How will you be able to evaluate tennis elbow exercises, and decide whether or not they are tennis elbow exercises you should avoid?

Let’s Start With Tennis Elbow Anatomy

To learn what types of exercises you don’t want to do, you have to understand what tennis elbow is and what’s going on in your shoulder, arm, elbow, forearm, wrist and hand.

This is actually quite simple.

Your elbow joint is somewhat complicated if you were to dissect it, but by looking down at your elbow right now, you’ll see a crease marking the skin between your arm and forearm in the front of your elbow. Find it?

The part of your elbow closest to the body is called the medial elbow. One good way to remember it is to think that it’s closest to “me”.

The opposite part of your elbow is the outside of the elbow, or the lateral elbow.

Why Tennis Elbow Has Another Name

Tennis elbow is also called lateral epicondylitis. Usually the disorder starts out with just the tendons inside the elbow joint becoming inflamed. But the longer the tendons are inflamed, the more the inflammation spreads to involve the muscle and the joint itself.

The name “lateral epicondylitis” gives you an idea that the disorder involves the part of the elbow that is lateral. If you thought that, you are correct. This area is where some muscles originate, and it’s the ones that are associated with tennis elbow are troublesome.

What Muscles Are Involved In Tennis Elbow

The muscles that originate here are responsible for extending your wrist, extending your fingers and for gripping objects.

If you stroke your arm from the lateral elbow area all the way down to your wrist, you’ll feel a meaty muscle towards your lateral elbow that thins out towards the wrist. This is the primary muscle affected during tennis elbow.

It’s called the extensor carpi radialis muscle. There are other extensor muscles in the same area.

These muscles aren’t strengthened very often in exercise programs. When you go to the health club, you’ll never see a weight machine that is very specific for wrist extensors and finger extensors!

By strengthening these muscles, you can start to decrease the pain of tennis elbow. To strengthen these muscles you would simply close your hand tightly around a ball, open your fingers wide and move the open fingers toward the outside of the body.

When health practitioners give you a rehabilitation plan for tennis elbow, you get exercises that make you extend your fingers and wrist. Sometimes the exercises will be ones that ask you to turn your hand from a palm down to palm up position, and back again.

Tennis Elbow Exercises To Avoid

Any exercises that don’t focus on extending your wrist and fingers would not help you eliminate tennis elbow pain or put tennis elbow in your past.

Thus, if someone tells you to move your right upper arm across your chest to grab your left shoulder, you know that this wouldn’t help your tennis elbow at all.

Here are some additional exercises that really won’t help you at all:

1. With your arms at your side, press your elbows behind your back as far as they will go. Return to the original position. Repeat.

2. Extend your arms out to the side, palms upward, and bring your hands to the elbows, then back to the extended out position.

3. Clasp your arms behind your neck, then lean backwards in a stretch. Repeat.

4. Touch your elbows together in front of your body. Hold them there while a friend or family member tries to pull them apart.

5. Sit calmly in a chair. Shrug one shoulder, then another. Repeat several times.

As you are doing some of these exercises, you may find that they create a little pain. This pain is simply from movement, not from stressing or strengthening the extensor muscles that are important in tennis elbow.

Why These Exercises Won’t Create Tennis Elbow Relief

Did you see how some of the exercises focus more on the shoulder, not the elbow? If an exercise doesn’t focus on the right body part, you won’t feel any relief of pain from the exercise.

You could repeat the exercises until doomsday and still, no relief would be in sight. It would be in the category of tennis elbow exercises to avoid.

For tennis elbow exercises to be fruitful – strengthening your extensor muscles – you must target the right muscle group.

For more insight on which types of exercise to do to improve tennis elbow and eventually get tennis elbow relief, get the ebook, Tennis Elbow Secrets Revealed.

This ebook will make a lot of sense to you now that you know the information presented in this article!

Treatment usually consists of cortisone injections that can help relieve the inflammation. Another treatment is a topical ointment made of nitrous oxides. The disadvantage of using either one of these treatments is potential side effects.

The Type of Tennis Elbow Treatment That Works Well

Another part of tennis elbow treatment includes physical therapy emphasizing stretching, massage and ultrasound. And there’s always the standard care of using ice and heat, as well.

