Elbow Pain Rehab (Tennis & Golfer's Elbow) for BJJ | Part 3 (19 min)

Now I'm going to use the other hand to help me bring it back up again. So I'm just concentrating on lowering it down. I don't have to bring it back up. Okay, I can use the other hand to do that.

I'm going to repeat that. And again, to start with, you may only be able to do a few reps of this. So don't feel like you have to do all of them. It's okay to cut the set short.

That's it. And again, it's making sure that that is slow and controlled. I can change the amount of tension. Again, don't forget, I can change where I hold this band so I can put more tension on if I want, or I can make it a bit easier.

Or I can change the tension of the band. I can use a lighter band or a heavier band. So I want to get that point where it feels uncomfortable but it's not really painful. And it's important that we judge that correctly.

Okay, so when I've done that, I'm going to switch the band over. This time I want to make sure I wrap it around the thumb side of the wrist. Okay, and again, we're going to do a similar thing. Just with the palm facing up.

So again, you can do these with a light dumbbell. That's fine. I like the bands because you can very easily adjust the amount of force that you're putting through it. With a dumbbell, the weight's going to stay the same.

With this one, if I want slightly less tension, I can slide my hand, or if I want slightly more, I can do that as well. So that's the great thing about these. And also they're very portable. It's very easy to carry one around with you in your training bag.

And then you always have it available. Again, I want to take it right to the end of range of movement there. And I can adjust the position of that elbow again. I want to find the point where there's a little bit of discomfort, but nothing too extreme.

I'm going to go back this way. So again, my wrist is in a straight line as much as I can manage that. And again, for some of you, you may only want to take it at this part and then just do a small movement. That's fine as well.

So we want to challenge the muscle, but this isn't the right time to be a hero. Gradually stretching your comfort zone, but we want to make sure that we're not going to flare anything up. Okay, and switch that band over again. I'm going to go back to this one.

Okay. And again, if you turn the wrist slightly, or turn the arm slightly, you'll find that you can slightly emphasise muscles on the inside of the arm. And the exact position that brings on the symptoms may be slightly different for everyone. So we're looking to find the point that's a little bit uncomfortable, because that's where we want to be challenging it.

We're not going to push it too far at first. One more. And then we're going to go back to palm down again. Now at this point, it might be starting to get a little bit tired, in which case you can reduce the tension, or you might find that actually the pain's decreased.

Very often what you'll find is that as you go through the sets, the pain gets easier as you go through. It's a little bit counterintuitive sometimes, but often people find that when they load the muscles in the tendon, the pain reduces. So sometimes you think that rest is going to be the best thing for it. With tendon problems, that's almost never the case.

Actually, complete rest is one of the worst things that you can do for a tendon issue. And a couple more there. Like I said, remember that you don't have to go all the way up. If you're getting pain here, but you can hold it here, that's fine, you don't need to use the full range first, but you're working towards that.

So as the pain decreases, you're going to try and increase the amount of movement that you're getting. Repeat this. And what you'll find is that some of these, depending on where the pain is, depending on exactly what's going on, some of these exercises will be a little bit more uncomfortable than others. Some of them you might not feel at all, others might be quite sore.

So again, you're going to adjust the amount of tension in exactly what you're doing based on your particular symptoms. And then you're going to try and increase the amount of movement that you're getting. Okay, I'm going to stop there. So this is our shoulder mobility, and we're going to follow up on that.

So this is one of our shoulder mobility exercises. I'm going to use quite a light dumbbell, and you definitely want to make sure this is light to start with. If this feels good, you can always increase the weight later on. So for this exercise, I want my shoulder at 90 degrees to my body, and I want my elbow at 90 degrees as well.

And all I'm going to do is I'm just going to take the arm back with the weight as far as I can comfortably. So if I can get the back of my hand to the mat, that's great. If I can't, that's okay as well. Now you may start to find, if your pain is on the inside of your elbow, you may find this starts to strain it.

So again, I would make sure you're starting with a nice light weight when you do this. You say a small bottle of water or a can of beans can be a good place to start. Okay, I'm just controlling that rotation through the shoulder. A little bit of discomfort at the elbow isn't something to panic about, but I don't want it to be a sharp pain, and I certainly don't want to aggravate it.

