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Hi, @Duane58! I had problems with “guitar elbow” or “tennis elbow” as well. I ran into it maybe three months into my first year. Here are the things that helped me (I went to a sports medicine doc and physical therapy and they set me on the right path):
1. Stretching before and after playing (the TAC stretching exercises in the skill courses section were great)
2. Eccentric strengthening of the wrist extensor muscles – look up “eccentric exercises tennis elbow” and you’ll find a bunch of examples. I got a resistance bar on Amazon and also did the ones where you use a hammer for a weight. I think I got the most relief from these
3. I iced the area 3-4 times a day for 20 minutes
4. I videoed my technique and looked at my wrist motion – turns out I was wildly rotating my wrist with flatpicking and strumming, and I spent a lot of time with my wrist on the bridge which put my wrist in exaggerated extension. Fingerpicking didn’t seem to cause problems at all and I had my wrist in a much more natural position. I have modified my flatpicking to keep my wrist in a more neutral position and the problem hasn’t come back. Everything I’ve seen on this gets to the point that it’s a good thing to keep the wrist in a pretty neutral position and to avoid tension in any of the arm muscles while you’re playing. I’m assuming it’s your picking/strumming hand that’s impacted, but there’s a similar case to be made for the fretting hand
Good luck with all of this, and I wish you a speedy recovery! Good thinking on other musical pursuits to keep your head in the game. You can always work on technique on the hand that’s doing OK, too – if your strumming hand is impacted, you could concentrate on fretwork and strum super gently, for example…