that is the best way to describe it. like a guitar string in my right elbow. i noticed it nearly a year ago when i was doing lots of tricep pushdowns. a little pain and alot of numbness around the thumb followed, and then i changed my grip and still went heavy.
i decided to cut out pushdowns but my elbows still did not feel perfect, so i stopped dips, then all pressing for about six weeks.
i resumed light benching recently. i dont get plucking from flat benching. but when my arm goes near a steep angle. acute angle i guess. incline bench, pushdowns, i get that pluck, or pop. right on the back side where your elbow would make contact with the bench during a preacher curl. the more weight i press with the “louder” it is.
i get the same numbness and pain, but only when i do anything overhead, and go past 425 bench.
wonder what it is.
Sounds very similar to what I get on the other side of my elbow, the inner part on the forearm part of my arm. Whenever I do a pullup movement/close grip bench (Basically acute angle) and I am moving weight (using the muscle/tendon) I get a snap/brief numbness/pain. Worse the more weight I move. Mine is likely from a surgery and being in a full arm cast. When I talked to my doc about it, he said he honestly did not know why this was happening, said MAYBE because the muscles on the other side of my arm were weakened due to the surgery and casting.
He thought it was a tendon snapping over the bone and pinching a nerve when it did so, causing the numbness and pain. Might be what you are experiencing. Please keep us updated on if you find anything out, I would like to know.