TargetTalk

3 months into my re-start in AP, I noticed that my elbow was always sore. I can't recall who I spoke with, but I SWEAR that I heard, "You must lock your elbow when you shoot. That'll do it."

Being new, I took that as, 'Don't lock your elbow stupid, you'll mess it up and cause pain.'.'

So, for the last 6 months, I've been shooting, with my elbow slightly bent. Scores have continued to move up, but I felt it more challenging. I've also reached a bit of a plateau.

A week ago, I realized that my elbow was STILL sore! Nothing had changed. Worried, I took 3 days off. Last night I shot only 10 shots and my elbow is still sore after 3 days off.

A discussion with a top shooter about this had him laughing. "How do you shoot with a bent elbow?" I thought; uh, with a lot more difficulty, that's how! Isn't that how you do it? As it turns out, he locks his elbow, which allows him to lock his shoulder.

Then I started to look around and see pics of seasoned shooters and noticed that not only are elbows most likely locked, but many appear to be HYPER-extended when holding. Bowing UP!

So, what's up? Does nearly everyone on this forum have an elbow that's always a little sore when extended? Is it just me? Am I most likely setting myself up for crippling arthritis in my elbow when I'm older because of the abuse?

Oz

Interesting. I found that what works for me was for the elbow to be locked and have it rotate to around 45 degrees. This allowed me to not strain my elbow as much and yet gave relatively good ability to keep my wrist locked.

Hopefully what i said could be understood.

I posted a query about this issue a while back. Lots of opinions were put forth, no real answers. I've been dealing with elbow pain off & on for about 30 years.

I have been experimenting, and I think it is a combination of things:

1) Physiology of the shooter, i.e bone shape, elbow geometry, past injuries, etc. I started having problems when I crushed the sinovial membrane in my elbow doing too many pushups. After lots of cortisone shots, physical therapy, and a year of not shooting anything but a little AP, I could go back to .22

2) Physical condition (although nobody has ever come up with any exercises that help)

3) Grip angle. A lot of European pistols have the wrist bent WAY down. That definitely seems to aggravate things.

4) Weight of pistol. Heavier pistol = more pain

5) Balance of pistol. Nose heavy = more pain.

6) Recoil & geometry. Not a big deal with AP, but the low bore line & straight back recoil of a free pistol can really tick it off. Try not flinching when every shot feels like someone hammered your funny bone.

Some days I can shoot and not feel a thing. Other days, same pistol, same range, same ammo, it's excruciating. Over 30 years, I've never been able to correlate what is going on with ME that causes the variation. Mostly it's OK, but every time I go to the range I just have to hope it's going to be OK that day.

Good luck, and I hope you find a fix. One question: is it a muscle ache, or is it in the joint? The most common thing is tendonitis, which I've also had, but in my fingers. Ibuprofen helps, as does warming up the area before hand, and icing it afterward.

For goodness sake, don't actively try to lock or hyper-extend your elbow - it will hurt and take a long time to settle down after you realise it was such a bad idea.

The best position of the upper arm is so that, with elbow bent 90deg, your forearm's pointing straight up. Then let your hand come straight down, and allow your elbow to relax and stay in that position. Then, hopefully, there's no muscular activity around the elbow, thus another potential variable eliminated.

Because of different elbow geometry between the sexes, women will look as if their elbow is in a really uncomfortable and forced position. Don't be frightened by the pictures!

RL wrote:Interesting. I found that what works for me was for the elbow to be locked and have it rotate to around 45 degrees. This allowed me to not strain my elbow as much and yet gave relatively good ability to keep my wrist locked.

Hopefully what i said could be understood.

I'm quite delighted by the talk about the subject of elbow rotation in this thread: in archery this plus hyperextension is discussed quite often because it affects string clearance. The comment about ladies elbows certainly applies here, and is well known. In the analysis of pistol shooting these things are sadly missing. The only recommendation I've seen before is 45 degrees (once in some forum, never in the text-books, maybe I've overlooked something?). The trick of bending your arm to see and control the rotation I've known for several years.

Personally I shoot AP with a straight but relaxed, and elbowrotation somewhere between 45 degrees and "vertical", my bent arm goes fairly close to verical. You need to adapt your grip by twisting the lower arm to avoid canting the pistol. This twisting also affects the joints and tendons. You may try, but turning your wrist is just about impossible.......