So if the pain's getting worse through the set, I will do fewer reps or I'll use a lighter weight. Few more. This all feels good. Like I say, you can increase the weight here.

I'd increase it gradually, not all at once. Now, if I want to go the other way, I'm gonna roll slightly onto my side. So I'm gonna put my hip on this side to the floor, and then I'm just gonna take the arm down, again, only as far as I can. So that's as far as I can take it before my shoulder comes up.

So I'm just gonna use that range of motion there. Again, if you get pain in the elbow with this, you might need to use a lighter weight. Again, I'm not looking for a shoulder workout here. I'm more interested in the amount of mobility I get.

I'm gonna get back onto my back. I'm just gonna go back to this one. So. We're working the rotator cuff, but we're also trying to make the most of that shoulder movement.

And you'll notice I'm keeping my fingertips on my shoulder here. Just to make sure that my shoulder's not coming up, I'm keeping it in place. Again, I'm not really pushing it. I'm just pushing it in.

I'm just pushing it in. I'm just pushing it in. I'm just pushing it in. I'm just pushing it in.

I'm not really pushing it. I'm just monitoring what it's doing. Turn onto my side. I go the other way.

Okay. Okay. And we're gonna stop there. We're gonna go onto the next thing.

So we're gonna do some more finger extensions. So we're gonna do some finger extensions. So we're gonna do some more finger extensor work. I've said this before.

I don't think Jiu-Jitsu guys in general do nearly enough work for their finger extensors. We do loads of gripping, loads of pulling with this side of the forearm. This side of the forearm often is comparatively quite weak because we don't use it nearly as much. And that's one of the things that can lead towards this imbalance that can cause problems at the elbow.

Okay, so finger extensor work is great for everyone. It's great for people who have problems with their elbows and whether you've got elbow problems or not. But specifically for you guys, this is a really good exercise. So we looked at some the other day with the rubber bands.

I'm gonna give you an alternative today. This is, it just makes it a little bit more interesting. I'm using a drink shaker. You can put a bit of water in it if you wanna make it heavier.

Okay, so again, I'm just using my, the extensors to hold the beaker up. Like I say, the heavier I make that and the more water I've got in it, the more interesting it gets. I can hold that for, again, we're looking at about 20 seconds at a time. So I can hold that.

You can do both arms at once if you want. And then from there, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna alternate that with this wrist mobilization that we did before. Again, trying to take my fingertips back towards my shoulder. Anyone who does any Olympic weightlifting will be familiar with this.

Fingertips towards the shoulder, pushing the elbow up. And then I'm gonna do the other arm. And when we're done that, we're gonna go back and put this up, maybe put a bit more water in it. We're gonna hold that.

Again, you can play with slightly different positions. You can put your fingers in different places. You can use different kinds of beakers. I'd stay away from anything breakable.

And then rest. We're gonna go back to our mobilization again. And what you'll probably be finding by now is that some of these exercises feel more relevant to you or feel more beneficial to you than others. I would encourage you to do the full set.

I think the idea is that we're getting a balance there. But it's fine as well if you find there's a particular exercise you like to take that away with you, to build that into your warmups, build that into your training sessions and use that outside of this program as well. Last time, we're gonna go back to this one again. Again, you can change position of the elbow, moving it around, write the alphabet here.

Just getting the arm into different positions. And then we'll finish with mobilization again. And we've done a bit more work today in the last few weeks. And I think we've done a bit more work today and we've done a bit more work today in terms of the eccentric loading.

So if the elbow becomes a little bit sore later on or it's a bit sore tomorrow, don't panic too much. As long as that's easing off, that's fine. If it's getting sore and it's staying sore and that soreness is building up, we may need to back off some of the exercise a bit. So again, be sensitive to how your body's responding and be prepared to back away.

The ideal amount of loading is gonna be different for every one of you. So it's very hard to have a set program where you say, I want you to do exactly this many reps with exactly this load. So to some extent, you have to pay attention to how that's feeling and to adjust things accordingly. So that's the end of day three.

We'll be back tomorrow for day four of this program. And again, we're starting to advance some of these exercises on a little bit further. Thank you.