Category: Exercise

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Avoid elbow tendon pain

Exercise form matters, especially if you’re in the gym a lot. Plenty of people do triceps extensions to help build up their arms, but probably over ninety percent of them are doing it “wrong” in terms of helping to avoid elbow tendon pain.

The short explanation is: keep your upper arms slightly off the vertical line while performing the exercise. This will place less stress on the tendon and more on the triceps, especially the long head.

You’ll probably need to drop the weight slightly if you use this new form, but you’ll be rewarded with better muscle contraction and be less likely to develop tendon pain as a result.

This is one of those times when seeing is easily is worth a thousand words, so I’ve put together this very short video. Click on the link below to take a look:

Correct triceps extensions – Small

Avoid elbow tendon pain

Pretty self-explanatory. Honestly, if you’re young you probably won’t have an issue either way, but anyone over the age of about thirty-five should start taking a good hard look at their exercise form and cleaning it up where appropriate. And at any age, if you start feeling pain when you put your elbows on a table a day or two after doing this exercise, that’s a warning sign that you need to fix something. Don’t let exercise form complacency cost you weeks or months of lost time in rehab.

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Speed work for tendon health

Ask anyone whose time in the gym is measured in decades, and they’ll tell you that it’s not the muscles that go first, it’s the soft tissue: the joints and tendons, the spongy discs between your vertebrae, the ligaments holding all your tiny foot bones in their proper place, the cartilage between your ribs…

I’ve written quite a bit about nutrition for keeping your tendons and so on healthy (try the keyword “nutrition” for this website), methods for preventing tendon pain in the first place (foam rolling before a workout and stretching after are great places to start), and a year or two back I started adding some exercise programs that can help (like this post detailing the Hundreds program). Today I’d like to add to that last category, and talk about speed training using weights. Because speed work with weights can have a positive impact on your tendon health.

If you’ve ever tried powerlifting, you know the name Westside. It’s the most famous powerlifting gym in the Western hemisphere, if not the entire world. Louie Simmons and his crew have produced some of the most respected names in the sport, and the number of world champions coming out of the Westside gym in Columbus, Ohio is constantly going up.

They use a lot of advanced training techniques, but the basic Westside template uses something called conjugated periodization. What this means in layman’s terms is simple: you work a particular lift (not a bodypart, like the chest, but a major lift, like the bench press or squat) twice a week, once using very heavy weights and once using very light weights…but training the lift for speed on the light day.

Basically, what you do is take somewhere around 50% of your maximum and do eight sets of three reps, performing the reps as quickly as you can while still maintaining good form. So let’s say your maximum bench press is 120kgs. You would train your speed day using about 60kgs (maybe a little more or less, based on individual characteristics, but you want to use the most weight you can while still being able to pop the weight up very quickly). After a good warm-up, you take the bar and lower it to your chest, pause for a moment, then blast it up as quickly as possible (while still maintaining good form, of course). Like, so quickly that you would launch it from your hands if you weren’t holding on. Perform three reps like this, wait one minute, then repeat for your second set. Do eight sets and then go to assistance work, which would be exercises targeting the triceps, deltoids and so on–the smaller muscles that contribute to the lift. The assistance work should be done conventionally, two or three sets of six to eight reps or thereabouts.

Speed work, because it uses such light weights, is much easier on joints and tendons than conventional weight training. But unlike most light work, training for speed on one’s lifts can add significantly to your 1RM (maximum weight). Try it for a couple of months and see for yourself.

The author at 59, resting between sets
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The Hundreds Program

I spend a lot of time talking about how to prevent tendon issues on this blog, but as you get older it’s equally important to prevent joint problems. So in this post, I’m going to tell you about an old program that will give you a great workout while simultaneously giving your joints and tendons a break: The Hundreds Program.

The Hundreds Program, or just “Hundreds” for short, came from the fertile mind of a guy named Jeff Feliciano back in the 1980s. I lived in Southern California at that time, and got to know Jeff personally when I joined a gym where he was a personal trainer. Jeff was a super nice guy who was heavily into learning about bodybuilding techniques and trying to improve training programs. He knew a lot about both nutrition and training, and I made some of the best and fastest progress of my life using his advice.

