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I'm starting to have pain in the elbow, from lifting, and everything points to tennis or golf elbow. What are some good exercises to help with the pain and recovery?

Ivo Flipse
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Meade Rubenstein
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3 Answers3

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Tennis elbow is usually caused by the tearing of tendons during eccentric contraction of muscles around the elbow. Last year, I got tennis elbow from using a kettle bell that was too heavy for me. The solution involves lengthening and strengthening the tendon.

The Theraband Flexbar is a grippy rubber bar which allows you to do the exact exercise you need to help this problem. I became very depressed reading about how some people never recover from tennis elbow, but after 1 day of using this tool, I started to feel relief. Complete recovery took about 2 months for me. I first read about it in the New York Times. I urge you to try this.

Make sure you know if you have tennis elbow or golf elbow first. These are injuries to different parts of your arm.

There are also two stretches that can help.

  1. Hold out your injured arm straight, with the palm facing down. With your other hand, pull your fingers down so your palm faces you.

  2. Hold out your injured arm with your palm up. With your other hand, pull your fingers down and towards your body so that the palm faces away from you.

These stretches felt good to me, and helped, but the exercise was the most important part.

Good luck, and please report back on success or failure.

michael
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  • Nice awnser. I did not know the Thera Band 'till now. – Leo Oct 27 '11 at 07:48
  • Got the Thera-band and it help pretty quickly - quicker than I would have thought possible – Meade Rubenstein Oct 29 '11 at 17:38
  • I'm glad it is helping! – michael Oct 30 '11 at 12:46
  • @michael: Your Amazon link is broken. So what sorts of exercises does one do with this "Thera-band"? – Sean Duggan Mar 15 '16 at 15:01
  • @SeanDuggan Here is an updated link: http://www.amazon.com/TheraBand-Resistance-Improving-Strength-Tendonitis/dp/B0002ECYRQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1458054519&sr=8-2&keywords=theraband The exercise is hard to explain in text. You can see an example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJA_MmAS5ws – michael Mar 15 '16 at 15:10
  • Thank you. Doing a bit more research, it looks like it's Golfer's elbow I'm dealing with, inner elbow instead of outside, but I'm told they have similar treatment. – Sean Duggan Mar 15 '16 at 15:28
  • Yes, it's very important to identify the right diagnosis, or you could make things worse. I am a massive fan of eccentric exercises. Good luck, I hope you get the problem solved! – michael Mar 15 '16 at 15:39
  • My doctor said I have tennis elbow, so I got the Flexbar and started doing the Tyler Twist exercise. After a few days, I was hurting a lot more than before so I stopped. It's been a week since I stopped, and the pain isn't getting any better, and now I'm noticing pain when I wake up, when I drive, and when I type at the computer - none of that ever happened before. – pacoverflow Jun 05 '19 at 14:25
  • @pacoverflow I'm sorry this exercise was counterproductive. You were right to stop when it got worse, as it should have improved rapidly if this was the right exercise for you. Best of luck with finding something that works for you. – michael Jun 06 '19 at 17:46
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I have successfully rehabilitated from this injury and it can be quite a lot of work.

Rest is of course very important and depending on the severity of the injury, you may want to ice the area after working out. I would also recommend that you refrain from activity that causes the pain until you have completely rehabbed the arm. i.e. If there are certain lifts you feel might be the culprit, take those out of your workout until you are pain free. For me, it was upright rows and front raises. Hammer curls may also cause problems for some.

It seems this injury is actually caused by weakened forearm/grip muscles and aggravation of muscle fascia due to inflammation.

I experienced success by doing the following: On those days where I knew I was aggravating the injury (for me it was shoulder day), I began to incorporate a 10 minute forearm warmup. This involved forearm curls, reverse forearm curls and wrist rolls. I did this in place of the exercises where I felt the most pain. My session was once per week, but I'm sure you could do it more often if desired. After a few weeks of this rehab, I began to try the previously painful exercises using very light weight and experienced no pain. Soon, I was able to increase weight and eventually get my strength back to where it previously was and still be pain free. I would say all of this took about 6-8 months total. As I said, icing may help speed this process and help with soreness.

I now continue this regimen on my shoulder days as a warmup and I haven't had tennis elbow pain in a couple of years despite doing numerous types of upright rows and front raises.

If the above doesn't work for you, I would recommend going to a clinic that specializes in fascia repair to have a consultation. This was great for me when I tore my hip flexor and had difficulty making a comeback.

BradH
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In my experience I would say none. A tennis elbow is an inflammotory injury of your tendon that needs to rest. Keep it could and make shure you rest enough. You could also take a five day cure of an inflammation blocker while you are resting.

If you will not rest with this injury, it will only become worse...

Leo
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