Elbow pain from grip work
Pain on the inside or outside of the elbow that shows up after grip-heavy blocks: farmers carries, sled pulls, pull-ups. It builds quietly for weeks and then makes carrying a shopping bag hurt.
This is general training information, not medical advice, and nothing here is a diagnosis. The same pain can have very different causes, and only a qualified professional who can assess you in person can tell which one is yours. If pain is severe, getting worse, or not settling, get it looked at.
- · Pinpoint tenderness on the bony bump on the inside (golfer's) or outside (tennis) of the elbow.
- · Sore gripping, twisting a door handle or lifting a kettle.
- · Worse the day after a grip-heavy session than during it.
- · Weak grip that is more painful than genuinely weak.
- · A spike in grip volume: farmers carries, sled pulls and pull-ups stacked in the same block.
- · Heavy hanging volume added quickly.
- · Thick-bar or fat-grip work introduced suddenly.
- · Forearm capacity that has never been trained directly while the pulling load kept climbing.
- · Farmers carries.
- · Sled pull, hand over hand.
- · Pull-ups and toes-to-bar in volume.
- · Heavy deadlifts held without straps.
- · All lower-body work and running.
- · Pressing, which is usually unaffected.
- · Pulling with straps, which often removes the symptom entirely while the tendon settles.
- · Progressive loaded wrist and forearm work, which is the usual fix.
Like-for-like substitutions that keep the training stimulus while the niggle settles. A swap, not a rest day.
- · Progressive loading of the wrist flexors or extensors: heavy and slow, which tendons respond to.
- · Grip volume tracked across the week, since it accumulates from four or five different sessions.
- · Straps used deliberately as load management rather than treated as cheating.
- · Months rather than weeks of patience, as with every tendon.
None of the advice above applies if any of these are true. These are the signs that this is not an ordinary training niggle. Stop managing it yourself and get assessed.
- · Numbness or pins and needles in the hand or fingers.
- · Locking, catching or the elbow not fully straightening.
- · Pain after a specific traumatic moment rather than building gradually.
- · Marked genuine weakness rather than pain-limited weakness.
Sweatlas is not a medical provider. Everything in the niggle index is general information about training, written for healthy adults, and it is not medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Do not use it to self-diagnose or to delay getting care. If you have pain that is severe, worsening, or not settling, or you have any of the warning signs listed on the page, see a doctor or a qualified physiotherapist.