Jeff contributed to the muscle magazines for a while, but Hundreds was probably the single thing that he was best known for. Unfortunately, as a niche program that could only be used once in a while, Hundreds fell into disuse almost immediately. It’s not something you can do often, and if you’re a young trainee, once you’ve gone through it once, you’ve pretty much gotten all you can out of it. But for older trainees, Hundreds (with a few minor modifications) can be a useful and productive program much more frequently.

THE PROGRAM

So here’s the program, as Jeff originally wrote it and as best I can remember it 30 years after the fact:

1. Pick a very light weight, like about 15% of your 1RM for upper body, and about 25% of your 1RM for lower body.
2. Try to get 100 reps in a row with that weight. Probably you will not be able to do this.
3. Whatever number you fail at, take a ten-second break and then do more reps. Continue until you hit 100.
3. Write down the number of reps that you actually get. (It is essential to keep a training log with this program.)
4. If you get 100 reps in one continuous set, up the weight slightly the next workout. If not, stay at the same weight and try to beat your previous number(s) your next workout.
5. Rinse and repeat.

So here’s a concrete example of Hundreds in action. Let’s say that you want to do Leg Presses. You choose 40kgs as your weight and try to get 100 reps, but you fail at rep #68. Take a ten-second rest, then do more reps. You fail a second time at rep #89. You take another ten-second break and then do the last 11 reps, making 100 in all. In your training log, you would write down Leg Press: 40kgs x 68-89-100. After that, you would put a small circle (like a degree mark) indicating that the weight stays the same for the next workout.

The next workout would be about two to four days later, depending on your recovery ability, and let’s say that this time you use 40kgs and get 79 reps before you fail. After a ten-second break, you then get the last 21 reps, making 100. So you write down 40kgs x 79-100, again with the little circle. Next workout, you fail at 88, so 88-100 and the circle. And the next workout after that, you get a set of 100 straight reps. So you would write down 40kgs x 100 and put an upward arrow indicating that the next workout you want to go up in weight.

In Jeff’s original conception, you were supposed to add 5kgs to leg exercises and about 2.5 kgs to upper-body exercises I think that for most older trainees, this is going to be overly optimistic. Just add a kilo or two and that will be enough to provide a decent progression.

Hundreds is a full-body program, meaning that you work your entire body each time you go to the gym. Given this, it makes sense to choose compound exercises like bench presses and rows rather than isolation movements like barbell curls that only work one muscle at a time. So a typical workout might be:

Leg press
Calf raises
Bench press
Pulldowns

This is going to be the core of your workout. If you want to add some abdominal, forearm or shoulder work on top of that, feel free, but I think it’s going to be hard to get 100 reps for those bodyparts. Personally I just go for about 20 rep sets for shoulders and 40-50 rep sets for crunches and the like.

ADVANTAGES OF THE HUNDREDS PROGRAM

So what are the advantages of The Hundreds Program? First, it will likely be a very different workout from what you’re doing now. Everyone knows that the best workout is the one that you aren’t doing, and hardly anyone is doing Hundreds. So just the shock of a new program will probably give your body a boost.

Second, since you’re forced to use such light weights, Hundreds will give your joints and tendons a rest. Lifting heavy is fun, but as we get older it becomes less and less cost-effective due to the chance of injury. I’m 57 as I write this, and I only go really heavy about once every four to five weeks on any given exercise. I do think that heavy lifting is important for everyone, including older lifters, but you have to work within your capacity. And as we all know, that capacity dwindles with age.

And third, since you are literally doing one set for each exercise, a Hundreds workout doesn’t take that much time to complete.

DISADVANTAGES

Are there any disadvantages to The Hundreds Program? Well, you won’t develop much in the way of high-end strength using this program. It requires a little bit of a different mindset to grind through 100-rep sets than your “normal” weight training workout. And you certainly won’t get any ego satisfaction using baby weights.

One thing to remember: If you try this program, be careful about doing Hundreds on a machine that locks you into a certain “groove”. Something like a cable pulldown machine is fine, but I would avoid Smith Machines and the like. With a free weight or cable, each rep you perform is going to be slightly different. But on a machine that locks you into a certain track, there is so little variation from rep to rep that there is a higher risk of developing a repetitive stress injury. If you do have to use something like a leg press or some machine to bench press on, be sure to vary your foot or hand placement a little from week to week.

So that’s it. I would say that probably most young trainees are going to get as much out of Hundreds as they ever will by using the program for about two months. And once they’ve done it once, they probably won’t be in any hurry to do it again. But for us older folks, doing a month of Hundreds once or twice a year can really result in some good “gains” in the form of fully recovered tendons and joints. And that’s certainly a plus for anyone.

