Looks like I’ve got “tennis elbow” from lugging and throwing heavy logs around. It’s painful, I can live with it, I know best advice would be to rest it, but I don’t want to (have lots of tree work and log splitting to do). Aside from rest, is there anything else I can do to ease it?

Get the 2-in-1 steroid injection.

It worked almost instantly for me, after months of tying other approaches.

And it’s never returned.

Also – try **** with the other hand. HTH.

Dodgy Elbows

I always found that impact stuff – hammering/chopping used to piss it off when it was at its worst.

Elbow straps, despite what the article says, may help in the very short term if there is something you really have to get done, but at some point you will have to cut back on pain-causing activity for a bit, give it a chance to settle and exercise to strengthen/rebalance it.

try **** with the other hand

Sit on it first – err, so I’m told…

Waaaahh but I don’t wanna! (We’ll be having a break from all the heavy work over Christmas so will rest it then, just looking for anything to tide me over until then. If gets more troublesome in future then I’ll see GP and go from there)

Perfect time to get it done then.

Very short term this – tightly grip the forearm just below the offending elbow (as tight as you can) then clench the fist of the offending arm and release. You should feel your forearm muscle pushing back towards the elbow. Repeat 10 times – should give some pain relief until you go see a medical expert.

Voltarol pain relief ?

I’d see a physio and talk through the options. They’ll know best whether you can “work” through it

Get the 2-in-1 steroid injection.

It worked almost instantly for me, after months of tying other approaches.

And it’s never returned.

This. I had physio, ultrasound, all sorts to no avail. The Jab sorted it out nicely.

These things worked for me. I did a lot of research before buying and they seem to be well recommended.

Different brands available.

I threw mine after it did that job. Dumb! 🙁

rubber torque thing

Been doing that forearm gripping thing, eased it at times. That rubber twisty thing reminds me of twisting a towel that used to do to strengthen forearms when used to play golf

I’ve had tennis elbow on & off since October. First in my right arm so I started using my left arm for any lifting/twisting activities and then it eventually spread to my left arm as well 🙁

I also failed to follow my physios advice and rest 🙁

In addition to IMS (acupuncture), I also got two of these which did help and I still wear occasionally and when riding.

Don’t follow my advice, though, as it’s taken over two months to calm down….
Ill investigate Scotsroutes solution if it flares up again.

I got a cuff thing which helped no end, loads of ibuprofen and a rubber flexbar job.

You need to stop doing, or change how you do, whatever’s causing it.

I have a cuff thing that seems to work for me – cheap one off ebay. I bought a more expensive one but it’s not as good for me (mainly because it’s a bit bulkier and I can’t get my work jacket over the top of it) so looking to sell. Cost my £16 or £18, but will sell for a tenner – barely worn

Tennis/Golf Elbow Clasp

Just to add, my physio eventually diagnosed my issues as being caused by poor posture resulting in a trapped radial nerve (not the correct term!) which runs down the side of the neck, under the shoulder blades and down the arm to wrist/hand. In my case, I would have twinges anyway along that path.
The physio gave me some specific exercises which aims to stop me rolling my shoulders forward and improve posture. I think I’m slowly starting to feel the benefit of that as well…

After years of manual work and self abuse I too recently began to suffer from the same thing. A mate who’s an arborist and a pretty serious rock climber brought in one of these for me to use and it works.

Arm Aid

If it has been hurting for less than two weeks rest it.

If longer then single arm negatives on a pull up bar, if not strong enough grasp a hanging towel with the other arm.
Do 1 or 2 to start off with with 2-3 days rest in between, do it for 4 weeks then rest for a week, then resume training for another month.

Note, do not pull yourself up with the hurty arm, negs only.

I also had the Injection and it did work after a while. Just make sure your doctor can aim properly ….. that’s all I’m saying!

Get the 2-in-1 steroid injection.

No longer recommended. Anti-Inflammatories inhibit the healing process. They also reduce the chance of surgery working (more applicable to shoulder / achilles tendons than elbows).

