Golfers Elbow

Golfers Elbow

Golfer’s elbow is REALLY painful, I have had it 3 times in the last 15 years. It is so painful that you swear its something that will require surgery to fix. The pain is on the inside of the elbow and radiates down the forearm. Not only is it painful to the touch but it causes weakness in any pulling exercises. Exercises like pullups, chinups, deadlifts, and curls are all very difficult to do with anything but baby weights not only because of the weakness but because of the elbow pain. Squeezing or grasping things is painful too.

The amazing thing is that this is one kind of tendonitis that is very easy to self treat. Just to hedge your bets, make a doctors appt about 4 weeks in the future so that if your self-diagnosis is wrong you can get it fixed professionally. There is really no down side to doing these stretches while you wait for your appointment because either one of two things will be true:

  1. It is golfer’s elbow and the stretches will fix the problem so you can cancel your doctors appointment.
  2. Its actually not golfer’s elbow so the stretches dont help so you have just helped the doctor eliminate one possible cause of the pain.

How to cure golfer’s elbow

  1. Hold each stretch for 30-60s.
  2. It is CRITICAL the the elbow is straight and locked or the stretches do nothing.
  3. Do these stretches at least 10x daily.
  4. Don’t rip your hand off, gentle but firm pressure applied with the other hand is fine.

 

golfers-elbow-stretches

Googling Medical Advice

Remember that there is actually a reason that doctors go to school for 8 years after a college degree, its because this stuff is complicated.  Google is no replacement for a doctor.   Using the internet to self-diagnose can be very dangerous because an pain or problem can have many different causes and the treatments can be very different, in fact, treating a mis-diagnosis will often make the problem worse.  This is actually a good example.  A lot of things can cause elbow pain, its not just tennis elbow and golfers elbow.  If you think your problem is golfer’s elbow but its not, these stretches will not help you at all.