If you are reading this, then either you think you have a tennis elbow or you have been told that you have one. Although it is called tennis elbow, you don’t need to be a tennis player to get it! It is soreness or pain felt at the outside of your elbow due to irritation of tendons at your elbow on account of overuse /overload that happened at some point in time but you may still be suffering from it even after you have decreased the load/use or even after resting. Below are the 3 things that you need to know about it.
1) Prolonged Rest does not work
As with most tendon injuries purely resting the tendons will not make it go away. In the lucky cases where the pain does subside, it will take very little in terms of load to cause a flare ups. And each time our tendons have a flare up and and are used even less they get weaker and more prone to degeneration /tears over a period of time if this cycle continues.
2) Stretching/massage alone won’t help either
Stretching and massage may feel relieving temporarily but if not followed by a specific progressive strengthening program you will still leave the tendon vulnerable to continued weakness and easily provoked flare ups.
3) So How Do You Get Rid of This Thing?
Guided and graded loading and a hell of a lot of patience. Exercise selection is key in the early phase. Not everyone with Tennis elbow can start at the same level/type of exercise. We need to select an exercise and monitor symptoms. The best evidence tells us some pain is ok.
Once we feel the tendon and your symptoms are stable in comfort and symptoms we want to progress the intensity or load of the exercise without too much increase in symptoms. For example we would like to keep the pain at or below 3/10 with our first exercise. Once you have mastered it the pain should drop.
At that point in time when the pain drops we would normally increase the load again to continue along that 3-4/10 spectrum. Doing this for 12-16 weeks is the only way to get your tendon happy, healthy and strong again.
Other Options;
Cortisone for Tennis Elbow is very common practice but will not address the problem at the root level. At best it will provide some temporary relief but the side-effect of this is that it can weaken the structure of your tendon in the long term.
Conclusion
Don’t live with your tennis elbow or think you’re on top of it with stretches and massage. Make sure you are getting guided and graded loading to fix it once and for all.
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