Epicondylitis is pain on the outside (lateral) or inside (medial) of your forearm, near the elbow. I have personally experienced this type of pain, both medial and lateral from 03' to 05'. For me, relief came from changing my bouldering habits; I needed to eliminate the mental aspect of maintaining "pump" as a training or "try hard" aspect. In addition, I started to get sport massage and use Compex EMS (electromuscular stimulation) to help. The final push was to take fish oil supplementation; whether this was/is psychosomatic doesn't matter as I feel like it helped and take it to this day.

Jones et al report that of the 201 active rock climbers, around 50% had sustained an injury; 21 climbers (10%) had sustained acute climbing injuries as a result of a fall, 67 (33%) had chronic overuse injuries, and 57 (28%) had acute injuries caused by strenuous climbing moves. Dedicated climbers participating in different forms of rock climbing more often and at a higher level of technical difficulty may be more prone to injury, particularly overuse injuries of the finger and shoulder. Misdiagnosis and delays in treatment occur due to unfamiliarity with climbing injuries.

A recent development in treating any kind of Tendonitis (acute inflammation) or Tendonosis (chronic tendon pain - could be several reasons, but lasts in duration from weeks to years) is to perform ECCENTRIC contraction. An simplified example of an eccentric contraction would be the lowering phase of a pull up, whereas the CONCENTRIC phase would be the pull UP.

INFORMATION ABOUT LATERAL EPICONDYLITIS:

ECCENTRIC TRAINING FOR LATERAL EPICONDYLITIS:

TAPING FOR LATERAL EPICONDYLITIS:

INFORMATION ABOUT MEDIAL EPICONDYLITIS:

ECCENTRIC TRAINING FOR MEDIAL EPICONDYLITIS:

G Jones, A Asghar, D J Llewellyn, The epidemiology of rock-climbing injuries. Br J Sports Med 2008;42:773-778 doi:10.1136/bjsm.2007.037978