# Elbow Pain From Lifting: Where It Comes From and What to Do

> Elbow tendinopathy: why it sets in, the exercises that feed it, what actually calms it, and the signs that call for a medical opinion.

- Source: [Musku](https://musku.app/), free strength training tracker for iPhone and Android
- Canonical URL: https://musku.app/blog/elbow-pain-lifting
- Published: 2026-10-08
- Updated: 2026-10-08
- Level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
- Language: English
- French version: https://musku.app/fr/blog/douleur-coude-musculation
- Author: Musku (Julien Legrand)

_Informational content: this is not a substitute for medical advice. Check with a doctor before starting a training program, especially if you have a health issue or any pain._

The elbow is the joint that warns you worst. It does not bother you during the set, it wakes up that evening, then when you open a bottle, then when you carry the shopping. By the time you deal with it, it has usually been going on for three months.

## What actually hurts

In the vast majority of cases it is not the joint itself but a tendon's attachment to the bone, just above it. Two locations cover almost everything:

| Where it hurts | Common name | What triggers it |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Outer side of the elbow | Tennis elbow | Gripping hard, holding a bar, wrist extension |
| Inner side of the elbow | Golfer's elbow | Underhand pull-ups, curls, wrist flexion |
| Back of the elbow, on the point | Triceps tendon involvement | Cable extensions, dips, heavy pressing |

The mechanism is nearly always the same: a tendon took on more work than it had time to absorb. Not a trauma, an accumulation.

## The five real causes

**1. Progressing too fast on arm work.** Muscles gain strength faster than tendons adapt. Three months of curls going up every week, and the gap eventually gets paid for.

**2. Grip volume.** Pull-ups, rows, deadlifts, carries: all of these demand a strong grip, and the forearm muscles attach exactly where it hurts. You can easily have a painful elbow without having done a single arm exercise.

**3. A straight bar where the forearm needs to rotate.** On straight bar curls and straight bar extensions, the wrist is locked in a fixed position, which concentrates tension on the attachment. An EZ bar or dumbbells let the forearm turn.

**4. Loaded end range.** A curl with a swing at the bottom, elbow fully extended and the weight thrown, puts the attachment under maximum traction at the worst possible moment.

**5. A wrist that gives way.** A passively extended wrist under the bench press or on dips transfers the strain to the elbow. Plenty of elbow pain is really wrist positioning.

## What does not work

- **Complete rest.** A detrained tendon becomes more fragile. Two weeks of nothing and the pain returns on the first session back, often worse.
- **Anti-inflammatories so you can carry on as before.** They mask the signal without fixing the cause, and you keep accumulating while feeling nothing.
- **A compression strap on its own.** It relieves things in the moment, which is useful, but it changes nothing about the load the tendon takes across the week.
- **Waiting for it to pass.** A tendinopathy left alone for six months takes far longer to resolve than one addressed at three weeks.

## What makes the pain recede

**Reduce without stopping.** The target is pain that stays tolerable during the exercise and is no worse the next day. In practice, drop the loads on the exercises involved by 40 to 50 % and keep the rest of your session.

**Load the tendon slowly.** This is the core of it. A tendon repairs by receiving tension, not by avoiding it. Wrist extensions and flexions with a light dumbbell, two or three sets of fifteen, lowering over three seconds, two or three times a week: slow, unspectacular, and it is what works.

**Change the equipment, not the exercise.** EZ bar instead of straight bar, dumbbells instead of the machine, neutral grip instead of underhand, rotating handles on the cable. You keep the muscle's work and remove the strain on the attachment.

**Take the grip out.** On heavy pulls, straps remove a large share of the gripping. This is one of the few cases where using them is clearly indicated.

**Warm the area up.** Two light sets of the movement in question before the real work, more useful here than on any other joint. Our article on [warming up](https://musku.app/blog/warm-up-before-lifting) covers the method, and the one on [alternatives for sensitive joints](https://musku.app/blog/exercise-alternatives-sensitive-joints) gives substitutions exercise by exercise.

Count in weeks, not sessions: six to twelve weeks for an established tendinopathy is the normal order of magnitude, and progress is measured by the next day's pain rather than today's.

## When to get it looked at, without waiting

Elbow tendinopathy can often be managed on your own with patience and an adjusted load. But **some signs are not for self-management and warrant a medical opinion**, because they suggest something other than a simple tendinopathy:

- **Tingling, numbness or loss of strength** in the hand or fingers, even intermittent: a nerve is involved, not just a tendon.
- An elbow that **swells, reddens or feels hot**, or any associated fever.
- **Locking**, a catching sensation, or being unable to fully straighten or bend the arm.
- Pain that **came on suddenly** during a set, with a snap or a tearing sensation, or a visible dent.
- Pain **present at rest and at night**, waking you up.
- Pain that has **not shifted at all after six to eight weeks** of properly adjusted loading.
- A specific context: long-term corticosteroids, recent fluoroquinolone antibiotics, known inflammatory arthritis, diabetes.

In those cases a doctor, a physiotherapist or a sports physician settles it in one consultation, and a clinical examination beats three months of guessing. Nothing written here replaces that opinion: these are general markers, not a diagnosis of your elbow.

## Frequently asked questions

### Can I keep training with a painful elbow?

Yes, in most cases, provided you adapt. Legs, back work with straps, core and any pain-free movement all remain available. What has to go are the sets that wake the pain during execution or leave it worse the next day.

### Ice or heat?

Cold calms sharp pain after a session, heat loosens things beforehand. Neither treats the tendinopathy: they are comfort tools, and progressive loading remains the only lever that changes the outcome.

### Are curls to blame?

Sometimes, but they get accused too quickly. In many cases the real cause is grip volume on pulling work, or a straight bar locking the wrist. Dropping curls without changing anything else often fixes nothing.

### How long before my old loads come back?

Six to twelve weeks for an established tendinopathy, with a gradual ramp once the next-day pain has gone. Going back up too fast is the leading cause of relapse, and a relapse takes longer to resolve than the original episode.

A tendinopathy plays out over weeks, which means knowing what you were doing a month ago. In Musku, per-exercise history gives you the exact load and date where you started going back up, and the notes field lets you record the elbow's state session after session, along the lines of "EZ curl 12 kg, no pain next day". Read together, those two things tell you whether you are genuinely moving forward or going in circles, which no in-the-moment sensation can.