Tennis Elbow

Mark Perren-Jones from the haven Spa and Health Clinic

Tennis elbow-what’s all the racket about?

Ah, yes…I have somehow managed to fit in another awful pun into my blog. But seriously, tennis elbow traditionally tends to be very difficult to treat but get set because a recent study has shown some smashing results (sorry, couldn’t help myself)

For those of you who don’t know, pain on the outside of the elbow is normally known as tennis elbow and on the inside of the elbow is called golfers elbow. Tennis elbow affects the extensor tendons, in other words, if you pull your wrist upwards you are using your extensor muscles and tendons to do this.

Tennis elbow generally occurs due to repetitive overloading to the tendons. The area gets continual micro trauma after micro trauma. In tennis, a few reasons for developing tennis elbow are if you  buy a new racquet that you are not used to or if the strings are too taut, also if the grip is too big for your hand it can also cause problems. Another common problem is poor technique on the backhand and of course the major reason for most tendonitis injuries-‘too much, too often, too soon’. Many people who are often keen to get back into their beloved sport do too much too soon without giving their body sufficient recovery time leading to tendonitis injuries.

In fact, may people suffer from tennis elbow without ever picking up a tennis racquet. It’s common in golfers, typists, electricians and gardeners to name but a few. I had a client who decided to delete an enormous amount of files from her computer over a week and also managed to give herself tennis elbow. If this condition gets severe enough a person will have difficulty just picking up a coffee cup.

But here’s the exciting news!

There has been new research done in which many people have been cured of their tennis elbow quickly, cheaply and effectively. In fact there was an 80% improvement in their pain and over 70% improvement in strength! They actually did the study with a control group that was receiving just therapy whilst the other group was receiving therapy plus these specific exercises and low and behold the second group got better in a few weeks. They actually stopped the trial after 2 months because they were feeling guilty about the first group not improving and wanted to help them as well. This is very exciting because tennis elbow has been traditionally difficult to treat with many different techniques and the options of cortisone and surgery are not good options at all.