Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 14 December 2024
When I was training for the World Championships, I did some stupid things. One session in particular stands out. Casting wasn’t going very well, and instead of calling it a day and coming back another time, I kept pushing. My technique was off, the session became much longer than usual, and I tried to force a good outcome with a ten-foot twelve-weight rod. Not a recipe for success.
After that session, I experienced pain in my forearm. It was located in the meaty part of the forearm, but otherwise, it was hard to pinpoint exactly where the pain was. I had felt some pain or stiffness in this area before after casting, but it usually went away quickly. I could often cast it away by focusing on being relaxed while doing some distance casts. Sometimes, the discomfort came from being too tense in my grip during casting. But this time, the pain was more stubborn and on a higher level.
Stopping training wasn’t really an option. I backed off a bit, though, and identified things in my everyday life that aggravated the pain and caused it to flare up. I spend my workdays in front of a computer, which is the worst activity for this kind of pain if I’m not careful. Unfortunately, it’s also hard to avoid. Even how I sleep affects the problem; apparently, I prefer sleeping in ways that make it worse.
I revisited my “toolbox” from my time competing in Olympic weightlifting. This toolbox is both metaphorical and literal. In weightlifting, you’re almost always dealing with some kind of pain, which you have to manage to keep training and competing. If you expect to be entirely pain-free in that sport, you won’t get many training days.
I tried various strategies: icing the painful area, massaging it by hand, with a foam roller, and other tools. I stretched and massaged the areas above and below the pain, which is an important approach—pain in one area often relates to issues in surrounding areas. I also experimented with strapping my elbow during and outside of training to see if it made a difference.
Then I went to the gym and lifted weights, which provided the most relief. In the gym, I could make the pain disappear—albeit temporarily. I experimented with different exercises and techniques, eventually finding a collection of exercises that worked well.
The exercises that had the most impact were seated triceps extensions with a dumbbell and lying dumbbell curls. These exercises work the muscles through a long range of motion, providing significant resistance when the muscle is fully extended. This resistance at the end of the range helps strengthen the muscle while improving flexibility. As we’ve learned in my previous articles, this combination makes muscles both stronger and more flexible.
I’m not entirely sure why increasing triceps flexibility is helpful here. I’ve found that it’s important when dealing with tennis elbow, but I don’t believe the pain from casting is the same as tennis elbow. Still, strengthening and improving triceps flexibility seems to make sense.
For the biceps—or the collection of flexors in the arm—I have my own hypothesis. When we perform the 170-degree stroke, we allow the arm to fully straighten. If we do this repeatedly and with high effort, we want the muscles to be flexible to minimize strain on the muscles, tendons, and their attachments. Strong and flexible muscles also protect the elbow.
The seated triceps extension looks like this: https://exrx.net/WeightExercises/Triceps/DBTriExt.
Choose a weight so light that you can maintain a full range of motion. It’s tempting to use heavier weights at the expense of range, but don’t. I’ve also found that squeezing the elbows together increases the stretch in the bottom position.
The lying dumbbell curl started as an incline dumbbell curl, but I found that the smaller the angle on the bench backrest, the better it worked. I ended up using a flat bench. The bench needs to be propped up to allow a full range of motion; if that’s not possible, stick to the incline version: https://powerliftingtechnique.com/incline-dumbbell-curls/.
Interestingly, these exercises overlap significantly with the ones proposed in Joan Wulff’s Fly-Casting Accuracy. These exercises include: palm-up wrist curls, palm-down wrist curls, wrist rotation, seated triceps extensions/French curls, biceps curls, and bent-over rows. If we combine these with my previously suggested program and the exercises here, we can add some direct forearm work. While I haven’t found these additional exercises to directly reduce my forearm pain, I plan to evaluate them further.
You can incorporate these exercises into your existing program or use them as a standalone routine to protect the elbow area. If you’re adding them to your program, you can keep the volume low—one or two sets per session is enough since the muscles are already being worked. Three sets per session is fine too. If you work out multiple times per week, you can spread the exercises across sessions to keep them short. For direct forearm work, such as wrist exercises, aim for higher repetitions—about 20 per set.
Finally, here’s a simple checklist for addressing pain caused by specific activities:
- Is the painful area tender to touch? If so, start with rest and seek help from a professional.
- Are you doing something in your daily life that could be contributing to the problem?
- Can you perform the movement with lower volume, slower speed, or a lighter load to keep it manageable?
- Does improving mobility in the areas above and below the painful area help?
- If none of these strategies work, it’s time to seek professional help.
Have a great week!
PoD: The dangerous one.