One big component of your recovery plan is to strengthen the tendons that are so inflamed. This is done with tennis elbow exercises.

Known Positive Results From This Type of Treatment

In 2009, a study performed in New York City at the Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma found that one way to strengthen the connective tissue in those with tennis elbow was to use a large rubber band that cost very little. This rubber band was more like rubber tubing than a rubber band you place around a stack of papers.  The researchers called it a rubber pad.

When used with standard physical therapy and standard medical care of ice and heat, the band was enough to add increased strength and decrease pain so much that the researchers decided not to let the rest of the control group suffer anymore. They let them know the rubber tubing worked.

photo credit: nismat

Elbow Tendonitis Exercises Will Eventually Relieve Pain

Exercises for lateral epicondylitis won’t work overnight. They must be performed during the day at least a few times. You will have to incorporate time into your busy schedule to overcome tennis elbow!

However, after a few weeks, you will start to notice that you can do things that you really couldn’t do before. You will clearly see a change occurring.

And although it’s difficult to notice the absence of pain, if you really pay attention to pain and even rate your pain during different activities such as brushing your teeth and hair, gripping cups, tennis balls, and a golf club on a weekly basis, the results will become obvious to you.

Wrist Exercises are Included in Lateral Epicondylitis Exercises

When you have tennis elbow, it’s important to use wrist extensor exercises, such as the one below.

Wrist Extensor Exercise 1

With your right hand, clasp the top of your left hand and push the left hand in towards the elbow. You will feel a stretch in your wrist.

Hold the position for a few seconds at first, working up to 10 to 15 seconds. Then let go. Repeat 3 times at one sitting, then another 4 times during the day.

Wrist Extensor Exercise 2

One of the most difficult actions for someone with tennis elbow is to hold a weight in your hand. Think about this for a minute – what is the motion you need for holding a weight in your hand? It is one where your fingers clasp around an object.

You can perform a very similar exercise to strengthen the wrist extensors in your hand and wrist.

Grab a ball with your hand. Make sure your palm faces down towards the floor. Next move your wrist upward as if you were getting ready to throw the ball. Move it upward as far as it will go. Then hold this position for a few seconds.

Next lower the ball slowly towards the original position. Repeat 3 times and then do an additional set of 3 exercises four more times during the day.

Wrist Extensor Exercise 3

Grab a broomstick or a dowel about 5 feet long. Standing, hold the dowel in your hand with an outstretched arm. Your grip should be about halfway on the dowel.

Move the dowel down towards the ground slowly and then up again as if you are pointing the dowel outwards. Repeat about 10 times.

A little bit of pain in this exercise is good, but if the pain is great, do however many repetitions you can and then stop. Later on in the day, try again.

Don’t Just Focus on One Type of Exercise for Lateral Epicondylitis Exercises

There are other muscles besides the wrist extensors that need to be addressed in epicondylitis exercises.

For example, you can’t ignore the wrist flexors, supinators and pronators, and muscles that move the wrist to the left and to the right.

The good news is that when you do wrist extensor exercises, you also do wrist flexion exercises. When you extend your wrist, eventually you have to flex it to get back to a resting position. The same thing is true with supinators and pronators.

Common Sense about Exercising

Whenever you perform elbow tendonitis exercises, make sure that you follow the rules for common sense about exercising:

1. Don’t overdo it! Overdoing any exercise tears the body up. It also creates free radicals that can damage the bones, muscles, and already inflamed tendons in the body.
2. Take it easy on yourself when starting. It’s better to proceed slowly with exercises for your tennis elbow and use the beginning time to give your elbow the message that you really won’t compromise it. This way, your body won’t fear exercise.
3. If you happen to create a lot of pain after exercising, don’t do nothing. Instead, ice the area and take a little extra vitamin C. The vitamin C has been linked with decreased lactic acid after exercise.

There’s a lot more to exercising your body, and to lateral epicondylitis exercises that you should know.

The book I seriously recommend is Tennis Elbow Secrets Revealed which has helped so many people!

Fortunately, this is not true when it comes to treating your tennis elbow or tendonitis. In this case, you can actually achieve far better results if you decide to be your own therapist.

