I have asked this question to many people and never gotten a good answer, but here we go again. If I do EZ-bar curls for a few weeks (eg. in the 1-6 principle program), I start getting really sharp pains in my forearms. They almost feel like shin splints of the forearms. I can feel them with a straight bar but not nearly as much. What gives? Suggestions? Solutions? Causes?
My brother has had this recently and from what I understand it basically is shin splints only in the forearm. The only way I’ve heard of to get rid of it is to either back off for a few weeks and or shut it down all together till the pain subsides.
-Mani
I would have to exam you, but it sounds like ART would take care of it.
I had this. I switched to seated dumbell curls which felt fine, then added a few sets of barbell curls a couple of weekes later.
In the words of Charles Staley:
Croytherapy!
Hey IronDoc,
If I had been doing anaerobic (jumping exercises) circuits & sprinting and such, could this lead to shin splints so bad that they flair up when I do any kind of ballistic jump or sprinting exercise? I didn’t/don’t know much about stretching right now, so I’m sure my poor poor stretching techniques or lack there of affected it. Would ART help this (in your opinion)?
Kyle Witter
ive had the same forearm pain for a while. i find that it only really happens when i do heavvy preacher curls. for a while it got so bad i couldnt even grip a bar, so i stopped lifting for a couple of weeks and it stopped hurting. i also found that if i use straps a lot while curling it starts to hurt again, maybe its blood circulation, i dont know. i havent used straps or done preacher in 3 months and havent gotten the pain back, after having it for like two months straight and it was getting worse everytime i lifted. hope this helps
Forearm splits! they exact same pain as shin splints and they suck. I have not used my EZ Curl bar in to years. I have no answer how to fix them except DONT use the ex curl bar.
Definitely Kyle. Any repetive trauma, sudden trauma, muscle strain etc. can be helped by a good ART practitioner.
Three things cause myofascial adhesions: 1. trauma 2. repetition 3. tissue hypoxia can damage muscle leading to adhesions.
I approach a problem in the way that I can help anything if it’s not a totally blown disc, fracture, or some metabolic disease like cancer. Mike developed over three hundred treatment protocols for the entire body.
Kyle - the stretch I do for my tibialis anterior is pretty simple. Before doing any running, sprinting, jump roping, etc. I do this.
Stand normally. Put one foot behind you about 2 feet with the toe into the ground facing forward. Lean forward until the ankle of back foot nearly touches the ground. If you can’t go that far, that’s fine, but you should feel a really really good stretch on the front of your shin.
When I’m doing a lot of cardio or walking a lot, I find myself doing this fairly frequently. It works, and you can you roll your ankle to the sides to stretch not only the front, but front-sides too!!
Hey, thanks a lot for the tips on the stretching and the ART advice. Where can I find a quality ART practicioner in my area? Right now I’m in Charleston, SC, but by the time I’m ready to pay for that type of thing I’ll be in Ballston Spa (Albany area) New York…
I’ve had this happen twice now. Just like everybody says, it’s simply splints in the forearm, as opposed to the more common shin splints. The pain is caused by the stress of the bar pulling the tendon(s) away from the bone. The tendon(s) connect the forearm muscles to the radius or ulna - these are the two forearm bones, I’m just not sure which one it affects.
Again, like others said, it only happened to me using barbell or EZ bar curls. I switched to heavy dumbbell curls and haven’t hurt since. I don’t know this for sure, but there must be something about the bar that isn’t natural to the stress placed on those tendons.
Check your gripping during other exercises. If your like me, when the weight starts to get heavy, you grip the bar very hard even when it isn’t necessary (i.e. bench pressing). So pay attention during all your lifts to make sure you aren’t gripping unecessarily hard.
Also, ever since I started deadlifting over a year ago I have had very few problems with my forearms.
As stated above a too firm grip is one of the culprits. Another is the tendency to “curl” your wrists in toward the forearm. If you make an effort to:
A: Relax your grip so that you are holding on JUST tight enough to hold on to the bar.
and
B: Maintain a “Neutral” wrist position during the curl…
…You will be fine. From a Hypertrophy standpoint bailing on the preacher bench would be a sacrifice, so give these two ideas a try.
*This concludes my obligatory bi-monthly “helpful” post, now back to the regularly scheduled nonsense and ha-ha’s
“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men”
~ Roald Dahl