Nagging tendon pain

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Any pointers on getting over nagging tendon pain where my bicep connects at the elbow?

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It sounds like some kind of tendonitis. Therabands have helped me with this before

What have you tried. Sometimes tricky because you can re Injure easily. Elbow brace, Motrin etc. Maybe try voltaren also.

It's on the inside of my elbow, not the outside. Literally where the bicep meets the forearm. Injured it several years ago riding my mountain bike. Currently using voltaren and icy hot for pain. Between strength programs so I am trying to get my niggling injuries as healed as a 50ish yo old man can.
Oh and my current pullup max is 0.

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.

Sounds like you had a biceps strain. Strains, much like muscle soreness after training, are tears in your muscle/tendon/musculotendinous junction, except with strains they are too large for your body to heal by making new muscle/tendon so it fills in the torn area with scar tissue. It sounds like to me that you are having some issues with the scar tissue that was laid down. Unfortunately scar tissue is laid down haphazardly and often times you get that nagging pain with it.

You need to decrease the tension of your bicep. Stretching is good and I would suggest myofascial release as well(i.e. massage gun), followed by medium intensity eccentrics or heavy slow resistance (HSR), and finish it off with Transverse Friction Massage (TFM) at the point where you feel your pain. TFM and myofascial release can be done multiple times per day, but I would recommend you do the eccentrics and/or HSR every other day.

ETA: What kind of mountain bike do you have? Mountain biking is the only thing that has made my heart skip a beat since my time overseas. I've never had something humble me (I consider myself pretty fearless) more than mountain biking.

Thanks for the advice. I live in fairly flat south Mississippi so I just ride a single speed hard tail. When I go to the mountains, or better yet central Florida I ride a Trek Fuel dual suspension with gears. I thought about trying to single up the dually, but it sucks in the mountains and I haven't found a tensioner that can adjust that much slack. I originally hurt my bicep by literally yanking the front of the bike sideways a foot to keep from smoking a tree that suddenly appeared in front of me.

My favorite trail in the world is Alafia River, but Balm-Boyette is good too. Santos is either too easy or too hard for my old arse. I have also ridden Croom with similar results to Santos. My wife loves parks, so I bring her down and she does her thing and I do mine.

Have you ridden in northwest Arkansas? They are the mecca for mtb anymore it seems.

Look up BPC157. It’s helped my fricked up shoulder tremendously.

You should be able to get it from a Doctor. Usually HRT clinics will sell you peptides. If you don't want to go that route than I suggest peptide sciences, they seem to have the best peptides.

Don't go with the sublingual application. Some say there is no difference, but anecdotally I see a lot of people say sublingual is good for the GI tract, but not good for injuries.

With that being said, BPC-157 is GREAT for healing. I just happen to think you're past that healing stage. You need to remodel the scar tissue that you have already built up.

ETA: spelling