Elbow Pain.

[NightFighter]

The elbows should always be bent slightly (mark5pt56 already said this too). This gives sort of a spring for recoil, you'll have to try the method to see if it works. You maybe gripping the pistol too hard as well. The firing hand should have about as much grip pressure as you would on a baseball bat. Most of the grip pressure should come from your support hand.

Also poke around on the Brian Enos forums, here's the Tips for Improvement forum within that forum.
http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showforum=17

And Handgun Techniques.
http://www.brianenos.com/forums/inde...ilter=all&st=0

I also recommend getting some professional instruction since you earlier talked about getting into competitive shooting. Local to NoVA is the NRA Range (intermediate pistol) or http://www.nvtactical.com/ (from Tommy Thacker). I shoot with Tommy in USPSA a little, he's a good shooter and instructor.

Thanks for the hyperlinks to Brian Enos site. I am going out to west coast for a while. I will try to make a few trips to Gunsite or another good school while on the west coast.

[NightFighter]

Hey, with my limited excercise knowledge, I've been taught that for connective tissue, you need 30-50 reps to truly benefit them. Weight should be appropriate to work them vs. the muscle group around it.

I don't know what kind of program you do, but be careful not to overwork to where you are either injuring or on the verge of it. Soreness from workouts are actually injuries sustained to the tissue. Adequate rest and recovery is important. When I powerlifted, I could tell by week 3-4 in a program(8-9 week ones worked best for me) if I was overworking.

To avoid potential long term, I would see a good doctor to insure you aren't making it permanent. I was told by a Chiropractor that there are two types of injuries, the ones you know of right away and the ones you get when you're 60-from the stuff you did years ago.

Hope that helps

Mark

I will definitely be checking in with my doctor while I am getting this problem under control. I am in the health care field and have access to physical therapist and doctors and I will definitely take advantage of their knowledge once I go back to work.

[Joe R.]

If you are having pain across the elbow doing the straight arm wrist curls use a lighter weight...or none at all for the time being. Don't forget to stretch the forearms and wrists. The stretches are a bit tougher to explain via a written description (at least for my limited skills).

[Impact]

you need rest.
I have tennis elbow from boxing and it comes on and off depending how hard I train.
acupuncture and deep muscles massages seem to work for me.
usually it's because your muscles around your elbow are too tense so I try to relax them

[blackscot]

All of the above sounds like good stuff, and I'm sure very much worth checking out, but.......

I don't know your age, but I do know that you are getting older at the same rate we all are. At the risk of diverging philosophically, things wear out, including us.

Shooting -- along with an occupation and other personal interests that involve exposure to outdoor elements and use of various weight equipment -- have left me with a few decades of some definite mileage (I'll spare you the list of pinched this and torn that). I'm not complaining. It has been/still is a hellavu life, and I wouldn't trade places with anyone. But there is a cost to everything that it's best to be realistic about.

My shooting, work, and other activities have adjusted over time. Sure, there are some things I miss and would rather not give up, but likewise plenty of latitude can usually be found to still accomplish a lot and have fun doing it. As far as shooting, I now generally use smaller caliber, lighterweight guns, and otherwise have resolved to just accept that I can see the targets with only about a third of the acuity I once could. Sacrifices in other areas have also been made, including getting more regular daily excersize (yes, the boring kind that's good for you) and even better regulating my diet (gas can get very, very tedious...... ).

So, sorry again if taking too different an angle on this issue, and by all means do check out the many good steers given above. I'm just suggesting that we might all try to regard problems related to our "shooting mileage" more in the broader life context.

[markm]

You're shooting too much. Stop at around a hundred rounds, and save some ammo for the rest of us.

[toddackerman]

It's likely 'tennis elbow', I developed in last fall after a major 3gun match in Harvard, MA. The remedy for me is to stretch my wrists well before shooting and many times during the day. Also shooting a lighter gun has made a HUGE difference. That way I don't have to muscle the gun as much. I only have it in my left elbow (I'm right handed). I also occasionally use one of the gyro hand excercisers you can get at REI. This is why I stopped shooting my heavy Limited gun as much and shoot more Production w/Glocks or M&Ps. I also and using a different form/stance and it's helped me a lot. I use a version that D.R. Middlebrooks teaches called 'reverse Weaver' with a 'roll over wrist lock' which takes some of the stress off the support hand elbow and helps you control the gun with less effort.

I have experienced the same as gotM4 over the years, and it doesn't get better with age. It is aggravated by "Torquing" the tendon in your arm in a certain way (different for everyone), and the heavier guns of course require more torque to muscle them.

The pain comes from swelling. Period. Ice, and anti-inflammatory meds work wonders, but if you are really hurting, you need to lay of for a couple of weeks to let ALL of the swelling subside. The real PITA, is that once you develop a tendency for this type of condition in a specific tendon, it will always be vulnerable to re injury. Stretching helps, but I have found that there are certain little movements under load that I avoid as much as possible. I,e, the way you hoist your rifle, move it in and out of the "Work Space" etc.

Damn...come to think of it, it's starting to ache as I type this!

[blackscot]

......Damn...come to think of it, it's starting to ache as I type this!

Prolonged computer time definately does not help.

[HolyRoller]

Hey, with my limited excercise knowledge, I've been taught that for connective tissue, you need 30-50 reps to truly benefit them. Weight should be appropriate to work them vs. the muscle group around it.

30-50 reps?!? Says WHO?!? According to my own results for over 3 years now, and even according to people who know what they're doing, the principles for safe and effective weight training are: do it RIGHT (good form), do it SLOW (muscles, not momentum, moving the weight), and do it to FAILURE (no longer able to do it right). As you get stronger, you cause failure by adding more weight, not more reps. 8-12 reps is the target for failure. More than 15 reps, and you're violating the third principle and almost certainly the second. If it's an exercise that doesn't need extra weight but is still meant for strength building, such as pushups or crunches, then you may do a lot more reps, but you still do them slow and right.

In the gym, I see people all the time slinging around tiny dumbbells like candy, their joints going from lock to lock, and they wonder why they never get any stronger but their joints are hurting. It's because they aren't making their muscles fail and therefore grow back stronger, just going too fast and injuring their joints.

About locking the elbow, I shoot bullseye, where you need to lock the elbow, and when I first started I got a very sore elbow for a few days, but it went away on its own (the soreness, not the elbow). Now that I weight-train regularly, I don't hurt at all. I'm no instructor, but the way I've always seen the Weaver demonstrated, neither arm is locked--the support arm is sharply bent and the firing arm is slightly bent. I believe the Chapman stance is where you lock the firing elbow and have the support hand pull the firing arm back like a rifle stock, but so far the Weaver does everything I need it to do so I'm not proficient with the Chapman.

[zrider]

I had the same issue last year. Went to an Ortho Dr and he perscribed meds used at the same time as PT. The PT clinic knows exactly what exercises to do and when. Some exercises recommeded online aren't always the best ones for your particular problems and is sometimes best to work up to the correct ones for you. Get an experts advise and follow it.
Z