Trigger Point Therapy Tennis Elbow

Tennis elbow is a painful condition that causes the sufferer pain around their elbow joint. The clinical name for the condition is ‘lateral epicondylitis’. There are a few ways you can relieve the pain and start the healing process. Trigger point therapy tennis elbow is one of these effective methods.

Symptoms of Tennis Elbow

The condition usually develops through overuse or repetitive use of the forearm. Putting too much load on the muscles and tendons in the forearm and around the elbow joint, causing some pain and discomfort to start.

The symptoms usually start with:

• Feeling pain when bending your arm at the elbow
• Feeling pain and finding it difficult to grip and lift small objects
• Feeling a throbbing pain in your forearm and elbow
• Feeling pain when making twisting motions with your arm
• Experiencing a reduced range of motion and not being able to extend your arm fully

What Causes Tennis Elbow?

Your arm has a number of muscles and tendons that support and help the joints like the elbow, wrist, and fingers to move. The tendons are important to keeping the bones and muscles supported while the muscles deliver the strength to perform motions and lifts.

The main cause for tennis elbow is overusing the muscles that are attached to the elbow. When the muscles and tendons are put under too much strain or prolonged use of repetitive motions they become damaged. Small tears appear and they become inflamed around the elbow joint.

Why Is Tennis Elbow Called Tennis Elbow?

The name is fairly self-explanatory. It’s a condition that affects a lot of tennis players due to the repetitive nature of the sport. Tennis players primarily rely on one arm to do most of the work, and they put in maximum effort to a lot of the shots. Their elbows are put through an abnormal amount of strain and it’s common for them to develop this condition.

Other professions or hobbies that put a lot of stress on the forearms and elbows also carry a high risk of developing tennis elbow. Such as painters, violin players, javelin and shot-put throwers etc.

Using Trigger Point Therapy for Tennis Elbow Treatment

Trigger points are knots or tight spots in the muscles that cause pain and discomfort. Trigger points can cause other issues around the body as the muscle connect to other muscles, and without resolving the issue you can end up a lot of pain.

The pain is sometimes a sharp shooting pain, or it may be a dull ache that it uncomfortable around the clock. Trigger point therapy is designed to release the pain and resolve the knot in the muscle through applying pressure to the area.

Most people see an instant dramatic reduction in pain after one therapy. With further sessions needed to completely resolve the issue so it doesn’t come back. A lot of the time you can perform trigger point massage therapy yourself.

How to Massage the Trigger Points for Tennis Elbow

The muscles in the forearm are tightly wound near the elbow. This is both a reason why tennis elbow can develop, and the point where you can massage the trigger points to relieve the pain. Trigger points in the forearm often go unnoticed longer than say, in the neck.

It’s easier to notice pain in your neck and makes a bigger impact on your life. Likewise, it’s easier to keep typing or playing tennis through pain due to the need to keep doing these activities. This just inflames the problem and makes it a lot more difficult to resolve.

There are couple of different methods that are effective self-massage for tennis elbow techniques. These are as follows:

Friction and Deep Massage Therapy

Tennis elbow massage therapy is something you can do yourself with just a few minutes. Using a combination of deep tissue massaging the forearm and using friction therapy techniques is the best way to stimulate blood flow and work out the knots and muscle pains.

Gentle Rehabilitation

If you have a particularly painful tennis elbow there is a more gentle approach you can take to rehabilitate the elbow. Warm up the muscles in the forearm with some gentle rotation and stretching techniques for a couple of minutes.

Then start bending the elbow as far as it will comfortably reach back and forth for a few reps. Don’t push past the point of pain, the goal is to loosen and strengthen the muscles and tendons slowly. Add a weight to your hand as this becomes easier and build up the strength slowly with a few reps.

Will Tennis Elbow Go Away and Heal Fully?

The vast majority of people will heal fully from tennis elbow, especially if they put in the time and effort to perform trigger point therapy and some exercises as discussed above. There is a small amount of people who will not be able to recover however, in these instances a surgical procedure is required. But this is in the small single digit percentages of sufferers.

There is also a very high success rate to the surgery. So if you are suffering with tennis elbow, no matter how bad you think you have the condition – there is a very high chance of success.