Lifting with Tennis Elbow

Tore the ish out of my elbow shooting archery over the winter. Basically archer's elbow is the same as tennis elbow. It goes away and comes back, been 3 months. Can't ride my motorcycle because squeezing the brake aggravates it. Now it's time to get back to lifting. Anyone have experience with this?

Hurt my elbow pretty good about a year ago, still feel some discomfort once in a while, but it has gotten a lot better. Depending on the type of pain and movement, you might need to modify your workouts around that, until the muscles around it strengthen. For me personally, I had to switch many exercises to dumbbell's instead of barbell. I took a few months, but I was able to start using barbell's again. But, even today, certain exercises I still can't. And also, make sure to learn proper form and Technics for the type of lifts you will be doing.

I have this same problem as well right now, great to hear what other people have to say.

I had this problem for months. I started icing my elbow after workouts and I cut out my boxing work I did 2-3 times per week once I found out that was further aggravating my elbow. Since then, the soreness has all but gone away.

Tendon injuries are awful. They take forever to completely heal and are easy to reaggravate.

I developed golfer's elbow (the other side of the elbow than tennis elbow) from a day of heavy chainsawing during storm clean-up in May 2013. I tried to work through it, wasn't getting better, so I shut it down entirely for four months. No improvement. Decided "eff it" and resumed activity but trying to work around it. Got a cortisone shot (which improved it drastically for about a month). Currently, it's *slowly* getting better as I continue to work around it (by avoiding certain movements that I know are problematic) and by subbing certain exercises (like more dbs, less bbs).

I really liked the armaid device I bought, but didn't have the miraculous results I was hoping for. That said, I know a lot of people have experienced them, so it's worth a try. Seems like a beneficial tool to have in your toolbox for dealing with problems like this. It's not particularly cheap, but compared to surgery/dr. visit, certainly worth a try.

Also, I found the voodoo flossing technique to help a little (and really help for some other niggling problems I had along the way). An even cheaper thing to consider.

Best of luck.


ETA: Oh, I also had limited benefit from ART (active release technique) which I swear by as a solution for many similar problems. I also tried a month of proteolytic enzymes ("SerraGold") which I think started to help (maybe...it's hard to sort through the potential placebo effect ) but this was right before I decided to get the shot and then kind of forgot about them. Ordering another round of them has been on my to-do list for a couple of weeks though, so I decided they were worth another try.

I also do a lot of stretching of the area by pulling my hand back. Certainly provides some temporary relief. Not sure what it's doing long-term. (This approach really seemed to help my plantar fasciitis problem when I did it with my foot, so I figured, why not.)

I have issues in both my elbows. I also had active release done to help get rid of it. A few years ago I had it so bad in my left arm that I could barely pick a db up so i went and saw a local guy. He did ART on it for 30mins and it was gone! So i swear by it now. I just had issues in my right bicep and forearm and elbows that has taken a fair few sessions to clear up but i couldn't do incline biceps curls before i had it done and now im back to being able to go heavy on them again. I was also having issues doing push downs, lots of pain even on light weight and can now go heavy on them again as well.
I have had to adapt my workout though because i still cant do Skull crushers. They give me huge pain so I just don't do them any more. I have heard for some doing them with DBs doesn't cause them pain and doing them on an incline also helps but it makes no difference to me.
You might want to figure out exactly what you have first as well. Is it Tendinosis or Tendonitis as both can take different amounts of time to heal. Rest and some ART though would be well worth trying. I also read an interesting article on T Nation awhile back which had another alternative for curing it. Type in T Nation Eccentric Exercise A Solution to Tendonitis? to google.