Hi, yesterday I tweaked my left elbow while bench pressing and wanted to ask for advice on how to recover and prevent this happening in the future.
I was doing 531 boring but big bench day, the tweak occurred at the bottom of the lift on the first rep of my last 5x10 set, at a weight of 155lbs, which is weird because I would expect this kind of thing to occur during heavy lifting. I set up as normal, but when I lowered the bar to my chest something in my left elbow popped and I immediately felt a sharp pain around the joint, plus the kind of tingling like I when I bump my funnybone on something. I immediately re-racked the bar and terminated the set. It was weird because there was no prior indication this would happen, my bench session felt like it was going well and I wasn’t experiencing any discomfort until this very sudden tweak. I was able to do the rows and curls I had planned as accessories, but I had to cut out all my tricep work as I couldn’t do the motions without aggravating the injury.
I had a gig working on an outdoor event last week and felt something funny in the same elbow while lifting a heavy projector down from some scaffolding, so I think the two may be related. At the time it went away pretty quick so I didn’t think much of it, but now I’m worried it might be a bigger issue.
Today it feels better, still a little stiff and like I wouldn’t want to put weight on it, but otherwise fine.
- Has anyone experienced something like this when benching?
- Anything I can do to help the healing process?
- Anything I should watch for to prevent this from happening again?
- Is this the kind of thing elbow sleeves would help with? I’ve been thinking about getting some.