Tennis Elbow Exercise

Tennis Elbow Exercise - A Treatment for Tennis Elbow

Do you have a tennis elbow? If yes, then you'll definitely learn something from this. Tennis elbow is a Repetitive Stress Injury, so the first thing you might want to do is rest it so that it can begin to heal itself. During the first stage of injury called the Acute Stage, you should follow the R.I.C.E principle. Rest, avoiding all activity that worsen the injury; Ice, if inflammation is present, icing the affected area is suggested; Compress; and Elevate, this helps to keep the swelling to lower levels.

However, if you think that exercise is out of the question, then think again. Tennis Elbow Exercise is a main element in the formula for recovery. The key is doing a proper tennis elbow exercise for rehabilitation and not to harm your tennis elbow.

After the pain of tennis elbow has subsided, having and to some extent increasing muscular strength through tennis elbow exercise will help you improve and diminish the risk of chronic tennis elbow. You may want to start with the tennis elbow exercise of stretching and strengthening exercise routines called isometrics, which focus on the gentle stretching, like wrist flexion, wrist extension and wrist rotation, and are performed twice a day. Make sure that your elbow is extended and the arm is straight to increase the range of stretch, holding each stretch for twenty to thirty seconds and stretching only to the point of comfortable area. You can also squeeze a tennis ball to strengthen small muscles of the hand and arm; this is a simple isometric exercise but can do a lot for your recovery. Gradually increase the amount of work you are doing to improve strengthening of the muscle but remember that you want to help the area not re-injure it.

After pain symptoms are gone and you have full choice of pain free movement of your arm, then you are now ready to start more specific rehabilitation. While stretching and strengthening focuses on gradually increasing the work ability of the elbow, the next level of exercise is for gradually fitting in the movements for your sports or activity. It's generally like trying to get back to the one that created your injury, and it is important that only gradual work up is done prior to activity levels. Re-injuring ones self is very common at this stage because they tend to subject themselves to too much strain which the elbow is not yet ready to take. During this stage, the elbow strengthening and stretching exercises are still to be continued so as to fully recover from the injury.