Tennis and Golf Elbow
Pain on either side of the elbow? Maybe it’s when you lift weights, grip something, or play a sport?
Depending on the area of the elbow that is experiencing pain, this could be termed ‘tennis elbow’ or ‘golf elbow’. Regardless, it is pain that occurs either on the outside of the elbow or the inside of the elbow. The technical term for this is medial or lateral epicondylitis.
Why do you get it?
Epicondylitis occurs when the muscles that either flex, or extend the wrist are weak and develop tendonitis at their origin - the elbow. All muscles that flex your wrist travel through the inside of your forearm and attach at the medial (inside) aspect of your elbow. All muscles that extend your wrist travel along the back of the forearm and attach to the bony prominence at the lateral (outside) aspect of your elbow. When you handle loads that are too heavy for the wrist musculature, that stress will accumulate in the tendon near the elbow resulting in either golf or tennis elbow.
How do I know I have it?
If you lay the inside of your forearm on a stable surface and extend your wrist then have someone try to pull your hand to the surface as your resist and it recreates the elbow pain… you have lateral epicondylitis or tennis elbow.
If you lay the outside of your forearm on a stable surface and flex your wrist, then have someone try to pull your hand toward the surface as your resist and it recreates the elbow pain… you have medial epicondylitis or golfers elbow.
What do you do about it?
To start, increase the wrist and elbow range of motion. You can do this by placing your hands on a low table with your fingers pointing toward you and trying to stretch your wrist to the table. Next you can flip your hands over so the top of the hand is on the table and again try to push the wrist toward the surface to stretch the back of the forearm.
Next you need to start building strength in these tissues so that the loads you’re handling don’t overwhelm the tendon and cause tendonitis. You can do this with weighted wrist curls, being on your hands and focusing on pushing your finger tips and knuckles into the ground, and working on grip strength of the hand. These types of strengthening exercises will help build strength in the wrist flexor and extensor muscles which will prevent the build up of bad stress in the tendons.
Focus on stretching until your pain gets consistently better, then start to strengthen the hand, wrist, and forearm for a few months.
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