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With the Australian open well under way a common household label for a sore elbow has always been ‘tennis elbow’. In fancy pants terms its known as ‘lateral epicondylitis’, where the tendon of the forearm extensors gets inflamed at its attachment which is the epicondyle. This condition generally occurred with tennis because in the old days, wooden racquets caused the shock and vibration of the ball against strings to flow through the racket down the arm and it would hone into the area around the epicondyle of the forearm, causing aggravation, inflammation and pain.

Today this occurs much less from tennis as the rackets are made out of high tech materials reducing the flex and vibration, but more occurrence of lateral epicondylitis (tennis elbow) is from using a keyboard or a mouse, lots of people, lots of time on computers. When we type, the forearm muscle control our fingers and these muscle originate all the way up to the elbow. With fingers working furiously all day in the office muscle contraction and imbalance can set in causing aggravation and can lead to tennis elbow. Forearm stretching is a habit everyone should get in to, stretch the forearm extensors and flexors (you can google that) this will help prevent such overload and aggravation. If you are already experiencing Tennis elbow a skilled myotherapist will have it fixed in a jiffy. Deep tissue work on the muscle belies, Dry needling is very effective and functional facial taping I have had excellent results with. A few sessions and some home DIY therapy and you will be back on the court or on the computer.