- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the Internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Brad, I can't believe we haven't done this video yet,
but we need to do a video
on an effective self-treatment for golfer's elbow.
- Golfer's elbow.
- Or medial epicondylitis for the non, layperson.
- All right.
Basically, you're gonna have pain on your inner elbow.
- Okay.
- Is what you're gonna have quite often.
This could be from doing the forearms forehead forehand
forehand smash in tennis.
- Sure.
- Forehead.
And, or you could obviously get it from golf.
- Sure.
You could get actually get tennis elbow
and golfers elbow in, in, in golf.
- Sure. I believe it.
Yeah. Well, the way you swing, I actually got this.
I was working on a project one week and using a
cordless drill and a lot of hand, you know, and I don't
do a lot of hand work during the week.
And so I did so much.
It's like, oh, and it, this very intense.
It's a very good example.
A lot of gripping exercise.
Yeah. Will do it.
Cuz the muscle wad there actually does control
that gripping.
- Right?
So a lot of times you're gonna have
let's say it's my right arm.
You're gonna have pain when you bring your wrist
down like this.
And if I give resistance or if you go this way.
- Right?
So anyway, the pain, this is
we're gonna show you one treatment you can do.
And this is all the most effective treatment you can do.
We actually put a dot here.
So quite often the pain is right in through here.
You might feel it coming down even
and you're gonna do cross fiber friction massage.
- Right?
- Cross fiber, meaning across the fibers of the muscle.
- [Brad] Right?
So the muscles go from here and actually the muscle
belly is here.
And then it goes back to the tendon here.
And of course the tendons go
through your carpal tunnel and that then the rest
- Can provide
- Provide the motion of your yep.
Your hand and
- Wrist.
- [Bob] So what you're gonna do is you're gonna
you can put one finger on top of another, or you can just
put two next to each other, but you're gonna
what you're looking for is you're actually
if you wanna look for a bony landmark, this is your right
on the bone here.
And you could, you might have to rub on the bone itself
or a little bit down further from it.
You're just gonna have to find which spot is really tender.
And so I here, I, I, I got the bone right here.
So I'm rubbing, I'm gonna rub a little bit below it.
So I can put one finger on top of the other.
Now I'm rubbing quite hard here, Brad.
And my guess is this is gonna hurt.
Now the thing is though it should get worse and worse
and worse.
Eventually I'd like to see
that it kind of plateaus out or even gets better or numb
- Over a period of
- A minute.
- [Brad] So if you start rubbing on it
it hurts the first 10, 15 seconds.
- If it starts getting worse, worse, worse.
Yeah. After 30 seconds, it's still getting worse.
Stop. Yeah.
And then I'd probably just put some ice on it
ice it for a couple days and then try it again.
- [Brad] Sure. Yep.
- The, the thing that is going on here
and why this is so helpful is quite often when
you've hurt the tendon or the muscle
you've laid down some scar tissue and
that scar tissue gets laid down in like a web.
And that web is not very strong.
So as soon
as you start using the arm, again, that web breaks open.
And so a lot of times it'll start getting better.
You go, oh, it feels better on start doing something.
And all of a sudden it gets worse again.
So you need to do the cross fiber friction massage
over the muscle and at tendons.
So that, that web becomes more interlocked
like this and becomes stronger.
- Right.
- And actually you get more blood flowing
to the area too.
- Right. Right.
- So you're, you're gonna actually break
up the scar tissue is what you're gonna do
so that it'll heal strong.
So now how long can you do this?
You can, you really can do it for five to 10 minutes.
to be honest with you
- Your, your fingers will wear, wear out.
- Well. Yeah. Yeah.
Your fingers will wear out before you, you can stop here
and you can do it, you know, every day or every other day
depending on your tolerance.
If the skin starts to break down little bit, you gotta get
I've seen that happen.
You gotta give yourself a rest.
But this is a real simple one to do Brad.
I mean, you can be at your desk.
I want your elbow straight.
You know, a pillow on here works really good.
And you can see the dot here.
So I'm rubbing right on that spot, across the fibers
very deep breaking up the scar tissue.
And for some people they can even rub it down in here a
- Little bit too.
- Yeah. Well that can help loosen up those muscles
if they happen to be tight, cuz they're protecting
the injured area.
A tight muscle is not gonna be helpful at all.
So get that loosened up.
- This is very common in people 40 to 60 years
of age when I've seen it, obviously younger.
- Sure.
- And so, but you, you know how many sessions
it's gonna take?
It can vary a lot.
I've seen people get better in a couple weeks.
- Right.
- And sometimes it can take six to 12 sessions
even so, but it often does get better if you oh
- Yeah. Yeah.
It is one of those things if you've had it
cuz these will last for months.
I mean, I had my, I didn't, I didn't do this
but it wasn't bad
and I could live, but it just continued
to ache for quite a while.
- And the reason it keeps lasting
for months is because there's scar tissue
and a scar tissue keeps breaking open
then it has to re-heal.
- Right.
And then it breaks open again.
Then it re-heal, and it just keeps going
in this cycle where you wanna break up the cycle and
and break up the scar tissue.
- Right.
So yeah, if you want to get strong
like bull and have strong Popeye arms
- And be able to hit the ball 300 yards
you're gonna have to get that pain under control.
- So you better believe that.
- Make sure you subscribe if you haven't already.
- Yeah you too. Thanks.