Bicep Tendinitis
Biceps tendinitis is the most common tendinitis I get asked about. Its particularly aggravating because it can take months to go away, and it can be on and off
I experienced it myself years ago, I was training back and biceps together, and going hard and heavy on both.
I was following a heavy duty program, taking sets to failure and beyond, and I would program chinups or pullups to failure, and then train biceps after.
My bicep tendons started to HURT. And they kept hurting.
It was until I stopped training biceps entirely for 3 months that they recovered.
This was when I began to research tendinitis more, and picked up on the pattern
-High intensity and/or volume vertical pulls + High intensity/high volume biceps=tendinitis setup
The truth is that chinups and pullups ARE biceps exercises. They produce muscle growth in the arms, and the stress on the muscle is high.
Chinups are an almost bodyweight bicep curls for the amount of loading on the bicep muscle. Pullups are like bodyweight hammer curls. Your biceps and forearms ARE working.
How do you KNOW that they are Bicep Exercises?
Because both the Bro history and scientific evidence line up on this.
Research has been comparing multi joint, compound exercises, versus isolation movements.
Compound movements produce as much muscle growth in the biceps and triceps as does training them in isolation
There is no question that biceps (and triceps) are being worked then.
SO what does this mean for training?
If you train back and biceps in the same workout, you probably DO NOT need much biceps volume. 2-4 sets at most. You want to do more, go ahead. But if tendinitis is an issue for you, lower volume must be strongly considered
I would even say that the reason many bodybuilder historically gravitated towards "arm days" in the past was to AVOID this exact issue.
Rather than stress the biceps or triceps more, give them their own day.
LASTLY, Ditch the Straight Bar and Trying to go HEAVY on Biceps
But AJAC, Ive never had this issue, and I train back and biceps together all the time
Thats great Im happy for you. If what you are doing is working, dont change anything.
But if you are having this problem, heed my advice.
Train smarter.