![]() ![]() When Holzman came to Sport & Spine for help, Bishop put him through a series of traditional treatments including ultrasound, strengthening and stretching exercises, cross-friction massage, heat and ice. can really affect people's elbows," says Bishop. In Larry's case, it was a combination of all his hobbies: from squeezing the handlebars on his bike, to lifting weights and playing in a band. In addition to tennis players, Bishop sees the injury in gardeners with their shovels and trowels painters with brushes and golfers with clubs. I ordered the green (medium resistance) Theraband Flexbar for around $25 and set out to do the “Tyler Twist” tennis elbow exercise shown in the video below (named after the physical therapist and lead researcher Tim Tyler PT) for about 5 minutes a day, 3 sets of 15 repetitions.Credit: Maggie Starbard, Marina Dominguez I got online and researched the heck out of treatments and exercises for tennis elbow.Eventually I discovered one very promising sounding and cheap tool to cure tennis elbow through a New York Times article called the “ Theraband Flexbar.” It sounded too good to be true: researchers from the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at Lenox Hill Hospital in NYC had come up with the tool as an inexpensive and at-home treatment alternative to “in-clinic machine-assisted or injection treatments”– and a study in the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgeryand a subsequent study validated the effectiveness. I tried to back off playing for a while and do the ice/ibuprofen thing but it just kept getting worse (working at a computer 10 hours a day didn’t help). At the time, I had a crushing workload and couldn’t imagine taking time to go to physical therapy. The second flare-up in 2010 was much more painful– and much more problematic. It happened at a time when I had a few other injuries that forced me to take a month off from tennis altogether, so it healed on its own. I’ve had tennis elbow twice– the first time was relatively mild and happened only a few months into getting into tennis in 2008. squeezing balls) that I found to have very limited effectiveness. It’s a condition that has confounded doctors and researchers for years, which in practice has meant that players have been left with some not-so-helpful common advice for treatment including the dreaded “Ice, ibuprofen, and rest” coupled with some old-school strengthening exercises (e.g. Tennis elbow is usually brought on by overuse and/or, as it was in my case, performing a 1-handed backhand or volley the wrong way (I strongly recommend if you have tennis elbow that you ask an outstanding tennis pro to take a close look at biomechanics of your stroke to see if they can pinpoint any contributing factors). Note: if you’ve ever had golfers elbow (medial epicondylitis) this post hopefully can help you too. ![]() ![]() So I hope this post helps spread the word to those who are suffering from tennis elbow pain or have friends who are. Known as “ lateral epicondylitis“, it’s a condition that can cause an intense, searing pain and is really stubborn to treat. I recently discovered a relatively new, cheap and simple tennis elbow treatment out there that actually works (or at least it did miraculously for me and seems to for thousands of others)– but because it’s new very few players and coaches seem to know about it. Count your blessings if you’ve never had tennis elbow (aka “computer elbow” or “mouse elbow” because it also strikes folks who spend hours at the computer).
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