Tennis Elbow is a painful condition affecting more than 3% of people. Despite its name, athletes aren’t the only people who develop tennis elbow. If your job involves repetitive motions of the wrists and arms — like plumbers, painters, carpenters, and butchers for example — you are more susceptible to developing tennis elbow.
The pain is located in the elbow bone muscle and can radiate to the forearm and wrist. If you think what you are facing right now is a tennis elbow, keep reading to learn more about its symptoms and remedies.
What is Tennis Elbow?
Tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis) is a form of tendinitis caused due to swelling of tendons near the elbow joint. It occurs when tendons in your elbow are overloaded. Straining these muscles over and over again puts stress on the joint of the elbow, introducing your muscle to inflammation and tiny tears. Tennis elbow can affect people of all ages, but this condition is generally found in adults aged 30-50.
What are the Symptoms of Tennis Elbow?
Tennis elbow pain may radiate from the outside of your elbow into your forearm and wrist. The tennis elbow warning signs are pain and weakness, which can occur while you perform various activities like:
- Lifting something
- Making a fist or gripping an object similar to a tennis racket
- Opening doors or shaking hands
- Raising hands or straightening the wrist
Causes of Tennis Elbow
To better understand your condition, let’s cover what causes tennis elbow. Tennis elbow is an overuse and muscle strain injury.
Some of the common causes are:
- Practicing or carrying out repetitive motions can stress the tendon muscles like excessive and firm clenching on a racket during a swing.
- Activities, like playing, squash, weight lifting, or racquetball, can also cause tennis elbow pain
- Jobs or hobbies that elevate the risks include but are not limited to carpentry, painting, typing, and raking
How to Treat Tennis Elbow?
First things first, avoid any activity that you think is the root cause of the pain, at least until your symptoms improve. Tennis elbow can heal on its own. However, there are some cases where these treatment options can help speed up the recovery process:
- Icing the elbow — Apply an ice pack or cold compress on the painful area
- Getting effective massage therapy treatment — getting your muscles and tendons lengthened and released using the Moench Method will give you back full range of motion and proper blood supply, thus getting rid of your pain almost instantly. And at Therapy Central Bodywork, that’s exactly what we do. This stops your muscles from painfully pulling at any of their attachments. You can book an appointment at one of our two locations.
- Full range of motion exercises — Reduce stiffness and increase flexibility.
What to Do if The Pain Persists
Preventing tennis elbow is not easy, especially if your line of work requires frequent bending of wrists and straining forearm muscles. Still, you can take the measures mentioned above to minimize the chances of getting tennis elbow and prevent it from coming back.
If self-treatment isn’t helping and your pain still persists, come in and see us for a session. Not only will we work with you on your pain areas, our staff will educate you on what you can do to protect yourself from this in the future. Book an appointment at our Round Rock or Westlake location or consult with our licensed therapists at (512) 244-6241.