I make a point of shooting with a high shoulder: this gives me a NPA with a fairly relaxed arm. I let my hand/pistol hang as low as the grip allows (yes I'm European :-)

My elbow and escpecially my shoulder have been bad for decades due to all kinds of heavy usage. Excercise is the only thing that helps! Plus one more thing:

KEEP YOUR JOINTS WARM!
This means wearing more clothing than you need: I shoot in a long sleeved sweater that also covers my wrists while the next guy wears a T-shirt. And if my arm feels sore, I add a layer of wool. Most pro athletes do the same sort of thing to prevent injury.

I really enjoy reading about the elbow joint. Please, keep it up! :)

My elbow joint hurts me more after training for the first shot in the rapid series of Standard Pistol. But that may be because I do raise my arm too fast... who knows as I do not have proper guidelines [it's almost impossible to find a coach locally anyway] for that.

I have a diagnosed chronic tendonitis, but I somehow feel like it's not a tendonitis as the joint never hurts me in the same spot. Also, I have tingles [slight numbness?] in my heart finger.

The doc checked my joint for about 3 minutes... social health care...

When I started shooting pistol (late 1980s)l, it was with a .45 caliber Service Pistol in NRA (USA) Conventional Pistol matches and leagues. While everyone else was shooting reduced load ammunition, I was shooting full power (hot) ammunition. I did that straight for quite awhile, firing between 400 and 600 rounds per week, before I moved to other gun/ammo combinations. Except for a brief period of about three weeks much later on, I've never experienced any elbow pain issues in all my shooting years. That three weeks, about ten years into my shooting, was slight and went away on its own.

I have never locked nor advocated locking the elbow and I use an angle of about 40 degrees from the vertical for my forearm when my elbow is bent. The only tension in my elbow is from the weight of the gun. My forearm ahead of the elbow is tensed by the gripping muscles, but the rest of my arm is close to relaxed.

The geometry of my hand and forearm, when holding my guns, places the boreline above my elbow such that recoil bends it in the normal direction. My recovery is quick, but not immediate.

I still shoot everything from AP through full load .45 cal Service Pistol with no elbow troubles and I attribute it to not twisting my elbow to vertical, not tensing or over-extending my elbow and not recovering in a manner that would over-extend it.

(Now, as long as I can keep the gremlins from reading this and getting ideas...)

Take Care,
Ed Hall
Air Force Shooting Homepage
Bullseye (and International) Competition Things

Ed's description of his elbow angle is nearly identical to how I shoot. That certainly isn't a cure if you've already ticked off your elbow the way I have. Overextending or locking the elbow hard definitely makes it worse.

Once I had managed to really mess up my elbow, I started getting tingling & numbness in my fingers. The ulnar nerve passes through a hole in the sinovial membrane, and if the membrane gets inflamed, it can pinch the nerve. Mine was messed up long enough that they think there may be some scarring, which makes it easier for it to impinge on the nerve.

A few years ago I shot two 900 gallery matches at Tri County. First one was with a numb hand and the scores suffered greatly. There was a relay in between my two; so I rested. The following relay was better. I never had a pain in elbow or anything. Mystery.

These days shoulder soreness prevails at times. Along with back soreness after surgery at LL45. Not to mention plantar faciitis. The back and foot are tollerable most of the time now, but not cured.

Anonymous wrote:
I have a diagnosed chronic tendonitis, but I somehow feel like it's not a tendonitis as the joint never hurts me in the same spot. Also, I have tingles [slight numbness?] in my heart finger.

Prolonged semi-daily excersising with AP brings painful tendonitis to a muscle in my forearm (and senua fixturing point at elbow joint).

This is relieved slowly then, by shooting with my left hand only, for some weeks. Weak hand shooting difficult? No, just takes some practising to get satisfying scores.

Numbness in finger? Yes, been there too.
In my younger days i did much dry fire traing for military style center fire rifle programs. Trigger pull release force of service rifle was 4 - 5 pounds. Not seldom I notices a disturbing numbness to the front part of my trigger finger at end of dryfiring sessions. This numbness lasted fro many hours, fading only slowly. Caused by too much and lasting pressure to the soft "pressure pillow" of the finger.

I'm enclosing some pictures where you can see the spots in my elbow area where I can have, either, throbs or pain or tingling. The pain or tingling can be in any of the red-marked spots but seldom in them all at the same time. Also, I have tingles in the tip of my ring finger.

