How to Relieve Pain and Prevent Flare-ups with Tennis Elbow Exercises

Physical therapy is considered the gold standard of treatment for Tennis Elbow. In most cases, your treatment includes exercises designed specifically for the condition. But why are exercises a key part of your Tennis Elbow rehab? The short answer is this: exercises resolve the root cause of this condition.

Tennis Elbow affects a tendon on the outside of your forearm, called ECRB (Extensor Carpi Radialis Brevis). ECRB works with other muscles and tendons to extend your wrist (bring the back of your hand up toward you) and abduct it (rotate your wrist toward the thumb).

Tennis Elbow develops when repetitive stress of movements that involve wrist extension and abduction exceed your ECRB’s capacity to handle that load. With Tennis Elbow, movements like gripping and rotating a door knob, shaking hands, using hand tools and racquets can become excruciatingly painful. You also lose some of your grip strength because of the pain and weakness in the injured tendon.

Physical therapists use exercises that target specific muscles and tendons that work with the ECRB tendon to build up your capacity to handle more load. Stronger muscles and tendons reduce the amount of load that goes through the tendon, which reduces pain and improves your grip strength.

This is why Tennis Elbow exercises are one key component of the root-cause treatment: these exercises resolve the root cause - the imbalance between the load and your capacity - for relief that lasts, even when you take off your elbow brace, start working with your hand again, or go back to playing your favorite racquet sport.

• Not just stretching: stretching can get some people symptom relief, but Tennis Elbow stretches can’t build strength, so they can’t resolve the root cause of the condition for long-term relief.

• Specific: this might sound obvious, but your exercises should be selected specifically for Tennis Elbow. Some exercises that strengthen your wrist, arm, and elbow can make your Tennis Elbow worse; an otherwise beneficial exercise can be detrimental if done before your body is ready for the challenge. So, it’s smart to choose exercises that target the right tissue in the right way.

• Structured: you want to give your body just the right amount of challenge at the right time. The best way to do it is to follow a structured Tennis Elbow exercise program, instead of doing individual exercises willy-nilly. A good program starts with easy exercises that work on each muscle individually. As you grow stronger, it increases the reps, then moves you to more challenging movements that load multiple muscles and tendons at the same time, mimicking how you use your body as you go about your day.

• Work the whole chain: many Tennis Elbow exercises end at hand and wrist, but it’s important to strengthen the whole kinetic chain, all the way up to your shoulder. 

We are not listing all the exercises we recommend for Tennis Elbow with steps here. This is not because we want to sell our Tennis Elbow Guided Recovery Program (though, yes, we do recommend you get it because it’s the best!).

It’s because we believe that listing a few individual exercises without a structure, progress assessment, and coaching, is unhelpful and irresponsible. A Tennis Elbow exercise list can’t replace the structure and guidance of physical therapy in the same way that an interactive digital program can.

If you have access to a good physical therapist, you’ll likely get a Tennis Elbow exercise program to follow at home, with occasional office visits to assess your progress and adjust your treatment.

If you don’t have ready access to a good PT or would rather use the proven PT methodology to recover on your own, our recommendation is to use the Tennis Elbow Guided Recovery Program. The program, built by our co-founder and physical therapist, gives you a simple structure to follow, with daily routines, progress assessments, and expert PT coaching that empowers you and keeps your mental game strong.

We don’t recommend choosing random exercises off the Internet, because there’s misinformation and outdated theories. As we’ve just seen, it’s challenging to know which exercises are the right ones, and when to move to the next challenge when you’re on your own. Uncertainty is not only a motivation killer; it can also delay your recovery through time wasted in trial and error.

You can assess your progress using a Tennis Elbow test called Maudsley’s Test. A commonly used diagnostic test for Tennis Elbow, it’s also an effective way to track your progress. Learn more about how to do this Tennis Elbow test here.

It’s important to do progress assessments on a regular basis, so that you can see how far you’ve come, stay motivated, and know if your exercises are working. In the Guided Recovery Program, you do it every day after your recovery work.

It’s normal to have some discomfort after exercises, just like you would after a hard workout. But if you have actual pain or if it’s significantly worse, take a break from the exercises for a day or two. Pain is your body’s danger signal - don’t ignore it!

You can restart the exercises after a day or two at the same level, or you can try going back one level to see if that’s more comfortable. If the pain persists, there are several possibilities:

• You may be doing some of the moves incorrectly. Check the instructions. It may help to have someone else watch you do it, or record yourself.

• There may be something else going on that’s not Tennis Elbow. If this rings a bell, you should dial back the activities that might be aggravating the sensitive tissue.

• You may have put your ECRB tendon through more activities than you usually do, outside of your Tennis Elbow exercises. Overdoing it can temporarily aggravate the injury.

If you can’t get back into your exercise routine without pain for more than a few days, talk to your physical therapist or a doctor. They can correct your form, rule out other issues, adjust your program, and put you back on the right track. (If you’re using our Guided Recovery Program, please reach out to us!) 

Alleviate was founded by a patient-and-clinician duo to bring the effective chronic pain treatment from physical therapy offices to everyone's home. With our Tennis Elbow System that includes the Guided Recovery Program, you can use the Alleviate Method to recover from Tennis Elbow at home. No co-pays, no office visits.