- What's up, folks?
I'm Yani, this is Rad and we're down at Unity Gym
and a lot of people have asked us to do a follow up
or a more recent updated version for our
forearm tendinitis or golfers/tennis elbow videos.
We've done two of these and they've been
really, really successful.
A lot of people reaching out, telling us
how great they are, so we thought we'd add to this
because our knowledge and skill is constantly developing.
Today, I'm gonna use Rad as my model,
but before we get down onto the tools,
we're gonna do a slight little bit of theory.
(upbeat rock music)
Okay, this is what we call at Unity Gym
the issue intensity continuum.
This is probably the biggest thing that people get wrong
when they're rehabbing any injury.
Let me explain.
On one side, we have the issue spectrum
and on the other side, we have the intensity spectrum.
So, if our issue is a ten,
here, then our intensity
needs to be a one or a zero.
So meaning, if you've just injured yourself,
then you will not be exercising at all.
That makes sense, right?
As our issue decreases,
our intensity increases.
So let's just take an example mid-way.
Let's say hypothetically the pain you're experiencing
now in your forearms is a six out of ten.
That means that our intensity
of exercise should not exceed a four out of ten.
This is super important to understand
because most of us, we develop forearm tendinitis
if it's gym-related by doing too much gripping work.
It might be from pull ups, deadlifts, bicep curl,
tricep extension or all of the above and a combination
of all of the above.
If you're an athlete, it could be from playing tennis,
if you're a golfer, it could be from playing golf.
Whatever it is, what we tend to do is,
we go, we hurt ourselves, we get diagnosed,
we take some time off for recovery
and then we jump straight back in to what you're doing.
If that was an elite level athlete, then your intensity
would've been somewhere up here,
eight, nine or ten.
Particularly if you're like me and Rad in the gym,
we're doing loads and loads of calisthenics work
and gymnastics work, where we're balancing on our hands
using our forearms, where we're doing muscle ups,
where we're doing ring, sequences of movement.
It's very, very high demand on our forearms
so we're usually always operating around a nine or ten.
And in dead leg weights maybe
a six or seven.
That's what most people do and here's the mistake
that we all make.
We get an injury and initially the injury is
a ten out of ten.
It stops us or prevents us from exercising.
And then we have a few weeks off,
we might even go and see a physio or a soft tissue
therapist to do some ART on the arm.
If you watch the first program, that's what
we were recommending.
And then we tend to come straight back in
and try and repeat our intensity levels up here again.
We forget that our issue probably hasn't gone
to a three or a two, it's probably still up
around that nine, ten or seven mark.
And we should actually be doing exercises that match
our issue, that match the pain, that match the level
of discomfort that we're experiencing
or the level of discomfort that we were experiencing.
Here's the thing, and this is important to understand,
An injury, be it an acute injury that happens very quickly
or something that happens from overuse, it's from
an abusive load and that abusive load may
have been something you did in one incident
or it may be something you do over time in multiple
incidents like in tendinitis in the forearms,
golfers and tennis elbow.
But when we have that abusive load that causes the
inflammation and that causes effectively the breakdown
in the tissues and the tissue remodeling,
we have to respect where we fall on that issue intensity
continuum when we return to training.
So today, what I'm gonna show you is a couple
of exercises or movements,
that actually allow you to enter in
at a much lower point, even in the workouts that we put
together earlier, for those of you who are still
experiencing issues, around here.
Let's go out on the gym floor and take a look.
- Okay, I've got my sexy model, Rad, here,
my brother, and he's going to demonstrate
a couple of exercises that we use as a good entry point.
First of all, we're gonna do what's called isometrics,
or isometric contractions.
That's a contraction in the muscle tendon without
any movement occurring.
Let's jump down.
So we're working all the different types of movement.
The first one we'll do is the supinators and pronators.
So what Rad's gonna do is grip
the weight here.
And this weight, it's a Clubbell, is wanting to exert
force this way, so just by holding it there,
he's working the pronators.
Okay?
Nice and easy.
Now, when we're doing these isometrics,
and any of these movements,
you're going to have to experience a small level
of discomfort to force the tissue to remodel.
But it cannot go over a four out of ten
on the discomfort scale.
Very, very important.
