A number of injuries are linked with tennis including stress on the joints, muscles, and various soft tissues which need proper in-time caring to heal them. Sometimes small aches and pains can also grow like devastating injuries, if not treated properly in time. Some of the most common tennis injuries may include shoulder pain, sprained ankle, stress or fracture in the back, sprain calf and tennis elbow. Though any of these tennis injuries can occur anytime while playing on court but tennis elbow is the commonest of them all, which needs to be taken care of very seriously. Before talking about the commonest tennis injury, tennis elbow, you must know some basic things about it.
Tennis Elbow: The most common tennis injury
The inflammation of tendon and muscles of the forearm is known as Tennis Elbow as it is related to the humerus bone of upper arm. Some of the prolonged gripping activities including driving screws, hammering, playing on some of the musical instruments, weight lifting, digging and canoeing along with sports linked with racket like tennis and badminton are some the great reasons of this type of inflammatory problem. It causes pain when outer most part of the elbow known as epicondyl is straightened or touched by hand or if the wrist is moved backwards and forwards. Patient’s condition gets worse while doing some gripping activities like holding anything like door handle as it can increase the level of his pain.
Prevention of Tennis Elbow
In fact gripping activities are the main reason of tennis elbow. Either too long or too much hard stretching of the arm can cause pain. Along with tennis it can also cause while paddling canoe and hammering so while doing such activities you need to ensure the right size of racquet, canoe paddle and hammer should be used. You may have to grip it too hard as their size is too small. Similarly it will be strenuous for your hands if play tennis with long racquet as you will have to hold it very tightly to have a control on it. So it is better to use right type of racquet so that it can stretch and break the muscles after your wrist while doing different types of stretching activities like halting traffic like a policeman or limping wrist etc. You should wear a compression band, if you have suffered from Tennis Elbow problem earlier, to prevent the re-occurrence of the problem again. It will help in preventing the extension of the wrist muscles running along the outer side of the fore arm to prevent the problem again. It will fully contract the muscles to reduce the strain on the elbow bones.
Aim of Tennis Elbow treatment
The main aim of Tennis Elbow treatment plan is to rehabilitate the patient as it will strengthen the muscles of the patients. All the rehabilitation activities should be carried on in the presence of an expert supervisor to avoid further injury in the joints, bones and ligaments. The supervision of an experienced supervisor is necessary at this moment to control the increase in pain, during preventive activities, and reduce the stress on tendons and alleviate the symptoms of Tennis Elbow by using a support on the elbow. The rehabilitation program for Tennis Elbow is to reduce the inflammation and pain, recognizing and treating the causes of the problem, muscle stretching and strengthening exercises and return to normalcy gradually. Though different types of people use different methods of treating their Tennis Elbow problem but most of them use massage therapy to get rid of this problem as soon as possible.
Reducing the inflammation and pain
Wrap rest therapy, cold therapy, electro therapy and use of NSAID medications and wearing braces are some of the ways to treat the problem of Tennis Elbow among tennis players but still massage is one of the commonest and cost effective treatments which is used to get rid of this problem quickly. Some people also go for various types of exercises including muscle extender and strengthening exercises to make it easy for the patients to treat the problem efficiently and comfortably. They can improve their body activities through massaging their muscles, if no improvement is observed doing these exercises for at least 8 weeks.
Massage therapy
In fact massage is recommended for lowering lighter pain at initial stage or in case of any acute Tennis elbow pain. In order to stimulate treatment of the tendons a unique technique, Cross Friction, is applied across the tendons. The muscles of the fore arm can also be massaged to release the tight knots and forearm which are causing pain in your elbow at that time. Some of the health experts also recommend to use cold therapy after treating the patients with various massages to reduce the remaining the pain inn their forearm muscles. This therapy can also be used in any stretch problem in their upper back and neck.
Prevention of reoccurrence Tennis Elbow
In order to prevent the reoccurrence of Tennis Elbow you should use suitable size and type of racquets depending upon your experience and playing style. While selecting the right type of racquet the players already having shoulder and arm injuries should consult their coach or professional tennis players to avoid re-occurrence of the problem. You should also check the level of the court you are going to play in as it can also helps in increasing the risk of Tennis Elbow, otherwise. Tennis elbow can also be prevented by using right type of tennis balls according to the level of the court.The beginners and children should be encouraged to play tennis by choosing the right type of racquets according to their size, age and playing experience. Certain people use modified equipments like decompressed balls and mini-nets for the new players to introduce them to correct techniques and develop their tennis skills fast. Thus massaging can effectively alleviate and prevent the most common and painful Tennis injury, Tennis Elbow issues can be easily cured by massaging at the spot of injury and its surroundings and using right type of equipments.
