Forearm and Grip Strength
Our forearms are made of lots of small muscles we demand a lot of when we hang our body weight from just our hands.
There are two groups of muscles:
Flexors– 8 muscles that mainly work to bend your fingers and clench your hand into a fist.
Extensors – 12 muscles that mainly work to straighten your fingers and pull your hand back toward you, like in a ‘stop sign’.
The flexors attach on the inner side and the extensors on the outer side of your elbow.
Tendinopathy injuries can occur at the muscle-tendon attachment points near the elbow, causing pain, colloquially known as “golfer’s elbow” and “tennis elbow”. Some of you may have experienced this type of injury when you learnt Chinese Grip, if your top arm did not lift enough of your body weight, demanding more of your lower wrist – another time listening to your teacher for correct technique and progressions is important!
If you notice pain in your forearm with training – you may need to ease off, reducing load is crucial in healing tendinopathy injuries. Basically the tendon needs to catch up to the strength the muscle tissue has built, so the unit can cope with training demands.
Try applying ice after training and performing some gentle forearm stretches. If the niggle persists, I would highly recommend seeing a Physiotherapist for proper assessment and treatment.
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