What is tennis elbow?
Tennis elbow also known as lateral epicondylitis is an overuse injury to the wrist extensors. Most people that have tennis elbow don’t even play tennis. The pain is typically brought on by the motorcycle throttle motion, grabbing milk out of the refrigerator, and if you’re right handed even writing.
What exercises do I need to do?
Stretching the extensors can help, wrist roller exercises, wrist flexion exercises, wrist rotation exercises will all help aid in recovery of the tennis elbow. Here is a visual of what some therapists may recommend for tennis elbow
What if it isn’t getting better with the exercises?
Our bodies are like a car, sometimes its an easy fix and sometimes its not. When its not, it can be frustrating. This is why I’m making this article. To help people with the headache of spinning their wheels.
Many times in the gym, we eventually get some kind of nagging pain. Here’s one that is common and sometimes may not be as easy to fix as your think. Tennis elbow can hurt. For some it can prevent them from certain exercises and sometimes, keep them out of the gym. Tennis elbow sometimes is misleading. You feel the pain in your elbow, but really, its not coming from there. This could actually be coming from your shoulder. Particularly a rotator cuff muscle called your supraspinatus. The supraspinatus is located under your trap muscle and on top of your scapula.
What happens is the supraspinatus gets tight and locked up and it refers pain to your elbow. Pretty crazy, I know, but catching this for some can be a Godsend. When we do a lot of lateral raises in the gym, this muscle tends to get pretty beat up. The gym industry is big focusing on external rotations and face pulls at the moment and these can fire this muscle up too.
Use this stretch and see if some of the pain starts to subside. The key here is to make sure you drop your shoulder while performing the stretch. If your shoulder is elevated, its not going to work as well.
If you have tried all of the exercises to stretch and strengthen your elbow extensors and it didn’t work…Give this a shot and Good luck!
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