The names ‘tennis’ and ‘golfer’s’ elbow always make me laugh. The pain is not caused by playing golf or by playing tennis. This is of course is a movement limitation issue.
Let’s break down what is happening:
With golfer’s elbow, you’ll tend to see people with a valgus elbow presentation. This is simply an elbow that looks more twisted-in and therefore close to the body from the rear view. It is basically the same as a valgus knee (knock-knee) but at the elbow.
With a valgus elbow, everything is turned out into external rotation which sees the elbow screw in towards the body and then the hand is dumped in to produce their compensatory internal rotation.
This lack of internal rotation throughout the chain causes quite the twist at the elbow, causing them to feel pain on top of the ‘bony lump’ (medial epicondyle).
But why am I lacking internal rotation and how can I improve my golfer’s elbow pain?
You will be having a hard time expanding the chest wall on that side, so your ability to produce internal rotation at the elbow and shoulder will be diminished.
So if you have golfer’s elbow pain, or a valgus elbow, you should be doing exercises that include a bent or flexed elbow, hand pronated (palm down) whilst really driving expansion of the chest wall.
Think side-plank position on that side. Think triceps workout on the cables with your elbows reached out in front of you.
The big take home messages for golfer’s elbow are:
- Avoid locking / hyperextending the arm when you train. This is going to put so much focal load on the tissue that attaches to the medial epicondyle, it will not feel good!
- I would be doing everything with a pronated wrist – this is simply a palm facing down.
- Avoid palm-up (supinated hand) exercises when the arm is fully extended.
- Always remember this is a movement limitation at the ribcage. Doing exercises that arch the back, squeeze shoulder blades together or ‘crunch’ the front of the body will compress things more, diminishing elbow movement / rotation.
- Strength train those lateral triceps!