Anonymous wrote:I'm enclosing some pictures where you can see the spots in my elbow area where I can have, either, throbs or pain or tingling. The pain or tingling can be in any of the red-marked spots but seldom in them all at the same time. Also, I have tingles in the tip of my ring finger.

Sounds like a classic case of "Tennis Elbow" I get it periodically when I lock my elbows.

Thanks for your input Quest1!

May I ask what do you do to avoid having a "Tennis Elbow" condition?

I figure one cannot shoot with an unlocked elbow?

There are different degrees of "locked". From a score/accuracy standpoint the idea of a locked elbow is to eliminate motion in the joint. Any more pressure than is required to do that is unnecessary, and if overdone, likely to cause elbow problems.

I have NEVER heard anybody explain this to beginning shooters, and my first coach was pretty rabid about locking the elbow. The interpretation many of us had was that if locking it was good, locking it hard must be even better. He certainly never mentioned that it could be an issue. He eventually had to stop shooting because of elbow problems, so I doubt he understood the difficulties it could create in the long run.

"Locking" is such a vague term. What you don't want to do IMO is "force" it locked. Not only is it physically counter productive, it can't help but be a conscious effort which is something we definitely don't want. Same thing goes for grip, don't force it.

Arh yes. When i lock, by no means am i exerting excessive musclar effort. It just means that the arm acts as a whole pivoted at the shoulder.
But then again my scores are nowhere near what some here can achieve so take my comments with a pinch of salt.

Your comments are very interesting! :)

The only locking of my elbow I do is by raising the shoulder. Then, the elbow gets locked by itself with no conscious effort [or so I think]. At that point, I could force for a more locked elbow so I know I'm not overdoing it by just raising and pushing my shoulder forward. My forearm bends at 45º with that postition.

May it be that I'm forcing the grip? Any pointers on how to check that? I'm shooting ISSF Standard Pistol and the "Tennis Elbow" comes with most intensity when I'm training for the rapid series. The grip of my pistol is quite straight it's an FWB-AW93.

Folks,

I have had some trouble with this.

The pain comes from forcing. But it is easy to straighen my elbow with minimum force. Therefore, the problem comes from other muscles pulling the other way. And then you get a conflict with more and more elbow force to override the other.

First the wrist can be turned in.

Second the trigger finger can be pulling in.

Third the twisting of the forearm to control cant can result in unnatural positions for a straight elbow.

And fourth, recalling that recent discussion of relative finger tightness: it seems to me that more force on the pinky confirms the elbow whereas more force on the major contradicts it.

Putting these all together:

I start with the arm relaxed in front of me. I straighten the elbow as gently and as naturally as I can. I go through the checklist. I grip with a U shape beteen thumb and hand which naturally projects the base of the thumb forward and turns the wrist out a little bit. I grip with the pinky. I do not rotate the forearm. Ideally I should have a feel of balanced effort where the different muscles are all working and pushing the same way. If so, there will be no tendancy to pull hard on the elbow. Finally I raise the arm stiff using the shoulder only.

Final detail. If the elbow is not locked with the arm raised, I do not attempt to tighten it in place. Doing that is what will hurt most.

Recently, I decided that it was ok to have an unlocked elbow as long as I was always doing it the same way. The results were a disaster. If possible, it is locking the elbow which allows me to "always do it the same way". I now believe it is worth the effort to learn to do it right.

And pain is natures way of telling me when I am doing it wrong. Although I have had some spells in the past, at this time I have no unavoidable pain.

Best Regards,

Gordon

well, sumbitch. I've been shooting pistol for about 8 months now. Figured the sore elbow was just a result of getting old!

I appreciate all the perspective. This discussion lead to another phone call with the shooter that got me to re-think all of this. What I believe I have come to understand is that the muscles that control elbow flex (when in a comfortable hold) should be completely relaxed.

There should be no muscle effort to either hold the elbow slightly flexed, or muscle effort to hold the elbow in a super locked, hyper-extended way.

Naturally locked appears to simply be the state at where the elbow joint naturally "bottoms out" from the force of gravity.

I'm going to go back to this. I believe that the elbow joint soreness I experienced with this method was less than when I was exerting muscle force to hold the elbow slightly bent. And it's possible that for my physiology, the amount of time I spend per day holding a pistol is just going to create a bit of a sore elbow joint.

Oz