Elbow Pain can ruin your workout. When elbow pain gets in the way of your training like this, it can be hard to see the results that you want from your workout. To avoid elbow pain in my training, there are several handles that I use INSTEAD of doing them on the actual Pull-up Bar. This video shows you the handles I use to reduce elbow pain and make my Pull-ups virtually pain free.

Here are links to buy the devices shown in the video for pain free Pull-up training, as well

The Back Bull: I love this thing. It goes onto the bar easy and allows for both a near-overhand or near-underhand position, depending on which muscles you want to emphasize.

Perfect Pull-ups: Unfortunately, I can no longer find Perfect Pull-ups for sale. However, there is a tool out there called Stamina Rotating Handles that look very similar. What’s nice about these is that they allow for a bit wider grip.

Grapple Grips: To my surprise, I can not find these handles anymore either. That’s a shame because these handles could be used for Dumbbell Rows and Cable Rows, as well. A similar device you might want to try is the Grandfather Clocks from Rogue Fitness

Metolius Rock Rings: These tools are made for training the hands for the demands of climbing, but with the way they swivel while hanging from a bar, the make Pull-ups much more comfortable for the elbows.

All of these handles are very effective at reducing the pain you feel when doing Pull-ups and Chin-ups. If your back training seems to be suffering due to elbow pain, then give one of these a try and see if they can be effective at reducing elbow pain from Pull-ups as much as they have been for me.

Any questions on these tools, feel free to ask via the comments section below, email, or message.

All the best in your training.

Jedd

Avoiding Arm Pain from Kettlebell Training

Kettlebells continue to become more and more common in gyms and more popular these days.

And no wonder – they have proven to be very useful tools that can help you accomplish your strength, muscle and fat burning goals.

But, even with all their awesome benefits, if your form is off, kettlebells can cause some issues if your not careful.

Here are three very common errors in kettlebell training that can lead to elbow pain if you don’t correct them.

1. Grip in the Rack

When you hold a kettlebell near your chest/shoulder, it is called the Rack. This is a starting point for lifts such as the Kettlebell Press and Jerk, so it is also a common position to be in.

Unfortunately, this can also be a very annoying position if your technique is off. The kettlebell can sit on your forearm in a way that cause pain.

This pressure can later cause further issues in your elbow if you don’t correct things right away.

Luckily, this can usually be corrected by adjusting how you hold the kettlebell. By changing where and how your hand is positioned, you can reduce a lot of the pressure (you’ll see it later).

2. Crashing on the Snatch

New Kettlebell lifters often experience brutal forearm pain when performing Snatches, because they catch the kettlebell incorrectly at the top of the movement.

Usually, this comes from being too passive at the end of the Snatch. Lifters get into the habit of letting the kettlebell handle swivel in their hand. This may be what it looks like should be going on, but it is not.

When the kettlebell handle spins in the hand like this, the giant belly of the KB will smash with full force into the forearm, and this can cause deep contusions, surface bruising, and even knock the forearm bones slightly out of whack.

Having a tender forearm is bad enough, but when bones are starting to get moved around, that can throw up every press, row and curl movement you do in the gym.

Instead, what you need to do when finishing the snatch is allow the kettlebell to turn on an axis in the center of the bell itself.

This video shows exactly what you should do:

3. Bottom Portion of the Swing

The Swing is one of the foundational movements of Kettlebell lifting. It is a lift in itself, plus it the initial stage of many other lifts, such as the Snatch and Clean, because it is the most efficient way to bring the kettlebell from the floor to the shoulder or overhead position. Remember that word – “Efficient.”

When many lifters are starting out, they develop a habit where they keep their hand and forearm pronated at the bottom of the swing. That is, at the very bottom of the Swing, their palm is facing to the sky and the back of their hand is facing the ground.

In the true spirit of efficiency, this is not what should be done. Mechanically, during this follow-through portion of the swing, you should allow your forearm and hand to actually turn over BEYOND pronation. Otherwise, you are essentially resisting this rotation and fighting the bell.

Considering the number of repetitions that are possible with Kettlebell Swings, fighting the bell like this could potentially add up to a great deal of stress on the common flexor tendon in the forearm and result in pain that can be very irritating and get in the way of a great deal of your other training as well.

Correct Your Technique with This Video

These 3 areas of kettlebell training are easily fixed, once the lifter is made aware of them. The problem is that most people don’t even realize they are setting themselves up for injury to their forearm and elbows until it is too late.

For more information on how you can correct and prevent injuries and pain in the forearm and elbow, check out Fixing Elbow Pain. This program has helped hundreds of lifters get back to pain-free workouts and healthy lower arms.

Pick it up today => Fixing Elbow Pain

All the best in your training,

Jedd

DIESELS,

This week, I have been posting and emailing quite a bit about elbow pain.

