Ultimate Guide to Elbow And Connective Tissue Health

The elbow is a hinge joint that connects the upper arm and forearm. The elbow joins the humerus, radius, and ulna bones, along with an array of ligaments, tendons, and muscles. It is imperative to have strong and healthy elbows for basically any resistance-based movements as this joint is integral to athletic endeavors.

Functions of the Elbow

At its core, the elbow is designed to facilitate two primary movements: flexion and extension. While it sounds simple, these fundamental movements allow for more complex full-body movements such as throwing, lifting, and even gripping. In the realm of weightlifting, the elbow emerges as a focal point for power generation and control. Particularly movements that focus on the arm like bicep curls and tricep extensions order the elbow’s involvement in lifting and lowering weights. For any movement where you bend your arm, you can bet that the elbow is responsible.

Injury Prone

Since the Elbow is an important joint facilitating the entire flexion and extension of the arm it is very prone to overuse injuries. This is called tendonitis, an inflammation of the inside or outside tendons that make up the complex joint. It is the sore, aching, painful, and stiff feeling deep within the elbow. A very common symptom for newcomers to the gym or sports such as tennis or golf where the elbow is rapidly extended. With stronger elbows, you feel better while lifting and are less at risk for more serious injuries like bicep and tricep tears. Tendonitis is also common when initiating exercises with improper form or choosing a weight that is too heavy.

Overuse injuries can be explained by understanding a concept called tissue adaptability. What this term means is that muscle is the fastest to recover from workouts. However, ligaments and tendons take much longer. So what often occurs is the biceps, triceps, and shoulders are larger muscle groups that are easier to strengthen than the ligaments and tendons. These muscles will typically experience rapid growth and strength gains leaving the lagging tendons and ligaments with little time to heal. And before you know it you are lifting a lot more weight than 3 months ago and your muscles feel good, but your elbow isn’t doing so great. This means you should probably lower the weight or intensity and give your elbows some time to recover.

Fortifying Connective Tissue

Before we get into the ways of fortifying this important joint, I must stress the importance of proper performance. Using incorrect form, whether it be in the weight room or on the field will place excess stress on the joint. This leads to more stress being placed on the elbow. Combining this with improper progression, lack of rest, and using too much weight is a surefire way to elbow pain. So make sure this is properly accounted for before moving on.

Training the elbow and its connective tissues necessitates a holistic approach. First, we must lengthen and strengthen the muscles of the forearm. Strong forearm muscles aid in the stability of controlling the movements (flexion, extension) of the elbow joint as well as distributing excess force. Next, we should focus on training the muscles surrounding the elbow joint, through full range. When we lengthen a muscle with load (weighted stretching) this has been shown to accelerate recovery and blowflow and also strengthen the connective tissue supporting the joint. This could be as simple as doing a bicep curl and focusing on the eccentric (the way down) while getting progressively slower as your arm begins to straighten out.

But I won’t go into detail on all the secrets of iron elbows in this article. For a bulletproof guide on exactly how to accomplish this and exactly what exercises to perform with complete science-backed breakdowns, I encourage you to visit the bulletproof section. Also, check out our entire arms section for further knowledge on the arms. Thanks for reading!