When you’re good at your game, you never want to stop playing. You work hard to get in great shape and maintain your strength. Despite your best efforts, injuries will happen. But they don’t have to keep you down. Tennis elbow is one of the seven most common sports injuries. It’s unplanned but it happens and it hurts, so here’s what you need to know:
- Tennis elbow occurs when the tendons in the elbow are overworked. In tennis and other activities, the forearms are using repetitively and powerfully. This overuse can and eventually will cause pain, inflammation and weakness. The symptoms of tennis elbow not only affect your ability to play sports, they affect every day life. Rest and pain can help with symptoms but more attention is needed to ensure a full recovery.
Here are a few things you can do to significantly shorten your down time:
- Ice and cold therapy, used at the beginning stages of an injury can be quite helpful in reducing pain and inflammation.
- Learn specific exercises that can lengthen and strengthen your muscles so that you can heal quicker and reduce the possibility or severity of any future injury.
- There are movement techniques that will help you to reduce the stress you put on an elbow that’s already injured. Learning these techniques can help you to continue playing while you’re healing.
- Braces and supports are a great help in reducing stress on the elbow, forearm, and the wrist.
Contact us for help with treating tennis elbow as well as other sports injuries.