Which Tennis Elbow exercises actually work and which don’t? There is currently only one evidence-based tennis elbow exercise, and it involved using a Therabar or Flexbar. There’s nothing worse than having your physical therapist or chiropractor assign you a tennis elbow exercise in the office, and then you get home and can’t remember which hand goes where, and what direction to twist. Inspired by brilliant rap lyricist Missy Elliott, I show you an easy way to remember how to do this super-effective exercise for tennis elbow.
Also in this video I show you how to decide which color (level of resistance) to start with. Hint: if it is too difficult and your form breaks down, you would get better results by starting with a less-difficult resistance. This exercise is good for anyone who performs repetitive motions (dentist, guitar player, rock climber, keyboard/computer user. Most people who have tennis elbow aka lateral epicondylitis or lateral epicondylosis (find out more about the terms “itis” vs. “osis” here) don’t actually play tennis. But they get the same painful and annoying condition developing in their outer elbow as those who show up mentally and physically for a tennis match.
81% of subjects who did this eccentric exercise (in addition to traditional treatment) reported a decrease in pain compared to only 21% of subjects who skipped this exercise and only did traditional treatment. Building up eccentric strength in a tendon is important because we can tolerate more load in eccentric movement than we can in concentric movement, so it’s important to improve that particular type of tendon strength. This will help rock climbers resist forearm fatigue, and help computer users perform tasks for a longer period of time without having as much elbow pain.
So order a FlexBar on Amazon and get to it!
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* Tennis Elbow Exercises: Eccentric research article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2971639/
