3 Workout Habits That Lead to Biceps Pain
Experiencing lasting biceps pain, especially when you can’t straighten your arm, is generally rooted in the inflammation and damage detailed above. But these are often the result of a few common scenarios you may encounter during your workout.
1. You Pushed Too Hard
Overdoing it during a workout increases the chance of being unable to elongate your muscles afterward.
“If a muscle is stressed past its limits due to repeated contractions against a heavy load, it causes neuromuscular injury,” Buckingham says. This can be a sign you went too hard, so you might want to take things slower the next time, he says.
Upping the intensity little by little will lead to better long-term results. Moving forward, be sure to increase the intensity of exercise gradually, so that you’re not loading on more than you can handle.
2. You Tried New Exercises
If you haven’t worked out in a while or you do a different type of workout than usual, you might also end up with inner elbow pain.
You’ll experience more microtears when you’re doing an activity you’re not used to, Buckingham notes. “The reason is that your muscles have to build themselves up stronger so that the next time you do the same activity, they won’t have as much damage.”
But there’s no reason to avoid new exercises if they don’t aggravate a current injury or lead to a new one. Just make sure you ease into them.
3. You Worked Your Muscles Eccentrically
Pain and difficulty extending your arms is also more likely to happen after exercises that involve eccentric actions. “Eccentric contraction is the forced lengthening of a muscle,” Buckingham says.
For instance, during hammer curls, raising your hand up to your shoulder is a concentric action, or contraction — your biceps muscle is getting shorter. When you lower your hand back down, this is an eccentric contraction, elongating your muscle.
“Eccentric contractions produce the most muscle damage, because you are working against gravity,” Buckingham says. “Instead of simply letting your hand fall down to your side, you have to control the descent.”
Eccentric exercises are great for building muscle, so don’t feel like you have to avoid them. Instead, consider limiting how many eccentric exercises you do in a given workout — for example, stick with one per workout at first.