Triceps tendinopathy is pain at the BACK of the elbow, right on the bony point, that hurts when you push rather than when you pull. Think bench press lockout, dips, push-ups, hammering, pushing a heavy door. It’s the least common of the elbow tendinopathies and the most commonly mislabelled… because the bursa that sits on the same bony point produces a swelling everyone notices first.
Where it hurts, and what provokes it
The triceps attaches onto the olecranon, the point of your elbow you lean on at a desk.
Tendinopathy there gives you pain in the last 20 or 30 degrees of straightening, under load. Not through the whole range.
The giveaway is the direction. Tennis elbow hurts gripping. Golfer’s elbow hurts on the inner side. Triceps tendinopathy hurts pushing.
- Bench press lockout, or the last few inches of an overhead press
- Dips, push-ups, burpees
- Pushing yourself up out of a chair with your arms
- Racquet serves and overheads, javelin, throwing
I ask people to push against my hand with a straight arm. If that’s the movement that reproduces it, the diagnosis is usually done.
Three things it gets confused with
Olecranon bursitis. A soft, squashy swelling on the point of the elbow, often painless, often after leaning on it. That’s fluid in a sac sitting ON TOP of the tendon, not the tendon itself. Different problem, different treatment — see olecranon bursitis.
A stress reaction in the olecranon. Throwers and gymnasts get bone pain here, not tendon pain. Pain at rest and night pain point away from tendinopathy.
An actual triceps rupture. Rare, but it matters. A sudden pop while pushing or catching a fall, then a genuine inability to straighten the elbow against gravity, needs imaging urgently. Like the distal biceps at the front, this one has a repair window measured in weeks.
Tendinopathy is pain with strength. Rupture is weakness with a pop. Never treat the second as the first.
The risk factors people don’t volunteer
Two things sit behind a disproportionate number of triceps tendinopathies I see.
The first is a sudden jump in pushing volume. A new program, a new class, a house move, a fortnight of ceiling painting.
The second is anabolic steroid use, which changes tendon quality and is strongly associated with triceps rupture specifically. Nobody mentions it unprompted and I don’t push. But if it applies to you, tell whoever is treating you. It changes how aggressively the tendon should be loaded.
Treatment, and the honest timeline
Tendons don’t respond to rest. They respond to graded load. Rest just makes a weak tendon that still hurts.
- Weeks 0 to 2 — cut the provoking load, don’t stop training. Isometric holds (pushing into an immovable object, 30 to 45 seconds) usually reduce pain immediately.
- Weeks 2 to 6 — slow, heavy, controlled triceps work through a partial range. Slow down the lowering phase especially.
- Weeks 6 to 12 — full range, building back toward the load that broke it, plus overhead and scapular strength if the pushing pattern is poor.
- Month 3 to 6 — return to full pressing volume. Stubborn cases genuinely take this long.
Steroid injection into a triceps tendon is generally avoided. This tendon ruptures, and injections don’t help that tendency.
The elbow tendons all take months. The ones that take years are the ones that were rested for the first three.
Get it looked at if
- There was a pop, and straightening against gravity is now weak
- Pain wakes you at night or is present completely at rest
- The swelling on the point is hot and red — that’s a possible infected bursa, not tendinopathy
- Three months of sensible loading has changed nothing
If pushing hurts and you’ve been told to rest it, that advice has an expiry date. Get someone to build you a loading program instead.
Every article on this site is written using the Closing Window Method: name the window your condition runs on, find where you are in it, and act while it’s still open.