Re Thinking Your Elbow Pain
Will Stretching, Manual Therapy or Taping Make Things Worse?
Take an ice pack (or bag of peas) and press it against the painful part of your elbow. You only need to do this for 10 seconds. After 10 seconds does your pain start to ramp up? Or does it remain the same, or potentially feel better?
After this grab a small pin and prick the area of tension once, note how it feels. Then repeat this ten times in fairly quick succession (obviously do not do this hard enough to draw blood). Does the pain start to become worse? Or does the pin prick feel fairly similar each time?
If either or both escalate your pain then you need to avoid stretching, massaging or taping the area as the repeated stimulus will be too much for the elbow to tolerate.
Learn To Load
So, what can you do instead of the conventional stretch and hope? Strengthen! You need those tendons around the elbow to be able to tolerate the demand you’re placing them under. If you’re getting pain on the inside of your elbow, strengthen your wrist flexors. Pain on the outside of your elbow, strengthen your wrist extensors (see video links below).
Inside of the elbow = Wrist Flexor Strengthening
Outside of the elbow = Wrist Extensor Strengthening
The Rules of Loading
In order to build up your elbows tolerance to load we have a few simple rules:
- Slowly build up your repetitions, start with 3 sets of 8 repetitions at body weight and note how your elbow reacts
- Each repetition should be slow and controlled holding for 2 seconds then relaxing for 2 seconds at a consistent pace
- You need to experience slight discomfort but it should dissipate within 30 minutes after exercise. If this isn’t the case then bring down the repetitions next time round. However, if the discomfort does calm down within 30 minutes your body has granted you permission to up the reps next session
- Do not load every day, once every two days at a maximum
- When your body grants you permission (as outlined above) add just one rep at a time to each set, until you reach 3 sets of 15
- To progress beyond 3 sets of 15 bodyweight reps simply bump the weight up to 1KG and re start the process at 3 sets of 8 reps
- Patience is vitally important. I have seen many people rush through this, get frustrated, load up quickly and cause more harm than good
Can I Stretch If Neither Test Causes Pain?
100% go for it! Strengthening the tendons using the above protocol will always be useful as well. As always should you not notice improvements within a few weeks please reach out and we can do a full history and movement assessment to find out what else might be contributing.
Remember it is all connected,
Ben
Call – 07745 039 485
