What's up guys, Michael Kamalu here! Today, I'm gonna go over something that is extremely common,
especially among weight lifters and that is Medial Elbow pain, what is also called golfer's elbow or
medial epicondylitis. First, I'm going to go over what exactly this is, then I'm going to give you
four things that you can do to relieve this pain so that you can get back to proper functionality.
First, what is the Medial Epicondylitis or golfer's elbow? What exactly is causing this
pain? Well, the Medial Epicondyle is a bony part of your elbow, right here. You can actually feel
it on yourself if you feel the inside of your elbow, right here. What is important to understand
is that, there are five key flexor muscles of the forearm that all insert right here, on this
bony part of your elbow. They are the Flexor Carpi Ulnaris, Flexor Carpi Radialis, Flexor
Digitorum Superficialis, the Palmaris Longus and Pronator Teres. Now, the reason that this Medial
Epicondyle gets inflamed and painful, especially among Late Lifters, is that we overwork reflux,
the muscles of our forearm. If you think about it, from curls to back rows to pull-ups, all of
that is primarily focused on flexing your wrists. You're bringing your arms in and overworking these
Flexor muscles in your forearm. What that ends up doing is putting a lot of pressure on the tendons
that insert right here, on this Medial Epicondyle and those tendons start pulling and pulling and
get tighter and tighter, and before long, you give that a nasty pain on the inside of your elbow. One
way to test this on yourself is to extend your arm out with your palm facing up and then have
somebody grab on to your fingers while you can pull in, and if you feel any pain inside your
elbow, right here, you have Medial Epicondylitis. So, now that we understand what is causing this
pain, what exactly can we do to fix it? Well, I'm going to give you four key things that you can
do. The first, because we know that it's caused by an overload of flexion in the forearm, we're
going to do what a lot of people neglect, and that is work the extensors of the forearm. When's the
last time you worked on those? Now, the reason they're not worked a lot, because there's not a
lot of traditional lifts that work the extensors of your forearm. The main one that people do
use is the reverse curls. So, if you've ever gotten a barbell, a straight bar or dumbbells,
and done curls with your palm facing down rather than up, then you are going to inevitably work
those extensors of the forearm. So, that is one of the first exercises that we're going to do to fix
it. So, pretty self-explanatory but you're going to grab any weight here and instead of giving a
curl up with your palm facing upwards, you're gonna rotate them so that your palm is facing
down, and you're gonna curl up the second exercise that you're going to do to correct this imbalance
in the forearm muscles is, well, a little more effective than the reverse curls. They're what
I call Fingertip Wrist extensions. You're going to grab the weight and let it go all the way to
the end of your fingertips, and then you're going to curl your wrist backwards movement, like this.
You're going to pause at the top of that to make sure you're really getting a good contraction in
those extensor muscles of the forearm. You can also do it with the cable. Have the cable down
low, and then have the handle at the very end of your fingertips, and curl your wrist backwards.
Know that exercise you can do to work those extensors are what I call Extended Wrist Rolls.
You're going to grab some kind of bar, as you can see here, have a broom handle, and while your
arms are extended, roll back like this. Now, some gyms will have an apparatus, whether they'll have
a weight hanging from a bar, and you can roll the way up. That's excellent if you have it, if not,
just grab any bar and roll your wrists backwards. The second step to alleviating the pain of Medial
Epicondylitis is to avoid all reflection of the forearms during other lifts. Now, there's many
different areas where this happens, but the one I really want to focus on is during curls. Any time
we are curling, especially a dumbbell, we have the natural tendency to curl our wrist inwards.
As we're bringing the way up in order to fix this, Medial Epicondylitis is overworking to
the forearms. You've got to focus on keeping your wrist extended and so, when you bring it up, one
way to know whether you're doing this right is, if your palm is facing the ceiling the entire time,
and I even like to open my hand to make sure that I'm not curling my forearm forward. So,
curls should look like this, keeping your palm up the entire time. Not like this, okay? Not only
will that avoid aggravating the Medial Epicondyle of your forearm, but you also get a much better
workout of your bicep that way. Because you're not using your forearm to cheat, it's a better
isolation exercise. The third step to alleviating the pain of Medial Epicondylitis is to actually
stretch out those overworked flexor muscles of the forearm. Now, what some people try to do is
just do it themselves by pulling their fingers back and extending their elbow level. Work it
to some point, but there's a much more effective way to stretch those muscles, and this is what
you do. You're going to get down on your hands, and knees. Put your palms flat on the floor,
and then you're going to slowly rock forward until you get where you feel as much tension as you can
handle without pain. Leave it there for as long as you can handle, and then back. Do it between eight
and ten times keeping some tension at the maximal point, and you'll be able to stretch it out. Now,
you can also do this on a wall. For some reason, you can't get on your hands and knees. The fourth
step to read habit in your Medial Epicondylitis is actually to start working those flexor muscles
in a pain-free way, and ramp you back up to strength. Now, the way we're going to do this
is in an eccentric movement. The way you do it is to grab a weight and either a chair or a bench or
something that you can rest your forearm on, and then you're going to bring your wrist into
an extended position with your fingers extended as well. Now, what you're going to do, you're going
to assist the part of flexion in your other arm, and then let go, and slowly let your wrist extend.
So, you are resisting the downward movement of the dumbbell, that way, you can start working
these forearm muscles without any danger of over flexion, and irritation of the Medial Epicondyle
because the movement is not towards made of the condyle. It's away from it. You're simply using
those muscles to resist the movement, and the reason this is effective is because of all the
stretching and working. The Antagonistic Extensor muscles are going to help, but eventually,
you notice by strengthening those flexor muscles in a way that doesn't bring the irritation to the
Medial Epicondyle. Eccentric Load resistance is the best way to do that. So, there you have it
guys, in summary, the four things that we're going to do to overcome Medial Epicondylitis,
and get rid of your elbow pain are, one, to overcome this is balanced by working the extensors
of your forearm that are too often neglected. Two, avoid the over flexion of our forearms
during exercises such as the curl, making sure that we are keeping our wrist extended. Three,
we're going to actually stretch out the muscles before on the flexor muscles of the forearm,
and work on strengthening those flexors, and getting proper blood flow to the area through
Eccentric Flexion and lightweight works to make sure we ramp up slowly to the point where you can
be doing normal workouts again. Okay, so if you thought this was helpful, please leave me a like,
a comment, and make sure you hit that subscribe button. If you have any questions, either comment
below or find me on Instagram at michael_kamalu and I'll be happy to talk to you then.