Upper Triceps pain for 5 months
Hello everyone.
This will be long read but please bear with me.
I am a 24/M amateur gym goer (Stared a year and a half back). I started simple and progressed with the weights as time went on. Everything was going well, I lost a lot of weight, gained strength.
Around 6 months back, I decided to start training pull-ups so I started doing dead hangs, negative pull-ups and scapular pull-ups. After doing this for like 3-4 weeks I started getting pain in my triceps muscle when doing scapular pull-ups. Negative pull-ups and dead hangs didn’t hurt, only scapular pull-ups did. The pain isn’t near the elbow itself, I have no problem stretching and straightening my elbow. It is slightly above the elbow and extends through the entire triceps muscle, up to the shoulder/armpit. I was stupid back then and ignored the pain because it only hurt during scapular pull-ups and I had no pain doing any other exercise.
I kept doing this for like 2 more months and slowly my triceps started to hurt during pec-flys (When my arm is stretched), Dumbbell shoulder press (When raising the arm above head), and low to high cable fly.
I decided I needed to do something about the pain and went to see an Orthopaedist. I first got an X-ray to see if I injured my bone, the X-ray showed no injuries in my bone. He said I have triceps pain and told me to take it easy on the triceps exercise and start from a lower load and increase it and that the pain will go away in like 10 days. But the pain didn’t go away and I saw him again and this time he gave me anti-inflammatory pills and told me to stop doing just the triceps for 10 days. I took the pills and stopped exercising my triceps and also reduced the load of all of my upper-body exercises by 50% (I could still do it at full strength). The pain went away when taking the pills but it came back after that. So, this time I got an Ultra-Sound to see if I had any tear in my muscles or tendon and everything was normal in the Ultra-Sound. He said it is chronic pain and told me to just do stretches and triceps exercises with progressive load.
This time I started doing eccentrics for triceps with lower weights every other day and also all other upper body exercises at 50% capacity. A month later the pain was still there, my doctor said an MRI could show if there are any micro-tear in my muscles. I went to a different hospital and got one since my current one didn’t have any. And the MRI showed everything was normal from my shoulder to elbow, no tear or inflammation. The doctor at this hospital recommended me to a neurologist and the neurologist did some tests with my arm and told me my nerves are fine since I didn’t have any nerve related symptom. He just told me I might’ve injured myself somewhere and gave me some pills and told me to just rest for a month.
I am at a complete loss here, I have this pain for 5 months now and all of the scans show that my arm is normal but I still have pain in my triceps. Should I just rest for a month or two? But I heard that resting won’t work for chronic pain. Also I don’t even know if doing eccentric triceps push-down is right for this because I have zero pain when doing triceps pushdown. I also have no pain if I do push ups and also have no problem stretching and straightening my elbow which are supposed to be the symptoms if you have triceps tendinopathy. My pain starts above the elbow and extends through the entire triceps muscle up to shoulder/armpit and like I said hurts when doing pec-flys, scapular pull-ups, overhead press and low to high cable flys.
Can something else cause triceps pain? Have anyone else experienced this type of triceps pain where you don’t have any pain in the back of the elbow? If so, what did you do to recover from it. Any help would be appreciated because this is making me sad and frustrated. Thank you.