Learn How to Avoid and Deal with Tennis Elbow

Sometimes, we get injured doing exciting things like rock climbing or skiing. Other times, our aging bodies seem to get injured when we do nothing more than just sit there. Let Beijing United Family Hospital (BJU) Physiotherapist Ying Swee Ong walk you through the overuse injury tennis elbow so you can do exciting things like play tennis and the more mundane activities like typing without needing a week of bed rest.  

What is tennis elbow?

Tennis elbow is an overuse injury of the wrist and fingers that causes pain on the outside of the elbow. Tennis elbow is a condition where the attachment of your muscles on the outside of your elbow is inflamed and painful. If you have tennis elbow, you will have pain on the outside of your elbow when you are gripping something or using your wrist and fingers too much. You may also feel stiffness or pain in your elbow in the morning or during long periods of immobility.

What causes tennis elbow?

Despite being called tennis elbow, this affliction doesn’t only happen to tennis players. It can happen to anyone who does a lot of gripping. It can also occur if you are not using the correct technique or repeating the same movement over and over again. A few examples of patients that I’ve seen with tennis elbow are people who:

• Type a lot using a keyboard with their wrists in an extended position over a prolonged period of time;

• Carry heavy luggage over the summer holidays;

• Enjoy gardening but have a tendency to grip their tools too tightly;

• Enjoy cooking, but have a tendency to grip the handles of their frying pans and knives too tightly; 

• Spend lots of time writing calligraphy. 

How do you treat tennis elbow?

Rest or modify

The first thing you should do is to stop or modify the activity that is causing you pain. For tennis players, I often tell them to put on another layer of grip on their tennis racquets to make them thicker so that they don’t have to grip so hard. This same technique can be done for other gripping activities such as gardening and cooking. When typing, make sure you are typing with your wrist straight. Try using a pad underneath your wrist, as this will give your wrist support and prevent you from extending your wrist when typing. 

Image courtesy of Kneeling Chair HQ

Ice

Ice can help with calming both pain and inflammation. Ice your elbow two to three times a day for about five minutes each time.

Stretch and strengthen

Making your muscles stronger and more flexible helps you recover faster and prevents the injury from returning in the future. You can try the exercises in the illustration below to improve the strength and flexibility of your arms, elbows, and wrists. Both strengthening and stretching exercises should be done pain-free. 

Image courtesy of Sportsinjuryclinic.net

If the above is not working for you, then you should see a physiotherapist. They will assess your condition and help you figure out what is causing your pain. They can also help you loosen your muscles with manual therapy, help reduce inflammation with electrotherapy, do taping therapy to reduce the load on your muscles, and give you advice on self-management. 

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

– Henry Ford

It is important to identify the cause of your pain to resolve tennis elbow. Otherwise, as Henry Ford so aptly put it, you’ll continue to have issues. This is because if you keep typing with the wrong posture or play tennis with improper technique, you will always have the same pain in your elbow. You don’t have to stop doing the things you love, but you will need to reduce the stress on your muscles by decreasing the duration and frequency of the problem-causing activity and making sure that you are doing it with the proper technique and posture.

Ying Swee Ong is a New-Zealand-trained physiotherapist. She speaks English, Malay, and Mandarin. If you wish to make an appointment with her or any of our other specialists, please call the BJU Service Center at 4008-919191.

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