Dave Draper’s Musclebuilding Q&A

I began working out again at home with a bar, a bench and dumbbells after a huge layoff, ’bout 25 years! I’m experiencing elbow pain, mainly with curls and slightly with kickbacks and triceps extensions. Can’t do laterals at all without pain. Holding the weights for deadlifts and calf raises kills the elbows. Do have any advice for an old feller who loves to lift?

Elbows are under heavy stress: age and condition and inflammation due to overuse and overload and insufficient repair time. Additionally, training with limited equipment narrows down your choices of exercises to perform. Less variation, more redundancy and you’re pressed to practice unsuitable or disagreeable movements.

Sounds like tendonitis… so common and disheartening. You’ll have to follow the pain and work out the solution yourself — basic instinct and commonsense.

Rearrange your workouts so pressing and triceps work don’t interfere with one another. Don’t over-extend the elbow in either the lock-out or bent position.

Skip triceps kickbacks — troublesome.

Invest in a pair of elbow wraps that can be pulled on and off, snug and not-so-snug as needed. Helps me bigtime.

Take Aleve or other anti-inflammatory OTC medicine on tougher days. Ice if swelling is visible, or even maybe if not.

Try reverse or thumbs-up curls for painfree biceps action.

Expand your exercise repertoire by improvising or further equipment investments or a gym membership.

Provide a three-day weight-free rest each week.

Carry on the good fight, go… Godspeed… dd