Skip the Expensive Therapy, Do It Yourself

Many medical “experts” have one line of defense they stick to when treating tennis elbow, physical therapy. Every year, physical therapists and the related physical therapy industry generate millions of dollars in profits by treating tennis elbow.

However, all of the money you spend on physical therapy is not needed and is likely not to cure your problem.

For many injuries, especially acute problems like those from an accident, traditional therapy is an excellent way to rehabilitate and make a full recovery. The difference is that the exercises for tennis elbow are solely aimed at relieving your pain.

They do not focus on strengthening and improving the elbow beyond what is required to stop the pain and resume activity. In fact, often therapy sessions stop as soon as the pain stops leaving you open to future injury because you have not learned how to sustain a healthy arm.

Another problem with going to physical therapy sessions is that the equipment you are using is expensive. Most people only have access to that type of equipment at the therapy office.

This equipment is very effective at exercising the arm at the right angle, with the right weight, and with the right movement that will strengthen it and increase its flexibility.

The drawback comes, once again, when the pain stops. At this point you will typically stop your therapy sessions and no longer have access to these machines. You will not have learned how to continue caring for your arm at home without the machines. This will leave you vulnerable to injury again.

Finally, therapy is expensive. Many insurance plans do not cover it and those that do still leave you with hefty co-pays. Most therapy will require several visits a week for many months. These bills can rack up, especially since you can achieve the same results at home.

The Cheaper, Less Complex Equipment Will Help You The Most

If you search long enough, you are going to find a whole host of gadgets that can be used to treat. They are more than likely expensive and may even require multiple purchases before you get the full affect.

The fact of the matter is that you do not need to spend a lot of money on fancy gadgets in order to heal your tennis elbow. The simpler and inexpensive tools work best.

Most equipment for tendonitis has one focus. It is used in conjunction with tennis elbow exercises. Really expensive equipment strives to keep you in the absolute best position or posture during your exercise.

If you think about it though, what are you really learning using this equipment? You are not learning how to do the task correctly without help. You will remain at risk for injury whenever you do not use the equipment.

Essentially, you will either have to use the equipment for the rest of your life or learn how to do it right without the gadgets.

Instead of buying expensive gadgets, you can probably find everything you need at your local store. A good wrap bandage, also known as an Ace bandage, will give you compression to reduce swelling and possibly relieve pain.

However, it will not restrict your movement so much as to keep your arm in a certain position. You will have to learn the proper form.

A simple set of hand or free weights will also be very effective and very inexpensive. These will enable you to perform a wide range of tennis elbow exercise movements and techniques.

These free weights are a fantastic way to gradually build up strength in your arm. Make sure you do not take on too much load, start with the smaller weights first.

These weights are also quite effective during flexibility exercises. When you have rested your elbow, you will be able to increasingly stretch your tendons to prevent future tendonitis.

Learn the Right Moves From the Right Person

As you read earlier, you do not need to spend a lot of money seeing a physical therapist to relieve your tennis elbow pain. Any exercise for tennis elbow will be just as effective done at home. However, you will still need instruction on which exercises are best and how to perform them properly.

The author of Tennis Elbow Secrets Revealed, Geoff Hunt, will provide you with all of the instruction you need to start healing your tendonitis. Hunt, a former elbow tendonitis sufferer, designed his program based on all of the knowledge he gained on his quest to heal himself.

He was tired of simply treating his recurring injury only to have it happen again. He realized that the focus of exercise for tennis elbow should be on strengthening the elbow and making it more agile to prevent future injury.

In his book, Hunt shares the series of exercises which cured his own condition. If you follow this program correctly, you should also be able to permanently cure and prevent your tennis elbow. Hunt will show you how to use common household items to heal and strengthen your arm.

Hunt will also teach you the R.I.C.E. method of healing which includes using basic bandage wraps to support and compress the arm during exercise and while resting.

Do not get fooled into spending a lot of money on physical therapy or miracle gadgets to cure your elbow tendonitis. The exercises you need to do are not complicated and do not require a big investment to see results. With good direction and advice, you should be able to heal yourself in