And a great little marker to figure out whether
you've gone too hard is that if it hurts
the following day with zero stimulation
or zero stimulus, then you've gone too hard
the day before, okay?
So Rad's going to effectively, let's say hypothetically,
he was experiencing some discomfort and tendinitis
in his elbow, he would want to take this to a weight
and a difficulty where he feels it
for about a four out of ten, okay?
- And if you don't have a Clubbell, a really good
thing that you can use is a broom
because with a broom stick, what you can do,
you've got the head of the broom out there,
which will apply pressure for you,
and the further your hand is away from the center,
the more pressure it is.
So if you can handle it here one week,
you can put a little mark there and then maybe
next week you can try and move your hand a little
bit further away so you can incrementally increase
the difficulty.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Rad actually used a broomstick when he rehabbed his arm.
He found it better because of that reason.
He could mark and incrementally progress the exercise
really, really easily.
Our Clubbells go from two kilos to four kilos to six kilos
which is too big of progression, so sometimes you do need
that middle ground, especially when you take
into consideration that issue intensity continuum.
You don't want to jump from a two to a six on the
intensity level of your movement.
Okay, let's demonstrate an isometric contraction
in the supination position.
So now what he's doing is, he's putting tension
through the arm, he's squeezing the dumbbell
and if we did have an injury there,
I'd be telling him to use a dumbbell and position
his arm in a way,
which might mean that he doesn't rest on here,
it might mean he has to stand up,
but he wants to position his arm
where he can feel the discomfort.
But remember, you do not want that discomfort
going over a four out of ten.
Ten being like ridiculously painful,
too much so that you couldn't hold
the dumbbell anymore, okay?
So once he's feeling it, then we're just gonna
hold that isometric contraction for
about ten or fifteen seconds and you can do that
three or four times, daily,
until you're ready to progress to eccentrics.
So let's show what an eccentric would look like
if you're using your other arm.
So make sure you note that Rad used his other arm
to help bring the dumbbell up,
then he controls the eccentric-only contraction
on the way down.
Now this is both good for rehabbing and remodeling
the tissue, but it's also good
for reestablishing full mobility in the forearm.
He wants to go full range of motion,
allow the arm to stretch all the way down.
And make sure that he's not doing the concentric contraction
yet because that would take him further up that
intensity spectrum and it would probably be too intense
for a real injury, okay?
Flip it around and we'll demonstrate the same thing
in pronation, so this is if you had tennis elbow.
So now, again, rather than the weight going down
that way, he's actually holding it up
in an isometric contraction.
We're not creating any movement.
This is the entry point for someone who's
on a nine or ten
on that issue spectrum.
Okay, good, and then an eccentric contraction.
He'd help himself up with the other hand,
control a nice, slow eccentric contraction.
Down, good,
and remember the angle of your arm here, guys,
is going to be very dependent on what actually triggers
the sensation in your forearm.
It'll be different for everyone.
He might need to bring his weight forward
to feel the discomfort in his arm
to take it to a four out of ten.
He may need to stand up and not rest it at all.
You have to find where you actually aggravate
that arm discomfort, take it to a four out of ten,
repeat that process for maybe three or four sets.
On the forearms, they like around ten to twelve,
even up to fifteen reps, but I wouldn't
go over fifteen reps.
Okay, let's do an eccentric contraction on the pronation.
So once again, helping his hand up,
nice and slow down.
Beautiful.
Helping his hand up, nice and slow down.
Beautiful.
Anywhere from ten to fifteen reps, we usually
prescribe twelve to fifteen for our beginner guys.
And it's just critical that we just don't do the
concentric at this stage because it takes us too far
up that issue intensity continuum.
That's pretty much it, guys.
From there we would go onto concentrics and eccentrics
together and then you can go through our full
risk conditioning program where you can start to
work on mobility.
Once you've done a week or two, maybe even,
depending on the severity of the injury, of isometrics,
you'll usually be ready to go to eccentric-only reps,
do that for a couple of weeks, then go to eccentric,
concentric and then you can start working on mobility
on the floor doing all of those drills that we used
to do on the floor.
Cool?
Enjoy, let us know how you go.
Like, comment, please share the video with any
of your mates who are suffering tendinitis in the forearms
and we'll see you again soon in Unity.
Take care.
- Have a great day.