Tennis elbow is caused by an accumulation of microtears, not a single traumatic injury.  Tennis elbow would likely be caused by shooting a bow with a lot of hand shock, which Black Widows are not known to have.  What you are describing sounds more like a traumatic injury than tennis elbow.  While it is possible to treat tennis elbow successfully on your own, which I've done myself, a traumatic injury is best treated by a doctor or physical therapist.  So it's good that you're going to have a doctor take a look at it, because treatment for tennis elbow is different than treatment for a traumatic injury.

Grips are very important.  Once I had a Morrison Shawnee, a beautiful bow, that I bought used.  My elbow started to hurt within a month of starting to shoot it.  I'm sure it was the grip, although that grip evidently worked well for hundreds of other people.  Same thing could happen with a BW grip.  That's why they make 5 different BW grips now.  One size does not fit all.  So if nothing else works, it might be the drip.  Unlikely, but possible.  I haven't had any elbow problems since I stopped using that bow.

YES!

Enjoy life Kenny and Thanks for everything over the years!  Hope to still see your success stories and pics of the hunts in the seasons to come   

Quote from: MnFn on December 06, 2025, 09:58:15 AMThanks Jerry. That makes sense. Only so much you can do with a straight gripped longbow, I guess.

Years ago, I never thought I'd be where I am today. I've tried a lot of different bows just to find simpler can be better.

I have this exact sentiment! I just talked with Jim again late last week and pulled the trigger on a Hill Jack - sent my deposit in.  I've been itching to get at this for a bit now.   This will be my first ASL.  I was able to test drive one at ETAR.  Lighter poundage than what I ordered,  but was close enough to get me the gist of it. I'm very excited  Should be done by April - ish.   I'll put up some pics when it shows for anyone who is interested in how it comes out.  66", 52,53 or so at 28 .... brown glass on the back,  curly maple under clear on the belly, I believe he is going to do an ebony riser.  red-ish brown or brown leather grip with no stitching.   
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick ..........

I don't think grip is going to significantly influence your elbow issue.   On a few occasions, I have dealt with this kind of issue over the many years I've been at this.  Some of the times it was brought on by resistance training (weights) as you are dealing with now.  Other times,  repetitive motion of many sorts can bring on this aggravation or inflammation...... this is actually referred to as "repetitive motion injury".  Year before last,  I had just purchased a new log splitter,   a big mother .....and of course,  was itching to fire it up and see what it was capable of.  I split a lot of wood and fast.   Well, taking the split pieces off the carriage and flinging them into the pile a few hundred times, I didn't feel it immediately .....but the next day,  holy moly ..... could hardly bend my left elbow.   That took at least 3 weeks to get back to 100% or enough to say shoot my bows.   
There is no fast way to remedy what you are dealing with providing it is a "tennis elbow", tendonitis (could actually be BICEPT tendonitis!  Research into this!) .....  it's going to take time and laying up on that arm.  In certain cases,  I found that once the inflammation showed signs of improving noticeably, I began VERY LIGHT resistance training once again, but with bands.  I'm talking very light here!  This to keep things moving and to provide the tendons with a little resistance stretching under very mild load,  with hopes of actually speeding the full recovery.  That is something you could try.  I had very good luck.  Also,  I use natural anti inflammatory supplements when trying to heal this up...... a product called Zyflamend (look into that).
Circle back to your original question,  I don't believe grip change / grip posture is going to make any difference. You need to heal it up and THEN get back at it! 

As much as it may or may not help, I've definitely tried to use string materials and silencer materials to slow down a bow to a point that I could make an arrow spine work.

Had a 65@32 widow that I was only able to get a solid tune on when I dropped to a B50 string with nice fat wool puffs.

Honestly, trying to pick up a little speed, you've got a lot of room in that arrow to drop grains for speed.  But at the end of the day, if your flight and tune is perfect... that's hard to beat, unless you just have that need to tinker and mess with things.... Which I totally get too.

Can't remember where it resides but years ago Cody Greenwood did a bunch of testing on speeds with different silencer materials.  You might go dig through that for some quick cheap gain in fps.

Good luck!

Don't know about a PMA but a few years back I went from really heavy Hills to an SAii to add some mass to my overall bow trying to solve what they referred to as "Golfers Elbow"
If I remember right it was a difference of what side of the elbow, inner or outer... mine was inner.
I had assumed mine was from shooting those 100lb+ ASL bows, that had relatively no mass so all the energy was landing in my hand.  Took about 5yrs off from that went down to a 65# widow, and a couple of ILF rigs with a bit more mass, settled into two Hurst bows for the better part of the last 3 years... and just now coming back to a 50/60# Hill in the last couple weeks.  Definitely miss ASL bows

If you're hitting up the doc, they will have some deliberately tests and things. I did a lot of "Nerve Glides" kinda like stretches for your nerves that you aren't suppose to hold. And they had me do some weird rubber twisting negative thing that seemed to help a little bit, with like a 1" diameter foam rubber thing. It's been a total of 8yrs trying to deal with it. that pains gone now but my hand falls asleep a lot and they said they are talking about rerouting my ulnar nerve at my elbow... long run im. It sure if that's a cause or effect. And haven't decided if I want someone cutting into me for something so trivial

Good luck with your docs. Hopefully they are more user friendly than some of mine

 NM biologist says this is the first desert BH killed in NM with a trad bow and probably with any bow. I wonder what the Apaches and Anasazis would say about that?   Maybe that you should change your handle to the Great white Squirrel hunter. On a serious note this is a very impressive accomplishment, in my opinion as impressive as any I've read about over the years on here. Congratulations on a successful hunt!                                                           

I think the difference is the belly side of the grips thickness,,,, someone else can confirm but NM's grip narrows on the belly side,  Rob carter talks about it on a video.

Thanks for all your help over the past few years. Enjoy your retirement!
Andy from Shortsville