A tennis elbow is caused by a root muscle imbalance where the grip muscles are weaker
than they should be.
I'm about to show you a progression of three exercises that you can do to get your muscles
in the proper balance to fix your tennis elbow problem.
Number one is grip strengthening with a grip strengthener tool like this an exerciser.
Now these you can get off Amazon, I've got links in the description for this and all
the other equipment that I feature in this video here today.
And I like this one specifically, because you can adjust it you turn this knob, and
it will move the spring away to make it harder or closer to make it easier.
So you can find out exactly where you need to be working, you need to make sure that
you place that grip strengthener in this part of your hand right here and sitting on this
part of your palm.
That way, you can focus on using the grip muscles the right way, because if you only
hold on with the fingertips like this, you're going to miss strengthening the palm muscles
like you should to have proper balance between all the grip strengthening muscles.
So make sure to assist with your other hand to get it to the right tension.
Once you've placed it at the bends of your fingers, under these knuckles right here,
then you're going to hold it and squeeze it for 10 seconds.
And if you can get the ends to touch, it's too weak, you need to turn it up and make
the resistance more so that you struggle to get those ends of the handles to touch, I
can't make that touch.
So I'm at the right intensity here.
And I'm thinking about pulling all my fingers and even my pinky, my ring finger, hold it
there for 10 seconds, and then let it go.
And you should feel muscles in the palm of your hand working also here in the forearm
working.
The goal here is to get to doing 10 second holds like I just did, and repeat that 10
times.
And if you can tolerate it, do that hourly.
If you can't tolerate it, because it starts to make your tennis elbow hurt right out here,
then what you've got to do is hold for less, don't hold it for 10 seconds.
Instead shoot for like three, four, maybe six or seven seconds.
Whatever you can do without pain, you can also reduce the intensity here the resistance,
and you don't have to do an hourly, you can start off by doing it a few times a day or
even just once a day.
But the point here is you've got to get your grip strength up, you've got to claim your
grip strength up.
And you ideally need to be able to do this 10 seconds 10 times every hour, I'd shoot
for about 100 reps in a day.
So doing this 10 rounds in a day.
If you only got a tennis elbow on one side, I would encourage you to work out both sides
anyway just to make sure that you're balancing your strength left to right.
Once you're able to do this for 10 seconds at a time 10 times a day or about 100 reps
a day, you know sets of 10 each time you do this.
Now once you're able to do this for 10 seconds at a time.
10 reps each time you do it and you're getting about 100 reps a day or more than you definitely
have enough strength to move into weightlifting exercises.
I'm going to show you with a dumbbell what I want you to do when it comes to weightlifting
exercises.
But you don't have to use a dumbbell.
There's other exercises you can use that involve weights and still get your grip strength up.
The idea here is you want to do pulling exercises.
What I mean by that is like rows where you're pulling this way deadlifts we're having to
pull up this way, even hanging exercises because it's a pull tight motion at the hand.
And that challenges your grip.
What you don't want to emphasize is pushing exercises like a bench press, it doesn't really
challenge your grip as much as a row a pulling type exercise, a lot of people end up going
to the gym and they lift weights and they think that it's helping their grip and it
generally is but it's going to best help your grip if you do pulling type exercises because
your hand has to really hang on to the bar in order to accomplish the weightlifting exercise
and challenge your grip strength.
Some examples of exercises you can do are rows like where you're pulling a cable machine
with with handles like this, you can do lat pull downs, if you're not quite ready to do
pull ups.
deadlifts are a fantastic grip strength exercise, we have to pull the long bar down here.
Or you can even hold dumbbells like these and squat with them right here.
kettlebells tend to work pretty good too, except that a kettlebell handle tends to be
about that wide.
And so it doesn't fit both hands all the way your pinkies and ring fingers might stick
out some and that could be a detriment to your strengthening.
With all of these exercises.
The key thing to remember is your hand placement on the bar, you've got to make sure that that
bar sits in the palm of your hand when you wrap around.
And because you're going to be doing polling type exercises.
The tendency is as you get tired as you go to the reps is for the bar to slide like this
towards your fingertips.
You've got to readjust every single time to get that bar in the palm of your hand.
Because if you allow yourself to hang on like this on any of these pulling weightlifting
exercises, it's going to strengthen certain grip muscles but not all of them.
We want to make sure you uniformly strengthen your grip muscles.
So just get that bar right in the middle of your of your poem and grip it you've got to
clutch it with some force whenever you're doing the exercise.
And as far as how much exercise to do, you've got to exercise enough to feel it in your
grip.
You should feel like these muscles in your forearm and the muscles in the palm of your
hand, get tired, you're going to feel other muscles, of course, get tired, especially
if you're doing, you know, big upper body movements, that's totally fine.
But most importantly, your hand grip should feel like it's getting tired.
