My Recovery from Golfer's Elbow

My last incidence of golfer's elbow occurred in June 2024. By the time I finished that Easy Muscle block and started my chest expander block, both elbows were hurting. I'm convinced the cause this time was holding the 24kg kettlebell in bottoms up position for bottoms up goblet squat. The bottoms up grip allows the KB to be more easily used as a counterweight for sinking into a deep squat position. However, it cost me the health of my elbows, so in retrospect I should have held the KB in the normal grip.

In any case, I tried both Flexbar exercises shown in this video for a while but didn't notice much relief.

I spent the rest of 2024 following most of the advice in Geoff Neupert's elbow tendonitis article:

1. Check KB technique, especially ensuring no bent elbow on the backswing of cleans.
2. Do the exercise for relieving tension in the upper body extremity flexors immediately after KB training
3. Finger extensions after any grip work
4. P3 Protocol as implemented in Sore Joint Solution and Systematic Core Training For Kettlebells

In 2025, I started practicing this hammer exercise. It's a bit different from the hammer exercise shown in other elbow tendonitis rehab videos, in that each rep includes a 5-second hold with a stretch to either side.

I also started doing chin ups after my KB clean+press sessions, after watching this Geoff Neupert video. I was a bit skeptical of his Davis' Law argument (too much pronation, not enough supination) at first, but I decided to try anyway. I started by doing 2 sets of 2 chin ups on rings, so that my hands would be in neutral grip at the bottom, and supinated at the top. When the chin ups didn't hurt any more on the rings, I switched to chin ups on the pullup bar, again starting with 2 set of 2. Over time I worked up to 3 sets of 5. Chin ups felt less and less painful for my elbows as time passed.

I also spent much of 2025 practicing on piano instead of playing guitar. My reason to prioritize piano time over guitar was not golfers elbow, actually, but a desire to level up my skill at playing R&B/neo-soul grooves on the piano. This desire outweighed any desire to improve any aspect of my guitar playing. I've noticed that my left elbow occasionally feels sore after playing guitar, though I work on engaging my back muscles so that those muscles help my fingers apply pressure on the fretboard, instead of relying only on forearm muscles.

I started 2026 with an Easy Muscle B training block. The golfers elbow continued to recede as I built up my chin up volume doing this program. Looks like Geoff is right about Davis' Law after all.

By summer 2026 I was trying out the GMB Static But Deadly isometric program, which includes an isometric bicep exercise which could be a bicep curl or a chin up. While I dropped the program in favor of Dr. Keith Baar's protocol, I kept the idea of doing isometric chin up to help keep the golfers elbow at bay or maybe even make the elbows more resistant to golfers elbow.