re: Nagging tendon pain

Does it hurt above the elbow or below the elbow?

I had below the elbow pain on my right arm from bad grip setup on the squat, I mostly fixed it by fixing my grip width/hand placement, but I'm similar to you in that I can't do any chin-ups currently so I couldn't do this exact regimen.

I subbed them out for pull-downs using the same set/rep scheme and it has helped. I loaded up my pin with a pretty heavy weight, but nothing crazy(150lb-160lb). Just a weight that I thought would be perfect for making a really challenging set of 3 very slow and controlled reps. I pull-down slowly, full range of movement, and I count to 5 as I resist against the weight as the bar goes back up, to me, the eccentric phase of the pull-down, was the key.

Around set 5 of 10 I'd start to feel a dull throb from my right elbow. 20 second rest between sets of 3, I never did more than 10 total sets. My pain is 99% gone, so I may go up to doing 20 sets of 3 with a little less weight and see if it goes away completely. That dull throbbing pain remained for several hours, it felt like I could feel my heartbeat in my elbow, but the intensity was so low it wasn't really a bother. I would just tell myself that the throbbing was a sign of healing. I guess it worked.

I had to edit this because I realized I mis-typed out my set/rep scheme. 10 sets of 3, with 20 seconds rest in between sets. I also had my elbow sleeves on to aid in getting the joint warmer, faster.