Prevent Golfer/Tennis Elbow Pain

In sports, especially golf and tennis, it is very natural to receive injuries during the cause of playing. The most common problem is pain on body, limbs and joints. Some of the injured areas cannot be treated easily by medication and physiotherapy, especially the elbow. Even after a lot of rest and receiving treatments, it can recur easily and that is the reason appropriate measures must be taken to prevent it from happening. In this article, tips on the prevention of elbow pain will be discussed.

- Make sure you do not over work your elbow, have rest in between

- Carry only load that within your ability, call for help if the load is too heavy or use equipment to help

- Do the proper stretching of the arm muscles before carrying heavy load, avoid sudden lifting and lowering of the load

- Adopt proper lifting technique by holding the load closed to your body so as to reduce the tension on the tendon of arm and elbow

- Perform the necessary warm up exercise before your games especially the muscles and tendons of the arm and elbow

- Prevent repeated movement of the elbow, it will wear the tendon of this area

- Use only the sports equipment within your ability and capability

- Just like lifting technique, apply proper game posture and techniques to ensure the impact on elbow is minimum

- If you have earlier or minor similar injury, try to use the counter balance band (available in all sport shops/outlets). This band is being worn just below the elbow and it will help to distribute the pressure to the whole arm and prevent the impact being concentrating on the elbow. However, be sure to allow proper blood circulation due to over tighten of the band.

It is clear that no one likes to suffer from elbow pain, follow these tips and it will help to stop or at least minimize the chance of injury. The next critical thing to note is your body reaction, if pain started and persisted, stop the activities immediately and apply cold dressing to the injured part to prevent the injury from going worst. Have adequate rest and try to figure out where has gone wrong, did you stretch your muscles before exercise, repeated movement or over used your elbow?

For cure of a golfer/tennis elbow pain, a tradition Chinese way of applying pressure on some acupunctural points, without needles, herbal rubs etc will be discussed at the next article. Stay tuned.