How to treat tennis elbow at home

What is tennis elbow

Why medical treatment usually does not work

There are three main reasons why the results from medical treament of tennis elbow are too often very poor.

1. Doctors neglect the constant tension
2. Medical treatment targets the effect and ignores the cause
3. The exercises given can be counter-productive

Doctors neglect the constant tension

Medical journals tend to just mention the intermittent tension and ignore the constant tension (4,5). Because of this doctors prescribe rest, thinking they are removing the stress allowing the elbow to heal. However, with the constant tension stressing the elbow it cannot heal.

Medical treatment targets the effect and ignore the cause

When the elbow fails to heal therapies such as drugs, needles, laser, and massage are directed at the sore elbow, while all along the abnormal tension is preventing it from healing (6-11).

The exercise given can be counter productive

Doctors and therapists will often prescribe exercises or stretches. While these can relax the muscles sometimes giving temporary relief:

• these exercises pull on the attachment causing further stress
• the trigger points are a spasm or cramp of part of the muscle, so these will soon re-tighten the muscle.

Effective home treatment for tennis elbow

Simply speaking, the home treatment we will share will remove both the intermittent and constant tension, allowing your elbow to heal. If done early the elbow will easily heal itself. If the condition is worse we will advise some simple things to help settle it down. In this section:

• How to tell if you have tennis elbow
• How to tell if you have trigger points causing tension
• Basic home treatment and management of tennis elbow

How to tell if you have tennis elbow

Lets look at how tennis elbow is diagnosed. The tests are something simple you can do yourself, but please discuss them with a professional.

Symptoms of tennis elbow

The symptoms of tennis elbow are pain at the outside of your elbow, aggravated by activities such as bending back your wrist or fingers, or by gripping.

Simple tests for tennis elbow

There are two basic ways a doctor will test for tennis elbow. With a bit of advice you can easily do these yourself.

1. examining your elbow for tenderness
2. provocation tests that stress the attachment to see if they cause pain

Are trigger points and muscle tightness placing tension on your elbow

The next step is to see if you have trigger points in your forearm muscles creating tension and preventing your tennis elbow from healing. The simple steps are:

1. examine your muscles for trigger points
2. see if treating the trigger points relieves the elbow

See if treating the trigger points relieves the elbow

This is a very simple procedure. All you do is perform the basic tennis elbow examination and tests. You then the treat the trigger points and re-perform the tests. The trigger point treatment (temporarily) relaxes the muscle. If the muscles were abnormally tight this will relieve tension on the elbow, so there will be less tenderness and less pain.The steps are:

• do the tennis elbow tests,
• treat the trigger points, then
• repeat the tests.

Step one:

Try gripping something or bending your wrist back to reproduce the pain, then examine the outside of your elbow for tenderness.

Step two:

Temporarily relieve the tension in your forearm muscles by treating the trigger points using either of the two methods shown in the video below.

Step three:

Re-test your elbow by doing the activity that previously caused pain and by examining the side of your elbow. If the activity is less painful or the tenderness at the side of your elbow is reduced it is a sign that tension due to trigger points is contributing to you tennis elbow.

Basic home treatment and management of tennis elbow

In this section I’ll go over a basic step by step conservative plan that should fix most tennis elbow problems.

• Step one: settling the tennis elbow down
• Step two: the healing stage
• step three: rehabilitation
• issues that may stop your elbow healing
• prevention

Step one: settling the tennis elbow down

Tennis elbows are often continually sore, with sharp pain upon movements. If this is so the first step is to settle it down so it stops hurting so much and can start to heal.

Modifying activities

While your tennis elbow is settling down you will need to reduce or modify all activities that aggravate the injury. These activities will be very obvious. They will be the ones that hurt.

Reducing the tension in the forearm muscles

At this stage you can start reducing the tension on the injury by treating the tightness and trigger points in the muscles of your forearm. We show you techniques you can use in the video below. It is most important that you only treat the muscles, not the injury. All massage techniques should stop at least 2cm from the painful bump at the side of your elbow.

Braces

If you can avoid using one that’s great, but sometimes braces can be used to reduce the tension of the muscles on the injury.

Stop hurting the injury

A lot of common tennis elbow treatments actually aggravate the injury. These include massage to the elbow, needles, stretches and exercises. Stop these and let the injury settle.

Pain relief

Sometimes anti-inflammatory drugs are used to help reduce pain and swelling. However, these can have dire side effects (12-16). They also artificially block the pain making you think the injury is better than it is, causing you to overdo it and cause more damage. The safest way to help reduce pain and swelling is by applying an ice pack 5 minutes per hour for 48 hours.

Step two: the healing stage

After settling down your elbow may still be a bit sore, but should be relatively pain free except where movements stress the injury. During this phase you continue to minimise stress on the injury while allowing it to heal.

Treatment of forearm muscles

Continue to apply therapy to your forearm muscles. As discusses in our article Why do trigger points keep coming back , problems such as trigger points in your forearm muscles will take a large number of applications of therapy to completely remedy.

Gradually re-introduce activities

It is important to re-introduce activities to get your muscles and joints working normally again. Allow your body to tell you what you can and cannot do. If an activity causes pain the part that it stressed will not have healed yet.

Step three: The rehabilitation phase

If you have had your problem for some time tissues may have shortened and you may have lost strength in some muscles. If this is so, as healing is completed and activities become pain free it is time to start introducing stretching and strengthening exercises.

Special note on stretches and exercises.

We often see stretches and exercises recommended to relieve tennis elbow. These may give short term relief, but stress the injury to it’s long term detriment. Leave the stretches and exercise to the rehabilitation phase when the injury has healed. You will be much safer and better off.

Issues stopping your elbow from healing

When tennis elbow don’t heal issues like scar tissue and adhesions are blamed, but in the overwhelming number of case the tightened forearm muscles are the problem. However, if you have has tennis elbow for a long time or have had a lot ot treatment directed at your ebow like needles or rubbing issues like scar tissue and adhesions can actually a problem. In this case the conservative care I have recommended will take stress of the injury and help a lot, but you may need some professional help to deal with this issue as well.

The main thing is that you will still need to deal with the basic issues like tightened forearm muscles. Forgetting theses issues and focusing on the injured elbow is what usually causes the problem in the first place.

Demonstration of tennis elbow examination and techniques

References

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