Three tennis elbow exercises you should avoid to prevent making the pain worse

Three Tennis Elbow Exercises to Avoid

If you’re dealing with tennis elbow, the right combination of rest and therapeutic exercise can go a long way toward helping the recovery process. Working with a skilled and experienced physical therapist can help you develop an effective plan that helps improve functionality and injury resistance. However, it’s important to understand that some types of exercise can actually worsen the injury and potentially make your pain even worse. 

While there’s no substitute for working with a professional, we’re happy to share the following overview of three types of tennis elbow exercises that you should absolutely stay away from. As you read this information over, please feel free to get in touch with us if you have any questions or would like to learn more about your treatment options. 

Stay away from these types of exercises if you have tennis elbow

While you may think that any type of arm strengthening exercise will make you more resistant to tennis elbow, there are some that can put excessive strain on the wrists. These include:

  1. Straight arm exercises — Any type of exercise that requires keeping the arms straight and the elbow fully extended is bad for tennis elbow. This is because it increases the strain on the same muscles and connective tissue that are trying to heal. 
  2. Bench presses and pushups — These types of exercises put tremendous strain on the wrists, forearms and elbows. This is especially true if improper form is used. 
  3. Rowing exercises — These exercises are very similar to the types of motions that actually cause tennis elbow, putting excessive stress on the elbow tendons. 

With any type of exercise, if it causes actual pain, don’t do it. Since they are biomechanical experts who understand the functioning of your musculoskeletal system, physical therapists can provide the guidance to distinguish exercises that help from the ones that hurt. 

Tennis elbow relief from our experienced team

When you come to Specialists in Sports and Orthopedic Rehabilitation, our therapists can provide highly personalized treatment plans that can help you overcome repetitive motion injuries like tennis elbow. We can perform a detailed evaluation that helps you better understand your condition and how the right types of exercises and manual therapies can encourage recovery and healing. Once you get on the right treatment path, you’ll be surprised how quickly you start to see results. 

To learn more about tennis elbow relief, contact us today and schedule your initial appointment.