hey everyone dr jeff peng here tennis elbow is one of the most common causes of elbow
pain and is very easily treated through a home exercise program so the goal of this video is
to teach you an exercise routine to relieve your pain from tennis elbow let's get started
okay so first what is tennis elbow and how do we treat it tennis elbow is also called lateral
epicondylitis or common extensor tendinopathy it is caused by an overuse injury of the forearm
muscles repetitive movements cause wear and tear of the tendons specifically right at
the attachment site at the outside of the elbow repeated tugging causes damage to the tendons
all over here and that results in pain the goal of treatment is to first off load this area and
allow the muscles and tendons time to recover this will involve activity modification and
avoiding repetitive motions that make the pain worse now another way to offload the area is to
wear a tennis elbow strap also called a counter force brace this brace wraps around the forearm
just below the elbow and essentially acts as a new attachment site for the forearm muscles these are
fairly cheap and are available at most pharmacies as well as online okay what about pain treatment
options for pain include alternating between ice and heat packs as well as taking anti-inflammatory
medications such as ibuprofen or naproxen or pain medications such as acetaminophen we also want
to get people onto a rehabilitation program which involves stretches and exercises now the goal of a
rehabilitation program is to return to activity as quickly and as safely as possible but keep in mind
everyone recovers from an injury at a different rate in general the longer you have symptoms the
longer it's going to take to get better and the longer that you'll need to do these exercises
okay so we break up our rehab program into three phases the first phase is a quick warm-up then
we do some simple stretches and then we're going to do some exercises so for our warm up the goal
is just to increase range of motion and increase blood flow to our arm and so what we want to do is
just flip back and forth between wrist flexion and wrist extension and just do this for a total of 10
times it doesn't have to be anything fancy so 10 times this way and then after you've done that
then go back and forth this way so side to side just like you're shaking someone's hand and just
do this for a total of 10 times and this is going to help again increase range of motion and help
get blood flow into our muscles now let's move on into some stretches so for the first stretch what
i want you to do is to fully straighten your arm and then bend your wrist down use your other hand
and pull it backwards and where you're going to feel this is in the extensor compartment of your
forearm so these are all of your extensor muscles and these tend to get really tight and so the goal
is to work ourselves up to 30 seconds and we want to do three sets of 30 seconds doing this stretch
now i don't want you yanking too hard just gentle tug as enough to feel a stretch over here take a
break once you're ready go back into it and try to get up to 30 seconds again doing three sets
of 30 seconds now that is the extensor compartment we also want to work on the flexor compartment so
to do that then you just flip the wrist upwards and then use your hand and pull back and where
you're going to feel it when when you're doing this stretch is in the flexor compartment again
same idea we want to do three sets of 30 seconds in the stretching out the flexor
compartment now once you've done wrist extensors and wrist flexors then we're going to work on
pronation and supination so rotating the forearm so we call this motion where we are rotating our
palm down we call that pronation and then rotating the the palm up we call supination
and so we're just going to rotate it back and forth between pronating and supinating and every
time you do this i want you to hold hold your palm there for a good 2-3 seconds now once you
are able to do this comfortably then you can start challenging yourself by getting a small weight
and so now you're just doing this with a weight and the weight could just be a light dumbbell
it could be a can of soup it could be a water bottle and the goal is to do three sets of 10
using a small weight but again if you need to start without a weight because it's still
really sore and it's really hurting that's fine build yourself up three sets of ten okay so the
last thing we're going to work on are some simple exercises so grab your weight we're going to first
work on the flexor compartment so drop your wrist like this and then bring it back up slowly drop
it back down and then bring it up slowly drop it back down and then bring it up and we're going to
do three sets of 10 here now you don't want to go too hard on the weights first work yourself up to
heavier weights after you've done the three sets of 10 for your flexor compartment flip the forearm
over and now we're going to work on the extensor compartment so bring your wrist up and then slowly
back down bring your wrist up and then slowly back down do three sets of ten for the flexor
compartment three sets of 10 for the extensor compartment and the last exercise we're going
to do is grip strength testing so if you have a stress ball you can do that or you could just use
your weight and make a fist around the weight hold that for a good five seconds and then relax hold
it for a good five seconds and then relax and the goal is to do three sets of ten to work on grip
strengthening and that's it for the rehab program now the last thing that i want to say is that if
you are doing these stretches and exercises but you're not seeing the improvement that you think
that you should be having please get re-evaluated or please see a sports medicine doctor you may
benefit from more aggressive treatments such as injections and i will link a video going
over tennis elbow injections here thanks for watching and if you found this information
useful please consider liking the video and sharing with others i'll see you next time