What's up guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
Today we're going to talk all about Tennis Elbow, and really, what the hell's causing
it in the first place because a lot of you out there who deal with this common,
very common orthopedic issue, aren't playing any tennis at all, but you've been really
having a hard time getting rid of it.
Well we have to, as we always say here, start looking somewhere other than where it hurts.
If you really want to get to the root cause of what's going on with whatever orthopedic
issue you're dealing with,
whatever issue is preventing you from getting your best workouts in, or competing, you have
to start looking at the place that's not hurting.
At least start looking above and below where it's hurting.
So let me explain a little bit.
When we're talking about Tennis Elbow, we know that it's this spot right here on the
outside of the forearm that's killing us.
But, does it mean that that's the cause?
No, we know, already we know that 99 percent of the time, when something's hurting,
it's a breakdown of one of the supporting areas or joints that's causing this one to
start bearing all the brunt .
And especially when the joint in question here is one of those more stable and immobile
joints, and that's exactly what you're dealing with here in the elbow.
All it likes to do here is hinge up and down.
That should remind you of something else.
The knee.
The knee, we've talked about before in other videos, how the knee deals with all of the
inabilities of the hip and the ankle to do their own job.
When the ankle breaks down, or the mobility of the ankle is either too much or too little,
it sends stress up through the knee.
When the hip is either too tight or too weak, it sends stress down towards the knee.
The same thing happens here in the elbow.
So before you start thinking, 'Oh I've got to sit here and rub the outside of my elbow
because my therapist told me to do that,' or
'I've got to really strengthen the outside of my forearms by doing a lot of wrist extensions,
right, you know, wrist extensions with dumbbells, because I have weak forearm extensors.'
That's probably going to cause you to have even more pain.
And I can tell you this, it's not going to fix your problem.
So, we've got to start thinking a little bit differently.
If you look at your forearm, a lot of times guys the weakness is not on this side of the
forearm that everyone tells you it is.
It's actually a weakness on this side of the forearm, completely counter to what you've
been told.
So, here's how that all that out.
If your forearm flexors are weak, and let's go back to tennis because it's going to be
an easy way for us to describe its function,
if you're playing tennis and you have to serve, right, you know that a lot of wrist flexion,
powerful wrist flexion will come in as the racket comes down to execute that serve.
Guess what happens if you don’t have enough power to execute that flexion?
You have to, you have to create it.
And you create that by preloading the wrist flexors, by putting them on stretch very much
the same way that if we want to jump high, we don’t start from here.
We have to preload the quads and glutes by leaning, you know, by squatting down to jump.
Well, the same thing will happen here, but
every single time you have to execute that powerful wrist flexion, you’re going to
have to preload back here and you get an overuse of that muscle.
It’s not that it’s weak.
It’s being asked to do a job that it wasn't meant to do.
And that's to pick up the slack for the muscles on the other side.
So, the first thing you're going to want to do is start evaluating.
Where are you getting the pain?
What is the activity that's causing it?
And maybe see if it could be something related to your forearm.
See, in this video there’s no one fix.
And anybody that tells you that there’s one fix is not telling you the truth.
There’s no one fix, but I got to at least get your mind thinking where it might be.
And certainly get it off of the area that everyone else is telling you that it's on.
Because, I know long term you're going to have a much better shot at fixing this.
That said, the next place you're going to want to look, up here in the shoulder.
When we look at the shoulder here, how could the shoulder have anything at all to do with
what's going on here at the elbow?
A lot, because they're attached.
We all know guys, this is one bone that comes down and feeds into the elbow.
So whatever's mechanically happening up here, just like whatever's happening at the hip,
is going to have a carry-over effect into what the joint does below that.
So, guys with bad posture, we all know, there's a whole bunch of them running around the gyms
all the time.
The internal shoulder rotation here.
The rounded shoulder posture.
What does that do?
It creates an internal rotation of the arm.
The internal rotation of the arm creates a pronation here of our forearm.
Right, it all kind of comes together.
That's sort of this posture here.
If you have this prolonged internal rotation, flexor pronator tightness, you're going to
get a prolonged stretch on the outside of the extensors on the opposite side.
Remember what happens when we have prolonged stretch?
We get weakness.
So, we could have weakness, see.
It’s not always at black or white.
We could have weakness.
But guess what?
It’s wasn’t that we just didn’t do enough of the wrist extensor dumbbell exercises.
Because you could do all these that you want.
If you don’t fix this posture, it’s never going to really help to counteract what's
going on at this forearm.
And that's, I think, the issue here.
You're told to do one thing.
That's only part of the problem.
And again, it’s not really that.
If you could reposition this shoulder in the right place,
maybe you’ll still have the adequate strength in that forearm to not have caused that in
the first place because once you restore the normal length-tension in there, you'll be
alright.
So, lastly, athletes, throwing athletes, again the tennis server, the football player, the
baseball player, anybody that has to throw or you know, try to decelerate,
if you don’t have the proper strength and mechanics here back through your shoulder
blade and scapula to eccentrically decelerate your arm,
guess what's going to try to kick in and do the job that that's not doing?
Once again, you're right.
It’s the outside of your forearm because you can see that if my muscles are supposed
to be decelerating my arm here so that it doesn't fly off of my body into the camera
right at you,
if it’s not doing it, it’s going to try its damnedest every single step of the way,
all the way through this kinetic chain until the very last chance I have,
which is right through my hand as I let go of the ball, if I don’t have it there, I’m
going to try my hardest right down through the forearm,
and we're going to get a really overactive use here, eccentrically of our forearm extensors
to try to accomplish that.
So, here I’m not getting help, I’m not getting help, my arm is coming in too quickly.
I really have to hold up on my wrist here in this extended position.
I put a lot of stress up on this bundle up here.
And again, yeah I’m trying to do my damndest as a wrist extensor to help,
but it’s not doing me any good in the long term because all it’s doing is giving me
a hell of a lot of pain.
So, I hope guys that you can see that to fix this problem, to fix one of the most common
orthopedic problems around, it doesn’t matter what you're doing.
It doesn’t matter how you got it.
You have to start looking at least below down in your wrist into your forearm, or up onto
your shoulder.
And most of all and stop doing this.
Stop wearing your braces that you put over here that you buy at Walgreens.
And stop thinking that just doing these exercises is going to fix your problem.
You've got to make sure that you're doing the right things to attack this problem long
term.
Alright guys, if you like these kind of videos, remember we break out Raymond every now and
then so we can do some more of the PT'esk videos.
But, I want to know about it.
Let me know.
Leave your comments below.
What are the issues that you're dealing with, and I'll make sure I cover them in the video.
But at the end of the day, it’s all about keeping you in the gym and functioning as
best that you possibly can.
And when I write my programs as a Physical Therapist, I do exactly that.
It's about getting bigger, yes esthetically.
It's about getting stronger, yes.
We want you to perform better.
But if you can't stay healthy, then it's not going to mean a damn at all.
So I've got to make sure that when we write our programs, we're writing them using science
and putting it back in strength.
And that's what we do.
If you haven't already guys, head to ATHLEANX.COM right now.
Get our 90 Day Training Program and see what it's like to train like an athlete, to stay
healthy and perform at your best.
Because a lot of times we never, ever get a chance to experience that.
We're always banged up.
Alright guys.
We'll be back here again in just a couple days.
Let me know if this one helped you out.