? Well he suggested I go out and buy a wrist brace and wear it while sleeping.
Unfortunately last night I was not able to make over to a sporty sports store to grab one, so each time I woke up (I tinkle a lot throughout the night) I tried to pay extra careful attention to my wrist placement. I noticed that I often times woke up with the wrist cocked, and even though I was consciously thinking about my wrist placement I'd still use that hand to push myself out of bed while I stood up. Whoops. That's a problem. So, tonight I'm going to grab a brace.
He also gave me a few exercises to perform. I'm sure you all remember this beautiful tear jerking blog I wrote earlier about eccentric exercise. Well, apparently the one I've been doing (which is mentioned therein) is not ideal for this injury. He said I was on the right track, but I'm only stressing the affected area once the forearm creates a 90* angle with the upper arm, and lower.
The correct exercises, he said, would be one where you lay your forearm across a surface and over the edge (like a bench or preacher curl stand) while holding a DB/KB/anything with weight. While holding the weight in a pronated position, slowly supinate the wrist. Your wrist and palm should be facing upward in the supinated position. Then return your wrist to the pronated position. Repeat.
The other exercise is conducted on a similar surface in a similar position; however, your wrist and hand will remain pronated. While holding the weight, bend your hand upward until it forms a 90* angle with your wrist. Then lower it all the way down, and repeat.
Also, any time I pick up an object on the left side of my body to make sure I lift said object close to my body. That keeps the elbow from flaring and further stress from being applied on the inflamed area.
He said 3 weeks of this should get me back to normal. This is after nearly a half year of hell. We'll see how it works, and I'll most definitely keep you updated.
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