Tendonitis requires de-loading, to stop making it worse, followed by progressive loading to ensure the tendon recovers. Total rest isn’t recommended, you have to find a load that works the tendon without making it worse.

They can be right buggers to heal.

Bicep curls with a light weight worked for me.

If longer then single arm negatives on a pull up bar, if not strong enough grasp a hanging towel with the other arm.
Do 1 or 2 to start off with with 2-3 days rest in between, do it for 4 weeks then rest for a week, then resume training for another month.

Note, do not pull yourself up with the hurty arm, negs only.

That sounds like an awful lot of loading for my experience of chronic TE.

I couldn’t manage anything more than wrist curls with very low resistance for a while.

Hopefully it will settle down for you, OP – the link I provided will help you narrow down which exercises will be helpful.

Search for exercises using a light (1kg) dumbell. Basically you have to extend the ligaments. Rest your forearm on a table with the wrist overhanging the edge and palm down. Grasp dumbell and lift the hand and dumbell with the free hand, do not just lift the hand with the weight in, you must assist the lift. Then slowly drop the hand down under control to stretch the ligaments. There are variations on this including rotating the weight in your hand like a propellor left and right, again with the forearm on a flat surface. Do a proper search to find the exact methods.

Eccentric loading gets good results

[video]https://youtu.be/tKhnYlUz9pA[/video]

Do the excersises and stick with it. Took me 8 or 9 months to shift my “climbers elbow”. Actually it’s wasn’t getting any better after months of physio plus a strap and the exercises so I went back to climbing and low and behold I think the exercises and physio got the recovery started and getting the arm working again got rid of the pain.
The injection is last resort.

Trying to replace a tyre on a rim after last night’s puncture definitely did not help my TE 🙁

i get it every spring (from using scissors) wear an epicundular cuff

sorts it out , but takes a while

dont fancy injections, cos I’m a wimp

I had it for almost a year inside of elbow down to wrist but manual work in building trade prevents rest just had to work another way no problem now
Also tenosynovitus just up from wrist was painful and rest was the only cure for me Sevy Ballesteros used to suffer from it a lot too many divots

Just came across this page, with some good info…

Overcoming Tendonitis

Blue theraband for me was the only thing that worked. Well worth the £15 or so.

Had it for over a year, had 10 or more physio sessions which helped but did not fix it, I suspect I over did the physio to start but regular light exercises and rest have got it under control but think its going to be with me in background mode for some time

Had tennis elbow on and off for number of years and docs gave anti inflammatories or told me to stop what hurt – not much use.

About a year ago I started doing heavy weight training and build up arm strength as much as i could suffer at the gyme, within six months much improved, a year later it rarely bothers me.

So for me improving arm and upper body strength helped a lot, that said I do very little arm excercize so they were very weak compared to legs.

Rest it and rub on an Ibuprofen gel three times a day.

My suggestion of heavy negatives is based around what worked for me after suffering for some considerable time, controlled overload which will over time strengthen the tendons.

Strengthening the tendons is surely the common sense answer to this problem.

I now do arms only rope climbs with 25kg added weight and the elbows are bullet proof.

Rest it and rub on an Ibuprofen gel three times a day.

Rest and anti-inflamatories are counter productive with tendonitis.

My suggestion of heavy negatives is based around what worked for me after suffering for some considerable time,

Eccentric loading is the one of the recommended protocols for elbow tendonitis.

If you have a spare 35 mins, a video on research on Isometrics for tendonopathy..

Isometric exercise in tendinopathy.

Isometric exercise in tendinopathy. A must-watch!Great presentation by physio and researcher Ebonie Rio.Thanks to Sportfisio Switzerland for putting together a super conference on tendons & sport.

Posted by Rethinking Physiotherapy on Wednesday, December 20, 2017

The summary: Isometrics are effective for tendon pain but load needs to be heavy and it needs a reasonable Time under Tension e.g. 45 secs. NB Isometric loads are not provocative to tendons, so you can go heavy without causing more damage.

Great little video on latest research on Tendinopathy…

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFJeC2FjNmU[/video]