Suffering from Tennis Elbow? Let’s fix it!

Are you someone suffering from arm or elbow pain and it's stopping you from doing what you love? Read on as we discuss out what's going with your elbow and how you can fix it without drugs, surgery, or injections, and get there fast.

What is it?

If you've got pain on the outside of your elbow that might be lateral epicondylitis, or it’s more common term - tennis elbow. In this area is we've got something called the common extensor origin, where all the muscles of the outside/lateral portion of your forearm connect - tennis elbow is a flaring up and an upsetting of that tendon group.

How Does it Happen??

There's two ways that can will generally happen. The first is generally repetitive movements with or without some load (such as a tennis racquet) that can irritate the elbow. This can happen with a quick uptick in the amount of use such as like going back to tennis after a long break or possibly a large increase in trade work like hammering and screwing, or can occur over a longer period with repetitive stress and overuse.

The other cause that is also possible you've got some issues up around your shoulder or up around your neck. What that means is that elbow and that shoulder area aren't moving as well as they should, altering the mechanics and asking the elbow to do more than it should. Thus it starts to get irritated because the elbow is being asked to do more work. 

How do I know if I’ve got it?

If you want to test at home, there's a couple ways that you can find out if this is what's happening with you. If locking the elbow out hurts, or wrist and finger extension, like holding the fingers and wrist back while trying to push them forward. Pronation can also irritate the elbow, which is turning the palm toward the ground. 

What can I do to fix it?

To begin with, we need to discuss how elbow pain can flare up and how it is essential to calm it down and build it up gradually. Tendons do not like surprises, and we cannot jump straight back into doing full tilt sports or work, which is what caused the injury in the first place. We need to build it up gradually so that it starts to calm down and gets stronger to handle what you are asking it to do.

We can calm the pain down first with some stretching. Stretches may look something like

• Extending your elbow, bending your wrists so your fingers point toward the floor, and adding some extra pressure for a stretch in that area.

• Using a ball, such as a spiky ball, to massage the muscles in the forearm, above the elbow, and even the back of the shoulder.

• ice massage after exercises around the elbow to help to calm down the pain and inflammation

Following that we want to do strengthening exercises to help tendons settle down and become stronger without putting too much pressure on them.

• Start with “isometrics” - loading the muscles and other tissues without movement in the joints. We suggest using a jar or something that weighs between 500g -1kg, such as peanut butter, or Alternatively, you can use a band to do exercises as well.

• Progress to “isotonics” where the weight is going up and down, progressively getting heavier and working to control the up & down portion of wrist movement

• Want to make sure we bring some focus on the pronation element of your elbow pain, which is the whipping down of your arm when playing tennis. You can use a band or a weight to do the resisted element while keeping a neutral wrist. You can also use a mallet, gripper, or a Thera bar to do some back and forth movements to load up the grip.

We also suggest using a metronome set at 60 beats per minute based on the work of Jill Cook, and tendinopathy expert.
General recommendations are doing 8 to 15 repetitions of these exercises, two to three sets, maybe once or twice a day, depending on where you are personally. If you're doing well, do a bit more, and if you're not so far advanced, drop it back a little bit and progressively build it up.

With time and patience, the exercises and stretches will help you get rid of the nagging elbow pain and get back to doing what you love.