Relieve Your Tennis or Golfer's Elbow Pain With These 4 Stretches

Elbow pain on the thumb side of your arm is usually classified as "tennis elbow," while pain that's more on the pinky side of the elbow is usually called "golfer's elbow."  

It doesn't necessarily mean you're playing them, but those sports have repetitive movements that can aggravate those specific tendons and muscles.  You can certainly aggravate them with other movements as well.  

There's 5 things you need to relieve all types of chronic pain, inflammation, and tension.  We'll talk about 2 of them in this video and blog.

Concept 1 - Improving Range of Motion

Often this includes stretching.  Rather than just "oh, let me sling my arm over my head and stretch my elbow," I like to approach stretching more methodically.

If we continue to stretch the same way we have our whole lives (middle school gym class flashbacks...), we probably won't make any lasting changes. 

Stretching needs to be done in a way that respects your body's primal posture.  Core activation (all 3 parts!) is crucial.  Are your shoulders and hips staying even, or is one side dominating?  We all have a tendency to "cheat" a stretch to make it easier, but this won't help your results.  

Don't focus on what it looks like, but what it feels like! 

I also like to include PNF stretching into my mobility routines.  This enables you to move deeper into a movement and with less chance of injury than you would with just holding it in place or trying to force it.  

Concept 2 - Strengthening 

With many types of chronic pain, some muscles groups need more activation to stabilize the joint.  For golfer's elbow, we typically need to strengthen the triceps.  With tennis elbow, the biceps. 

This is an incomplete picture, of course, because there's so many other factors involved, but it's a good start!  

My approach to strengthening, similar to stretching, is that we need to take posture into account. 

A lot of people hurt themselves trying to stay fit because 

* not all exercises are "healing" (including some styles of dance, and the rigors of professional and contact sports.)  Yes, exercise is "healthy," but it can also be hard on your body.  

* sooo many people do things like pushups, pullups, and v-sits - all good things - with bad posture (just Google "crossfit pullups"), so they end up strengthening the WRONG areas and creating muscular imbalance, and therefore pain.  

If you want more information about dealing with chronic joint pain and tension, make sure you're on the waiting list for my upcoming course, Pain Relief Masterclass!