Body weight arm exercises that don't engage the short head bicep

MsMaeFlowers

So my doctor just told me that I have tendinitis in the short head bicep on my right arm. He wants me to avoid using it as much as possible, and to change the way I do things to avoid engaging that muscle. The problem is that I don't really want to stop working out my arms completely, and I am hoping there are still body weight exercises I can do without causing more harm to it.

I know I can spend 2 or 3 hours on google searching this, but I thought some of you might already know things I can still do that won't hurt me further. I don't have any free weights, or resistance bands, or anything else, so it has to be body weight moves only.

Thanks!

Sam_I_Am77

LittleMissMae wrote: »

So my doctor just told me that I have tendinitis in the short head bicep on my right arm. He wants me to avoid using it as much as possible, and to change the way I do things to avoid engaging that muscle. The problem is that I don't really want to stop working out my arms completely, and I am hoping there are still body weight exercises I can do without causing more harm to it.

I know I can spend 2 or 3 hours on google searching this, but I thought some of you might already know things I can still do that won't hurt me further. I don't have any free weights, or resistance bands, or anything else, so it has to be body weight moves only.

Thanks!

From a pure Kiniesiology stand-point when you flex your elbow, your biceps are engaged there no way around that. There are some exercises that can put more emphasis on certain regions of the biceps but just because you focus on the long-heard or brachiallis doesn't mean engagement of the short-head is eliminated. You should probably just cut out curls for now. How long does he want you to stop?

If you train your upper back those exercises often include some degree of elbow flexion which will engage the biceps. Perhaps try just doing some upper back work and see how it goes from there. Other than that I guess it depends on how irritating the tendinitis is for you and is it worth doing work that will cause you pain and reduce healing.

MsMaeFlowers

He wants me to stop "until it doesn't hurt anymore", very helpful of course. I guess I will cut out the curls and just try some basic stuff and see what hurts and what doesn't then, and cut out the painful things.

Sam_I_Am77

LittleMissMae wrote: »

He wants me to stop "until it doesn't hurt anymore", very helpful of course. I guess I will cut out the curls and just try some basic stuff and see what hurts and what doesn't then, and cut out the painful things.

Even if you stopped curling for 3 weeks but did some upper back work you'd be fine. It takes approx 3-weeks before de-training occurs and if those muscles are working with the upper back exercises it may not really even happen.

Cherimoose

Pushups (or elevated pushups), chair dips, shoulder presses (using anything heavy, like a bag of soup cans), rear delt flyes.

What's the tendinitis from?

Hornsby

Yea. Just cut back on arm specific exercises.

MsMaeFlowers

Thanks guys. And he says it's probably from lifting too heavy or too much. Neither of which I was doing, but I'm not sure what else it could have been.