Sebastian Brosche · 18 min · 1,780 words
Previously titled: Video 5 - Elbow Rehab
Welcome back to day five of our elbow tendon program. This is the home straight now. Hopefully by the time you've got this far, things will be starting to feel a bit better. You're starting to find that you've got some more strength and some more mobility.
The exercises today are another step up, so a little bit harder. If at any point you find they're a bit too much, feel free to cut the exercises short, do a few fewer reps, or even go back, do the previous sessions. As things progress, you'll find that you'll be able to do these with less and less pain. So today, I'm gonna need my TheraBand.
I've got my light dumbbell, and I've also got my elastic bands, and my tennis ball. Okay. Start in what should be a familiar position. Pinch the band under the opposite knee, and this time, I'm gonna try and go all the way down and back up again.
Okay. If that's too much, I can still help myself on the way up and concentrate on lowering down. But if it feels good, I'm gonna do both directions. Okay.
I still wanna make sure that I'm controlling it on the way down, so nice and slow and steady. Okay. And again, just turn it over. We're gonna do the same thing again.
So, really controlling it right the way down to the end point of the movement. I don't wanna be cutting this short if I can avoid it. Okay. So, I wanna make sure I'm getting the arm all the way to straight.
Okay. And again, if it's starting to feel quite easy, I'll adjust the tension. I'll make it a bit harder for myself. I'm gonna turn the palm over again.
Same thing again. Okay. Even though you're at the point where you're doing the full exercise, up and down, if you want to bring the isometrics in in between times, so other times of the day, that can still be a helpful way of controlling any flare ups that you're getting. And just a few more.
And give the arm a bit of a shake out. So, we're gonna do the same thing again. So, I'm gonna turn the palm over. I'm gonna turn the palm over.
I'm gonna turn the palm over. So, we're going for the final set. Hopefully, if you've chosen your tension correctly, you still have to get a little bit of a burn at this point. And like that.
And switch the hand back over again. And again, and switch the hand back over again. Final set, palm up. I tell people it's the only good use for a bicep curl.
And stop there. So, we're back to our ball and our band. And doing the same thing. Again, hopefully, you should be able to squeeze a bit harder at this point.
Again, and switch the hand back over again. And switch the hand back over again. And switch the hand back over again. And switch the hand back over again.
And switch the hand back over again. At this point, again, we can look for those positions to where the elbows, you start to feel it just a little bit. And hold it at that point. So, you're gonna squeeze as hard as you can, but only up to the edge of that pain.
Switch for the band. And push out. And like I say, you can buy these bands specifically for finger extensor exercises, but if you have a bunch of rubber bands, you can get a very similar effect. Again, the great thing with these is you can sit there and do that while you're watching television or while you're waiting for a bus.
You don't have to just reserve these for these sequences. Switch back to the ball again. Certainly, as far as the isometrics go, I always say with tendon issues, little and often is the best way. So, you want to be repeating these through the day.
And sometimes, if the pain comes on after you're doing something, that's a really good way to get it settled down. It feels like you want to start massaging it, you want to start digging into it or stretching it. Sometimes, actually, just putting some load on the muscle will settle things down faster than anything else. So, a lot of people use these to do reps with.
I find the isometrics, just the push and hold, works much better. Okay. So, we'll move on to the next one. And again, we'll put it together, some of the exercises we've done earlier in the sequence.
So, if you would like to do a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a So, if you've worked through all of them, you'll remember this one. We're working the rotator cuff and we're going for some shoulder mobility here. Again, you might find at this point, you can start putting a little bit more load on it without without getting pain at the elbow. So, that will often be the limiting factor for a lot of people is how much the elbow can tolerate rather than how much you can lift.
Enough. Pad lengai. Now來邊邊試試. Go back onto her back.
So we'll do a lot more of this sort of thing in the shoulder program. We'll be looking at the rotator cuff. But any time there's an upper body issue, say elbows and shoulders are really closely related. And a lack of movement at the shoulder, or a lack of strength at the shoulder, can often result in elbow problems.
There, what we're going to do is we're going to do another shoulder stretch. This one's for the lats. So I want to make sure that my lower back stays close to the ground. I don't want it to arch up too much.
And I'm just going to take the arms overhead. I'm just going to let the weight help me lower my hands as far back as I can until I feel a stretch on my shoulder. When I feel that stretch, I'm just going to hold it at that position. I'm just going to hold it there for, again, about 20 to 30 seconds.
So I'm just stretching it under a little bit of load. If you don't feel much of a stretch, you might want to try a slightly heavier weight. But it shouldn't be so much that you're struggling to hold it up. Again, a lot of people find that they have a short, tight lats.
And that can cause a lot of mobility issues around the shoulder. And it can contribute to shoulder problems as well as other upper limb issues. So this is a really good stretch. If you do have shoulder pain, and particularly if you start getting any pinching with this exercise, I would back off and get that checked out separately.
But as long as it just feels like a stretch rather than pain, go ahead. I'm just going to relax there and give that a shake off. We're going to go for one more. One more set of those.
Again, very often you'll find that after you get a bit more mobility from the first time out. And I want to make sure that I'm concentrating on keeping my lower back from arching too much. I want to make sure that the lower back is staying in a neutral position. It's very easy.
If I want to take my hands to the floor, it's very easy to let my lower back arch up. I don't want to do that. And rest there. So this last exercise is quite an effort to introduce mass It's quite an intense stretch for all the muscles down the front of the arm.
It's a great exercise if you can get into that position. If it's still too painful, if you're still getting quite a lot of soreness around the elbow, I'd suggest trying it against a wall first rather than doing it with your body weight on the floor. But if you can get into this position, it's a really good one. Okay, so I'm gonna take my arms, palms facing forwards in front of me, and I'm gonna lie on top of them in that position.
Okay, so. So there's not much to see here, but what I'm feeling is quite an intense stretch through the elbow, down into the front of the forearm, and all the way up into the biceps. And I can hold that for as long as it's reasonably comfortable. So again, I'm aiming for about 20 seconds, but if I need to stop sooner, that's fine.
And I should take the weight off. Sit up, and again, give your arms a bit of a shake. Maybe massage them out a little bit. And we're just gonna go for one more of those.
Like I said, this is quite an intense stretch. That's why we left it right till the end of the program. But if you can build up into it, so it's a great one for lengthening all those shortened tissues through the forearm from all that gripping that we do. When you get into that position, make sure you're in the same position as me.
When you get into that position, make sure you keep breathing. If you want to make it more intense, you can start lifting one leg and then the other leg. A bit more pressure down through the arms. And again, give the arms a shake out.
So, that's day five. So from here, you can go back, you can start again. You work your way through the program. I would recommend continuing with these exercises.
You want to keep doing them even after the pain has gone away. Now you can do it again, you can do it again, you can do it again. You can do it again, you can do it again. You can do it again, you can do it again.
You can do it again, you can do it again. And then you can continue with the exercise until the pain has gone away. Now you don't necessarily need to do the full program every day, but I would recommend starting to put some of these exercises into your warm-ups, into your everyday routine, into your training programs, and making sure that you're regularly strengthening those muscles, those tendons, just to stay on top of things and to stop the pain from coming back.
This is the transcript. Become a member to watch the video.
Watch now →