Because you're doing this, if you tend to slide this way, you're not going to get the
same effect, you'll be able to tell a difference, it could be that the weakest link in the chain
of muscles from your chest down your shoulder elbow over your hand, is your grip strength.
So even though you can do more reps lift more weight, say you're doing a row, because you're
using your upper body, you're because you're using the muscles in your upper body, your
shoulders and chest and back, you should slow down or reduce the weight, if your hands sliding
away, because then the weakest link is actually your grip strength, you've got to get that
bar in your palm and keep it there throughout all the reps.
Otherwise, you're going to be training into an imbalance.
The third level the progression is to hang.
I love hanging as an exercise for so many different reasons.
Now you don't have to do a pull up, you can progress to that eventually, there's other
exercises you can do from a hanging position, but just simply hanging and hanging there
for 1020 30 seconds a minute.
If you can tolerate it is excellent exercise for your entire upper body, even your spine
because it acts like a distraction.
It does like what an inversion table would do.
But it's better because you're using muscles the way that they're supposed to be used throughout
your entire body.
Now I've got this hanging station right here for pull ups and for dips and other things
like that.
I've got a link in the description below.
If you want to check this one out.
I love this one.
It's pretty sturdy.
And it's it's more compact than other ones that are available.
And all you gotta do is hold on right here and you let yourself dangle down.
But just make sure like with the dumbbell that when you grab onto this, that you're
hanging on, with a bar in the palm of your hand, you don't want to grab on right here
and let your fingers slide down with your palm exposed that that bar needs to be in
your palm.
Adjust your grip if necessary.
That if you haven't hung before, you're probably looking at me like I there's no way I'm gonna
hang this is too hard for me, I've never been able to do a pull up.
That's okay, you can do this modified and still get a ton of benefit out of it.
All you need is a step stool, I've got this two step stool.
But you can use any step stool as long as it's sturdy for you open that up and get your
feet on the stepstool.
So that you're not hanging with your full body weight you hang from a partial position
right here.
So my feet are on the on the stepstool here and I've only got about 50% of my body weight
through my arms, I'm making sure to keep the bar in the palms on my hands.
And this way I can tolerate doing this for much longer.
And my weight isn't an issue here.
My strength isn't an issue here.
You can modify hanging no matter what age no matter what weight you are, no matter what
gender you are, you should be able to hang and get the benefits of it.
Now the way to do this is to hang for 10 seconds at a time, work your way up to 20 seconds,
even a minute at a time.
And the ideal is to go for five minutes total taking breaks along the way.
So you hang for 10 seconds, take a 10/22 break whatever you need, then go 10 seconds again,
and just go like that for five.
If you can tolerate two minutes, that really increases your grip strength.
And this isn't something you have to do every hour some people want to and they do and they
benefit from it.
Especially if you have a desk job and you have access to a pull up bar, you can install
one or put one of those hands in the doorway.
So be careful those doorway ones make sure you have a footstool and that you're not putting
your full body weight through there and that your doorframe is very sturdy.
Going through this exercise progression starting with the grip strengthener then moving on
to some sort of weightlifting exercise.
And then eventually hanging is the best way to get rid of tennis elbow problems for the
long term.
Once you've gotten your tennis elbow problem under control, then you've got to keep up
some long term maintenance so that it's not recurring, so it's not coming back every so
often.
One thing I highly recommend that you get along this process for fixing your tennis
elbow problem is a hand grip strength measurement tool.
It's called the dynamometer.
There's a link in the description to this as well.
And I've got a whole video on how to use this and how to measure yourself.
So you can go check that out if you want to learn more.
But a key bit of advice moving forward into strengthening is to make sure that you avoid
pain, you don't want to increase any sort of pain, inflammation swelling in this area
here.
So if you're using this tool, because that's probably where you're gonna start out, make
sure to reduce the intensity so that it's not aggravating your elbow.
If you're progressing into weightlifting or hanging, just make sure that you take the
proper precautions, reduce the intensity, don't do it as frequently take rest breaks
as needed.
Take rest days as needed as well in order to let your tendons and ligaments recover
here so that you're prepared to challenge them the next time around.
It is important to challenge your strength and I'll show you how in this video.
What happens all too much as people don't get enough sleep.
lengthening, they may use a device like this or worse yet, they use one of those little
gripper balls or stress reliever balls expecting that to take care of the tennis elbow, and
it really isn't enough resistance to get the strength required to get the joint in a better
position and fix your tennis elbow pain.
For the long term need a more sophisticated plan with much more resistance and it's going
to take more time, but the payoff is huge if you can get rid of tennis elbow once and
for all.
Avoid relying on pain medications, injections and avoid a surgery for tennis elbow.
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Thanks so much and I'll see you in the next video.
Bye bye