UKC

I've been diagnosed with tennis elbow in my right arm, caused by lobbing sticks for the dog. I'm under doc's orders to rest up for a week & take anti-inflammatories, but want to know if there's any specific exercises I can do to strengthen the tendons? I don't want it to all calm down then have it flare up again following a hefty dyno the next time I go climbing!

There are a couple of thing you can try.
1, you can get a dyna band from amazon, get a medium strength one ad flow the excises on the dyna bad web sit.
2, you can use a frying pan. Have your arm bent at 90 degrees and your elbow locked into your side. Hold the frying pan up right, and start to rotate your wrist slowly and under control.
But the most affective way to porvent this injury from coming back is worming for 10 to 15 minuets be for climbing. Skipping is he best way I find.
Hope this helps you.

In reply to TryfAndy:

Why would you want to recover tennis elbow? Surely if you've got rid of it you'd want it to stay that way??

In reply to Hinchrn:

Worming for 10 mins, are you sure?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deworming

My back I ment warming up Lols

In reply to TryfAndy:
This is a very common climbing injury what makes you think you didn't do it that way?

In reply to Hinchrn:

>2, you can use a frying pan. Have your arm bent at 90 degrees and your elbow locked into your side. Hold the frying pan up right, and start to rotate your wrist slowly and under control.

Isn't that for golfer's elbow - ie the inside? Tennis elbow is the outside, no? In which case you'll need to rotate the frying pan the other way, so you can't have your elbow by your side.

There's a good article about this on this site somewhere.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

If you hold out your arm straight, palm up, hold the frying pan and rotate it clockwise, as if you were pouring out the contents, you'll use the tennis elbow-affected tendons. It certainly hurt like buggery when I had tennis elbow and tried to do this.

There are good exercises out there using therabands and free weights. The trick is not to aim to use so much resistance you produce pain, or even significant discomfort during, perhaps a mild ache afterwards.

In reply to TryfAndy:

I'd also agree with the comment which suggested that while the stick-throwing may have triggered the current level of problem, there could well be an underlying problem linked to climbing which is the main cause.

In reply to MHutch:

>If you hold out your arm straight, palm up, hold the frying pan and rotate it clockwise, as if you were pouring out the contents, you'll use the tennis elbow-affected tendons.

What, the ones on the outside of the elbow? If you say so. I'm doing something very similar, which seems to get the ones on the inside.

jcm

In reply to TryfAndy:

Iv`e got the same injury at the moment but, have not been to the GP !

just taking anti-inflammatories and putting my elbow under a lot of stress by lifting huge boulders all day `dry stone walling`.

If I carry on will my injury get chronic or just be painful and niggly all the time ?

Can it heal itself or is the only solution rest and gentle stretching ?

Never had an elbow injury before so will be greatful for the feedback given in this thread, hope you recover soon TryfAndy.

In reply to CurlyStevo:

No, I've not been climbing a great deal or particularly hard recently (twice a week max for the past couple of months), but I do spend between 3 & 4hrs a day lobbing sticks for the hound.
I'll try some of the pan exercises and see how I get on, and then upgrade to light-ish weights and the powerbands if needs be.

Thanks for the advice anyway

In reply to mr mills:

Don't worry, it's the generic GP response & prescription: "rest it and take anti-inflammatories". Now where's my huge pension please?

In reply to TryfAndy: Theres a couple f variations of of water therapy.

Hot/cold: water hand hot like a hot bath, the cold has ice cubes floating in, put the elbow in the hot for 1 minute, then the cold for 1 minute. Repeat for 15 - 20 minutes until your elbow id bright red.

Cold water: only used this on my hands for pulley tweaks. Just submerge your elbow in cold (icy) water for about 45 minutes. The ciruclation will slow, then increase and you should get some sort of odd peppermint feeling as the circulation returns.

Both these work by increasing the ciruclation so not really exercises but will help.

Cheers
Dave

In reply to TryfAndy: Here's the usual font of all web-knowledge for climbers... http://www.athlon.com.au/articles/r&i_dodgyelbow.pdf

Dave MacLeod's web site has some good stuff on elbow injuries too.

In reply to Adrian Daniels:

That article is superb.

following the exercises and advice I went from it being painful to do up shoe laces because of elbow tendonitis/osis to hardest ever sport climb with in 2 months?

still get twinges but it's very manageable

In reply to TryfAndy:

Depending on how bad it is, a week might not be enough. I would go and see a physio instead asap. I have had it last winter for a few months and what I was told by physio was: Ice the area at least once a day and do the following exercises. Tin of beans, hold elbow at 90 degrees and move wrist upwards (then release tin with the other hand), move wrist down again and repeat 10 times. That was when it was really painful.

The next exercise is to do the wrist curl up and down with the tin once you can tolerate it.

Also 10 times stretching, by holding arm outstretched and bending the wrist downwards.

Massage treatment of the physio really helped it,too. But I think Ibuprofen and a weeks' rest might be a bit optimistic if it really is tennis elbow! Good luck, let me know how you get on...!

In reply to Heike: Oh, and no crimping for a while!!!

In reply to Adrian Daniels:

That's brilliant, thank you

In reply to TryfAndy: I had tennis elbow really bad this year, i kept climbing on it all time. I found that i didn't really drop in grades but the pain went worse and worse. I tried all the exercises for it but it just didn't help. Towards the end i started doing a huge amount of press ups especially diamond/wide and bench presses. Now it has pretty much cleared up. Hope this helps.

In reply to TryfAndy:

http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=3614


This helped me massively. Combined with more warming up a bit of theraband excersise and push up to generally strengthen and balance the elbow a bit more. Also look at how you climb often caused by crimping with a bent elbow. work on better position and open handed climbing will all help. If you just let it heal and do a few excersises it WILL come back again. You need to solve the cause and I doubt throwing a stick is the only thing that caused the injury.

Working on all the above has helped my elbow which would constantly reoccur but now seems properly on the way to 100%.

Just my thoughts mind.