The main reason I have put so much emphasis on this week is because my buddy Rick Kaselj and I updated our program, Fixing Elbow Pain, and we put together an improved version.

We took our already helpful program and make it better based on feedback we’ve received from past customers.

The other reason why I wanted to focus on this is because over the last couple of weeks, I have talked with MANY of you who have been reporting elbow pain, especially Tennis Elbow.

I asked Rick if he could do me favor and just shoot a quick video on some of the basic causes of Tennis Elbow. Rick knows his stuff. He has 20+ years of experiencing helping people get out of pain, and it turns out elbow pain is a common injury he helps people with.

So, check out this video and understand the causes of Tennis Elbow.

As you can see, Tennis Elbow pain can be developed in as quickly as a day or two from doing an extra building job at your house, or by doing too much training over the course of a weekend.

It can also be something that is more cumulative – it can result over the course of several weeks, such as doing bigger home-improvement projects, or by specializing on one certain aspect of training in a micro-cycle, such as if you are attacking grippers hard for a while, or working on lifting the Blob or Inch.

Getting Rid of Tennis Elbow

If you’ve got it, Rick can help you get rid of it with his multi-faceted rehab program. Many people have actually reported that they have noticed a change in pain after as little as just one workout.

Avoiding Tennis Elbow and Keeping it Away For Good

If you want to keep elbow pain away for good, I will share with you EXACTLY what I do week in and week out to stay healthy. Some of the techniques I show on the Preventive side can also be used to fix pain as well. I can’t wait to share this with you.

Special Bonuses if You Grab It Today

If you haven’t grabbed Fixing Elbow Pain 2.0 yet, take note that Rick and I added 3 time-sensitive bonuses this week and they are being pulled down after this weekend.

Here are the bonuses:

Bonus #1 – Indestructible Elbows – This is awesome. This is a program that Jedd put together that you can do to fend off elbow pain from ever coming back again.

Bonus #2 – Secrets to Pain Free Elbows – This is a coaching call that Jedd and I did with past customers, answering their questions and expanding on the Fixing Elbow Pain program.

Bonus #3 – Private Coaching Call – Jedd and I will be doing one more private coaching call in the next few week. The first one went so well and helped a lot of people and we will do another one.

All the best in your training,

Jedd

DIESELS!

Elbow Pain is something that causes problems for any lifter.

It doesn’t matter what style of training or sport you practice, if your elbow is riddled with pain, it is going to keep you from lifting the weights you want to, it can keep you from performing your best, and it can be a little distraction that just sits there all the time in the back of your mind, and you will always be thinking about it and wondering when it it is going to bother you again…

I got the following email today in my inbox just as I was starting the below post. This is a question I get on a routine basis, so I thought I would address it here for all of you.

“Hello Jedd, my name is Alex. I am definitely a fan of your site. Since you’ve been injured before, maybe you could help me out.

I sustained an injury while doing 600 lbs calve raises. I was diagnosed with patellofemoral syndrome by the physical therapist, and I had real sore knees for six months.

Because it took so long to heal, I now have a fear of getting injured and I am always sore, even when I work out. I wonder, is that little twinge of pain in my wrist flexors indicative of a larger problem, or is it nothing?

Anyway, this fear of injury is causing me a lot of problems with really going to my full potential. Even now, I’m starting to be afraid of training my forearms, which I never thought would happen before. I’m afraid my wrist tendons will snap clean off the bone.

Anyway, Jedd, maybe you have some advice for me?”

Hell yeah, I have advice for you.

Do everything in your power to prevent these injuries BEFORE THEY HAPPEN, because even if that muscle never tears, and all you get is an injury to the connective tissues, that will be bad enough.

My recommendation right away is to grab our book, Fixing Elbow Pain 2.0 RIGHT NOW while we have it on sale and start implementing the preventive strategies I cover TODAY.

Diesels, I have suffered from High Forearm and Elbow Pain on more occasions than I care to count. The first time I got it, I was doing a lot of Steel Bending while I was also doing Odd Object Lifting like Atlas Stone Training.

Both of these activities are completely safe if you watch the volume and have good technique. Unfortunately for me, I was NOT monitoring volume because I thought I was some kind of tough guy, and I was very new at Atlas Stone Lifting, so I was probably lacking a bit in the technique area too.

What resulted from this lack of attention to volume and technique was some of the worst pain I’ve ever been in – a combined case of Tennis Elbow (lateral epicondylitis) and Golfer’s Elbow (Medial epicondylitis). Both of these conditions are bad enough alone, but I had a serious case of each of them and getting through a workout meant at least a half dozen ibuprofen – I was probably on way to developing an ulcer as well!

Fortunately, these cases are preventible if you follow some really simple prevention methods, which I’d like to cover below.

