C-Forum

okay,
so this may sound like a small thing, but I threw out my elbow when trying to throw a rock across a river to string a gate, and ever since, I haven't been able to really hammer my forward strokes. I went out yesterday, and it was all fine and dandy, but i went out today, and after about 1 hour of slalom training, it was in severe pain. last week it went away after about 2 full days of rest. so I am hoping that it will go away again, but not come back, because I have a race this weekend, and a training camp starting tuesday. so I sort of need it. but are there any stretches people do when paddling to help warm up their elbows? or anything else? I also have tried heat wraps, and ibuprofen, but nothing seems to help. it seems that it only hurts if I do full strokes, with my elbow outstretched 100%. or while surfing holes on/offside from gate to gate.
as always thanks for the help
-isaac

The pain may be in your elbow but the stress might be coming from wrist flexing. Google tennis and golf elbow for some hints.

bummer... seems like you're really going for it, as far as racing goes. good luck man.
i can't offer any advice, but if you can't boat anymore i'll take some of your cool boats and paddles off your hands for you!

Hey Isaac,
My first thoughts after reading your original post was some sort of tennis elbow (also called lateral epicondylitis), and but I wasn't sure, but seeing Bob's post confirmed some of my ideas.

I play tennis year round and had some trouble with tennis elbow in the spring of '06 that kept me out of paddling for about 2 weeks, but I've heard it can occur with different levels of severity.
It is some sort of tendinitis, and can be caused by many different motions in the arm, not just elbow movement. One of the causes in tennis is using the wrist too much, which may be a parallel to how you threw out your arm when throwing a rock.

It may not be anything like tennis elbow, but simply a pain in a similar area, but I can tell you what my coach advised me to do when I was having trouble.

He said:
a) lots of ice
b) keep moving it, just not in a stressful way. Draw circles in the air with your fingertips, first moving from the wrist then the elbow. Try doing that holding a light weight. Also, hold your arm out straight, and just turn your wrist/hand in both directions as much as possible. It will not feel like you're doing much, but supposedly it moves your elbow joint enough to make a difference
c) rest those certain muscles, in the case of tennis elbow, it only hurts when you make a certain movement that tenses a specific muscle, but giving those muscles a break should help.

The other thing to remember, is that as Bob P said, all of your finger muscles excluding those of the thumb, are in your forearm, near your elbow. So it is possible that it is hand/wrist/finger movement that is agitating the elbow more than elbow movement.
I think the important thing is just to keep it moving without stressing it too much. Maybe cut back on the paddling workouts a bit. With tennis elbow, I found that the more I played, even after correcting the technique, it continued to get worse until I took a couple days off and iced/stretched it a lot.

I hope the pain dissipates and you can paddle again soon,


Nate

thanks everyone for the sage advice.
I read the info about the lateral, and medial epicondylitis, and it seems that my pain is in a different area than they are describing. the tendon pain they describe is inside the elbow, and before and just after the joint. and seems to do with the wrist, but my wrist/forearm strength is fine, however it's only present when I fully extend my elbow... but my pain seems to me mainly just at the very tip of the eblow. if it persists, I may go talk to a PT just so I can get an answer...

i have done a ton of stretching, and the pain has ceased a little bit, and then this morning, simply throwing off the covers with a flick of the arm agitated it like nobodies business. i think it's just flinging my arm outward, so that the all of the momentum hits the outside of my elbow. so today, and tomorrow i will stay out of the boat, and rest-ice-compress-elevate it.
Skaal
-Isaac
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and larry, mostly everything that doesn't go fast is for sale...
Skaal
-Isaac

Hey Isaac,

You racing in the Rich Weiss Cup? If so, looks the water level will be pretty challenging on Tamahi Rapids.

You may have hyper-extended your elbow with that throw of the rock. I have heard of people chipping their elbows when doing such things so get an x-ray just to make sure nothing is floating around in the joint. Other than that, I know you do not want to hear it, R&R is the best bet.

As hard as it is to not push through injury, rest is key, especially when you hit the geriatric class, like me. To console and inspire yourself, dig through the Endicott on-line books for the one on Oliver Fix (K-1). Shortly before the Olympics, he fell on a piece of rebar and had to be out of the boat and off training entirely for two weeks. He felt the rest did him good. Think of it as a good chance to work on your visualization skills...edg

Take it from one who has been there. The only thing you can do for tendinitis is rest, and unfortunately, you'll have to rest it for a whole lot longer than you'll want to. These things take a long time to go away.

Hello Isaac,
Some good advice.....
1) Watch your sleeping posture . By that I mean, control the position of your elbow and wrist as you sleep. Keep them relatively straight with a slight bent. Use some joint wraps to help keep the joints straighter as you sleep if needed. This process will greatly accelerate the healing. You might wonder why your elbow hurts so much in the morning - it may be because you have been sleeping with elbow and/or wrist in a sharply bent position. Joints heal poorly when bent all night. This can be a CRITICAL aspect of your healing.
2) Use anti-inflammatories, but in moderation. Inflammation tends to immobilize the joint (and protect it from further stress) , but also can damage the joint tissues due to macrophage attack. So try to control the level of joint inflammation with Aleve or Ibuprofen. This also reduces the chance of arthritis in the stressed joint later on in life.
3) Give the elbow/wrist a rest when you need to.

SYOTR,
Dr. Bruce