Tennis Elbow No More: How Sports Chiropractic Care Can Keep You on the Courts
Playing tennis is an incredible life-long sport that offers many physical, mental, and social benefits. While these benefits most definitely outweigh the risks, tennis players are often prone to several common sport-related injuries, among them tennis elbow.
An overuse injury that can affect as many as half of all tennis players at some point in their playing years, tennis elbow is a condition that occurs when the muscles on the outside of the forearm become inflamed and strained. Micro-tears near the elbow joint lead to swelling and radiating pain when flexing, straightening, or twisting the wrist, or when requiring it to bear weight during lifting or gripping actions.
As you can imagine, this makes handling a tennis racket uncomfortably challenging, but can also affect carrying groceries, turning door knobs, gripping utensils/tools, and other daily activities. But that doesn’t mean you should give up tennis. As with any sport, it’s important to understand the proper way of recruiting muscles during play to help prevent common injuries.
Perhaps the most common golf-related injury is pain and damage to the lower back. Swinging a golf club can be likened to wringing out a wet towel. It involves sheared force under torque, a rotational stress that can result in strains, sprains, and even disc herniation that leads to sciatica, spasms, or other low back problems. Injuries of this nature can be from a spinal misalignment and/or lack of core strength.
Regular sports chiropractic care has a number of modalities that can not only help rehabilitate current injuries such as tennis elbow, they can work as pre-hab to properly condition the body for the sport so that future injuries can be prevented.
Sports chiropractic included in an athletic training program focuses on strengthening and stretching the muscles most often relied upon during play, as well as the opposing muscles that support them. With tennis elbow, this generally involves increasing grip strength by building up the muscles of the forearm as well as improving flexibility and mobility of the wrist.
Hands-on soft tissue manipulation, chiropractic adjustments to the elbow, electrical muscle stimulation, and instrument-assisted techniques are only a few non-invasive methods employed by sports chiropractors to reduce inflammation, loosen up the elbow joint, prevent scar tissue build-up, and promote tendon healing.
A body mechanics assessment involves a thorough analysis of how the structure, function, and mobility of an individual patient’s movement patterns might be affecting or compromising their overall functionality. Improving body mechanics — posture, gait, muscle balance, and flexibility — can increase endurance, reduce muscle fatigue and pain, prevent injury, and lead to better overall performance.
Technique/equipment evaluation — even long-time tennis players benefit from having their technique evaluated, especially as body mobility and flexibility change over time. Tennis elbow often results from things like inadequate torso rotation during a one-handed backhand stroke, too tight of a grip during backhand follow-through, or the racket grip itself being too large or too small, all of which, among other things, can increase the force on the muscles of the forearm. Technique deficiencies can creep up on a player's awareness due to seemingly unrelated factors like poor sleep, overcoming illness, or experiencing pain elsewhere in the body.
If you do happen to experience pain or injury while golfing, it is best not to “play through it.” Take some time off in favor of light restorative movements along, with moist heat and ice to the area. A TENS unit (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation) can also be helpful in stimulating nerves and blocking pain.
If home remedies don’t do the trick, sports chiropractic care utilizes a
variety of sports chiropractic modalities, including spinal and limb adjustments, myofascial massage, myacoustic compression therapy, dry needling, and physical therapy, among others, to prevent and rehabilitate golf injuries, as well as those from many other sports.
Ignoring your body’s pain signals could result in a more severe condition later on. At DTX Sports Medicine, we work with golfers of all levels to keep them in the game and pain-free. Schedule an appointment today.
Sports chiropractic care can not only help prevent tennis elbow and other common sports injuries but optimize performance by helping to identify optimal body movement patterns and determine the safest and most efficient method for recruiting muscles during sports activities.
Don’t let tennis elbow keep you from the sport you love. Contact DTX Sports Medicine to help keep you on the courts.
