Tennis Elbow Pain. Best Home Exercises!

How to Reduce Pain from Tennis Elbow – At Home!

Generally speaking, Tennis Elbow (aka Lateral Epicondylitis) is an overuse injury that can cause small tears in the muscle tendons that attach to the outside of the elbow, resulting in pain, dysfunction, and the annoying inability to perform once easy daily tasks.

A new systematic review and meta-analysis in the Journal of Clinical Medicine by Yoon et al. published in September 2021 determined that there are key exercises that can reduce your elbow pain significantly and conservatively and those are “Eccentric Exercises” of the forearm.¹

Eccentric muscle contraction occurs when you load the muscle while lengthening it, while concentric muscle contraction occurs when you load the muscle while shortening it.

Here is a video showing how to perform eccentric exercises for the forearm to help reduce your elbow pain over time. You can use a resistance band, a dumb-bell, a rubber resistance bar, or even a filled water bottle. Frequency can range between 10-15 repetitions per set, 2 times per day, 3 days per week, using 1-5 pounds to start. You can decrease or increase these parameters depending on your ability.

Here in the office, incorporating adjustments, acupuncture, physiotherapy and ultrasound may also help the healing process. If these home exercises don’t do the trick, call us and we’ll guide you the rest of the way! We would be honored to help you get back to doing the things you love and need to do.

References

1. Yoon SY, Kim YW, Shin IS, Kang S, Moon HI, Lee SC. The Beneficial Effects of Eccentric Exercise in the Management of Lateral Elbow Tendinopathy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. J Clin Med. 2021 Sep 1;10(17):3968