Good ol' Tendonitis

Our local little winter climbing gym has opened up, and the last couple times climbing there I've had the classic elbow pain again. I only seem to get it climbing in the gym, since that's probably where I'm climbing hard a lot in an hour or two.

My question is: once a person has issues with tendonitis/similar issues, is it something they have to monitor and maintain for life? Like is it a genetic thing or something? I haven't done a whole lot of research and have never seen a professional about it or really even done much of my own exercises to fight it, because it's never been that bad for me.. Just sometimes hurts the next day for a bit. So I don't have a great understanding of it. But I've been told it has to do with an imbalance of the muscle/tendon strength and the pain comes from the tendons being used more than the muscles. Is this true? Can anyone shed some light on this?

I can share my experience. I've been climbing five years non stop, about a year ago, after a season at the red river gorge, I noticed the classic elbow pain associated with tendonitis. I ignored it and continued to climb. The pain was annoying but not debilitating, but it was getting progressively worst after a few months ignoring it the pain started getting a lot worst and by June of this year I could not keep climbing on it. So I took two months off,, during this time I did all the traditional excercises to help with it, that includes push ups theraband exercises, rice buckets, stretching, icing massage ,acupuncture,swimming basically anything that strengthened the muscles supporting the tendons. As time passed the tendonitis wasn't going away I didn't feel better at all. I went to a specialist at this point who told me there is no real cure for tendonitis and that the medical community had no cure for it, just that it's chronic inflammation of your tendons. At this point I got very desperate and started looking online for miracle cures for tendonitis. I ended up finding my miracle cure on a climbing blog by tom Randall (wide boys). If you type a possible cure for tendonitis tom Randall, on google it will pull up the article. Anyways that stretch is the only thing that worked for me, within two days of doing the stretch my pain dropped from a six to a two, I started climbing again and as long as I keep up on the stretch the tendonitis stays at bay. This was my journey with this awful condition. Hope it provides some insight.

also: pronation. the pronator in the pronator/flexor wad is often neglected. strengthening pronator teres can take stress of of the true wrist flexors.
i've had good success with this and so has my coworker/climbing friend.

he was developing in li mig for 6 years, then moved back to the staters for a job, and within a month of gym climbing developed tendonitis.

mine is just on and off.

i use a kettlebell (5-8lb) with elbow extended and a set with elbow flexed, i do my best to keep the shoulder from helping and i do sets of pronation/supination until fatigue. i do this in between climbs at the gym and on days off.

can use a band for same effect. also, the elbow can compensate for shoulder/postural weakness, so if theres an issue there, addressing that can help as well.