How to Prevent High Forearm and Elbow Pain

1. Warm-up Properly

The muscles and connective tissues of the high forearm and elbow area need to be warmed up in order to function properly and to keep injuries away. In the video below I show what I do at the end of my full warm-up session in order to make sure my forearms are flushed with blood and the joints lubricated.

2. Stretch Post-Workout

If you are not stretching the forearm and hand muscles out at the end of your workout, then you are initiating a countdown to injury. Stretching helps to reduce the tension in the muscles, relaxing them, and allowing them to more fully recover. Skipping stretching is so 2001! It only takes 3 minutes to stretch out the forearms effectively, so I don’t want to hear any excuses.

3. Stretch Contributing Muscle Areas

Any time I feel tension building in the area near the elbows and epicondyles, I schedule a 30-minute massage. To my surprise, sometimes she isn’t even concerned about the epicondyle area, but rather up the chain to the upper arm. You see, the tricep had gotten do tight, it was pulling on the lower forearm bones and causing issues for the entire elbow. Here is what I do in order to keep this pain from coming back, 3 times a week.

For Alex, I would tell him to stretch his biceps. They could very well be tight and causing the same kinds of problems to his elbow, just on the other side. If you notice above, he said it is the flexor muscles that he is worried about. And along the lines of worrying – that’s got to stop right now! When you worry, you focus too much on the problem. Instead of worrying, pick up my program, Fixing Elbow Pain 2.0, follow my preventive strategies in the 2nd ebook, and you won’t have to worry anymore.

On top of the three things I show above, I also have a handful of exercises I do every single week in order to keep the lateral portion of the high forearm/elbow strong and stimulated. Weakness in the area is also a contributor, so I make sure there is NO CHANCE for weakness in the area.

DIESELS, I haven’t had a serious bout of epiconylitis in over 2 years since employing these regular prevention methods and I have done nothing since then but train harder and harder and harder.

I am confident that if more people followed my lead, fewer people would suffer from annoying pain like this. The information is available for CHEAP, a fraction of the cost of actual physical therapy, that’s for sure, so I am not sure why more people don’t get our ebook.

I talk all about these exercises in Fix My Elbow Pain (Special Price Right Now). Rick Kaselj and I worked together on this. He covered the REHAB portion, and I called the PRE-HAB and PREVENTIVE side.

Believe me, you DON’T want this kind of pain. I will show you exactly how to keep it away. Just click the image below.

All the best in your training,

Jedd

Many of the most common types of Forearm and Elbow Pain are preventable, but in the case that you do end up developing a Forearm or Elbow Injury such as Medial Epicondylitis (Golfer’s Elbow), Lateral Epicondylitis (Tennis Elbow), or any other type of injury to the soft tissue of the forearm near the elbow, like tendonitis or tendonosis, there are ways to get rid of the pain without having to spend hundreds of dollars on expensive therapy, take a bunch of pills with side effects or go under the knife for some kind of surgery.

I shot the following video to tell you about a project I have been working on with Rick Kaselj, called Fixing Elbow Pain. In this video I will tell you how the project came about, why I wanted to get Rick’s input regarding forearm and elbow injuries, and also I show you just one of the many things I have done over the years to get rid of injuries to the elbow and forearm and keep them from coming back with such training-effecting intensity over the last couple of years.

I hope this little video helps you out. If you have had injuries like the ones I mention in the video, then you know how bad they hurt and how much they can affect your training. You also know how tough it can be to get rid of them.

It is so much easier to prevent these injuries with simple exercises and other preventive strategies that add almost zero time to your training, that I hope you check this project out when it is ready to roll, next week.

Many of the methods that I cover in my section serve double duty as ways to not only keep Tennis Elbow and Golfer’s Elbow types of injuries from taking place, but they can also help put you on the road to recovery as well.

For instance, last month, I met Scott Mezzano at McHenry Community College and he told me about some issues his father was having. His dad plays a lot of guitar and the forearm pain he was experiencing was making it hard for him to do so. I know what it’s like to have a dad who lives with pain, so I wanted to share some techniques with him for his dad.

I told him about a quick battery of exercises I do after each training session and he passed it on to his pops, and I received this email shortly after:

“I would like to thank you again for coming to McHenry County College for the strength clinic last month. Everyone who attended your session had great things to say… Also, my dad has been doing the rubber band exercises and has had some relief with his tendonitis.“

I have had to deal with injuries like this many times over the years, almost always due to lack of guidance, my own rookie inexperience, and poor judgment. Since implementing preventive strategies, I have seen better results, continued strength progress, and I have been able to enjoy my training more.

I know that these techniques will be able to help out a lot more individuals as well.

If you want to make sure you get early notification of when this product is ready, make sure you are signed up for my newsletters, either in the upper right hand corner of this page, or by using the form below.

When you sign up using the above form, you’ll receive the cool interview I did with AJ Roberts, World Record Holding Powerlifter and one of the strongest dudes in the world.

All the best in your training,

Jedd