What is tennis elbow and how is it caused?
Tennis elbow is a common elbow complaint from racket sports or activities that overuse gripping whilst bending and straightening the elbow.
It's also described as a tendonitis of the elbow and, in some people, becomes a chronic and debilitating condition if left untreated.
How to find out if your injury is tennis elbow
Here’s a quick tennis elbow test to help you:
1. Stretch out your arm in front of you so your palms are facing down
2. Have someone resist your middle finger and lift it up against their pressure
3. If you experience pain on the outside of your elbow or into your forearm, it is likely lateral epicondylitis, more commonly known as tennis elbow.
Treating tennis elbow
In order to treat tennis elbow, it's important to first understand why and how the condition originates.
It's a common theory that the extensor tendons of the hand which attach themselves into the lateral epicondylitis become taut and overactive. This imbalance of muscular activity causes pain when bending and straightening the elbow or simply picking up objects, like a cup.
These muscles are simply unable to achieve normal contraction and relaxation and become hyperactive, creating too much tension at the site of the outside aspect of the elbow.
In order to avoid a recurrence of the symptoms the whole upper limb muscular systems must rebalance and work in unison for the forearm muscles to reduce their activity.
Using compression wear for tennis elbow
Compression around the elbow is key to this happening as it acts as a support mechanism and reduces the pain associated with the condition allowing the athlete to exercise and rebalance the system.
The best tennis elbow support has now been developed by the iGD team to incorporate forearm, elbow, bicep and triceps compression whilst being lighter due to its ventilated construction.
This is a sure-fire way of getting rid of tennis elbow.