u/Queasy-Speaker864

Recently I have come to terms that maybe I have ADHD and I dont know what this means or where should I go from here.. This last months because of life circunstances I was a bit more under the wather but paradoxically I had more projects in mind than ever, which I started and left unfinished erratically. This has been my pattern always but these days I have so much motivatiin to try to do many things to get my spirits up, but as always Icant't follow trough, to the point I feel a bit like going crazy... I have maneged to be very consistent with sports and other stuff at some point, but in this cases I did the oposite tonthe point of overtraining and fuled by deadline and stress. I am also loking here for some advice. Thanks in avance.

Just wanted to share with everyone my story about how after one year I healed for good from this injury which I have to say has been one of the most debilitating ones that I had, as nothing seemed to work.

My background:

I have been training for more than 10y. At one point I was really into calisthenics and managed to do some cool moves like one arm pull ups (at a high weight), muscle-ups, front and back-lever, flags, etc. So it was funny when I saw some people suggest if you have this injury is due to weak tendons. I also did weightlifting and BJJ, so very grip intensive.

My injury

I got injured by overtraining a lot of exercises in a an explosive way like bench press and pull ups with little weight and a lot of bounce, at this stage I wanted to get very explosive for BJJ.

At the begining I started to feel a bit of pain when I griped the bars, in my case it was medial epicondylitis (aka golfer's elbow). I didn't listen to the warnings and continued training until the pain was flearing just by grabbing the steering wheel of my car. So I couldn't basically grab anything without pain.

At this point I started to go to multiple physios and tried many of the classic remedies that you see on reddit, they work for some but I feel like in the most severe cases of tendonitis like mine they are not effective. This are some of the protocols that didn't work for me:

-Home exercieses: Slow negatives (eccentric loding), stretching, bands...

-Pysio: EPTE, dry needling, manual therapy, kinesio taping...

After 6-8 months I was demoralized thinking I was going to have this chronic injury for life, thats when I came across a youtube video by rockclimber Emil Abrahamsson which I really recomend for anyone to watch,  he explains the reasoning behind this protocol, based on the research of Dr. Keith Baar. For contex Keith Baar is a researcher on strengthening and tendon repair.

So I basically started to do this protocol following his guidelines: (there is a video on yt)

The protocol:

-4 isometric holds of 30 seconds (these can be pronation, supination, or whatever movement targets your injured tendon. In this video, it’s geared toward medial epicondylitis, aka. golfer’s elbow)

-90 seconds rest between holds.

Guidelines:

-Perform the routine twice a day (morning and evening).

-Always leave at least 6 hours between this and any other exercise.

-If you train (gym or sport) that morning or evening, skip the routine, it’s okay to miss it sometimes. Ex: morning-gym evening-keith Baar routine.

-Don’t go full force; moderate tension is enough to stimulate the injured tendon.

-After a month, test to see if the pain has decreased.

*Some notes:

-Keith Baar suggest to take at least 30-60 minutes before you do the isometrics a suplement of colagen and vitamine C, its not game changer but anything that helpes should be considered.

-Additionally, I also did Shockwave Therapy (ESWT) before starting the isometrics and I feel it really helped but I atribute most of the healing to Keith Baar exercises. I notices the real healing after 1 month of Keith Baar protocol, I could do everyday stuff without pain, and after 2 more months I could do weighted pull ups and intensive BJJ.

Summary

What actually did work:

-Home exerciese: Keith Baar protocol of isometrics + colagen&vitamin C

-Pysio/doctor: Shockwave therapy.

So now I can say after a year that I am healed, I can do BJJ at a high pace again and death grip the gi without a problem and I can do weighted pull ups; life looks bright again. Hope this helps someone as much as it helped me.

(Always consult with a doctor/phisio before doing anything)