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Dieting for tendonitis

I make the point in Target Tendonitis that it’s not the best idea to be on a restrictive diet when you’re trying to rehabilitate a tendon. Ideally, you want a surplus of nutrients available to fix things up, not force your body to choose how to allocate resources between repair projects. Basically, dieting for tendonitis is a bad idea.

I’m not against dieting per se, though. What you eat is supremely important to your health, and various diets are great for accomplishing various goals. It doesn’t all have to be fat loss all the time.

I myself have been dieting (almost fasting) fairly frequently for the past few months. Although I’m definitely carnivorous, I do a five-day long, full-vegan “week” every month and a half or so. During these times, I go down to less than a thousand calories a day, almost totally eliminate protein, throw myself into ketosis, and generally just exist on thin soups and crackers. (You can read about a representative week here if you want.)

Why go through all that trouble? Well, this particular diet accomplishes a number of things. One, you lose a little belly fat each time around…and it tends to stay off. Two, satellite cell production is increased. Nice for us older folks. Three, it’s a break from the regular eating schedule. Four, depending on how you set things up, you can often save money. And five, there’s good evidence that it can increase longevity.

So there are a lot of benefits. But one thing I don’t do during these times is work out with my normal volume and intensity. While I will still generally hit the gym, I only do one or two sets of any given exercise, and I don’t go all-out or anything close to it. I’ll generally use about 85-90% of my normal weight and leave a couple of reps in the hole. These workouts are just to help preserve muscle mass and accelerate fat loss. In other words, I’m using exercise to increase the positive effects of the diet, not build new muscle.

I also don’t try to rehabilitate anything if I have an injury. In fact, if I’m injured and am planning on rehabbing it, I’ll hold off on the diet week until I’m finished.

The bottom line is, your body needs nutrients for both building and repair. The best rehab program in the world will fail if the right building blocks aren’t available. So while I’m pro-diet for a lot of conditions, long-term tendon issues (which are almost always tendonosis, not tendonitis) aren’t among them.

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Voodoo Floss for Tendonitis

I just want to post a quick update here about using Rogue Voodoo Floss for tendonitis. I may decide to expand this post later, but for now, I’ll just say that it didn’t work for me.

I’ve been lifting weights for over 40 years and still spend a lot of time in the gym. And while I know quite a bit about how to prevent and cure tendon pain, I’m in my upper 50’s and the body simply doesn’t work as well as it used to. So even being careful and with best practices, I still do occasionally get some tendon pain.

Of course I know how to fix it when it does occur. But this time around I wanted to try the Voodoo floss method and see how that worked. Long story short, it didn’t. I had some elbow tendonitis, on the inside (generally knows as Golfer’s Elbow, even though I don’t golf), and figured it would be easy to wrap with a Voodoo Floss band.

So I tried it, keeping the tension around 75%, which is what’s usually recommended, and gave it a couple of weeks. While my arm did feel a little better during the workout after using the band, the tendon pain slowly got worse. This is generally a sign that tendonitis is morphing into tendonosis (a much worse condition), so after two weeks I gave up and went back to the methods I explain in Target Tendonitis. And got better pretty quickly.

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More effective crunches

Nothing to do with tendons this time, but I wanted to post a quick note about something I just discovered. Want to make your crunches more effective? Here are a couple of tweaks:

1.) If you’re doing the exercise on a bench or other raised platform, position your body so that your head is hanging off the end. This will do two things. One, you can get a better torso extension as you relax your abs, and two, you can work your neck a bit at the same time that you’re training your midsection.

2.) Try vacuuming your stomach while you do the crunches. I tried this a few days ago and was surprised (really surprised) at how much more “burn” I got in my abs versus not doing the vacuum.

If you don’t know how to do a stomach vacuum, basically you let most of your air out and then try to touch your bellybutton to your spine. This activates the transverse abdominis, which is a band of muscle that runs around your midsection, keeping everything tight and in place (and hilariously described as “the Spanx of the abdomen” in one meme I saw). It is the deepest layer of abdominal muscle, and doesn’t get hit by traditional ab exercises. Here is a shot of the great Frank Zane doing a stomach vacuum:

Stomach vacuum for more effective crunches

So there you have it. Give these tips a shot the next time you train abs and feel the difference!