How Tennis Players Can Avoid A Tennis Elbow Injury

Do you love to play tennis? If you are an athlete who plays professional tennis or just an enthusiast who really loves this sport, you know that a tennis elbow injury could keep you off the court for a long period of time.

This could happen to you as it would any other tennis player, or even to anyone who performs repetitive tasks with their arms on a daily basis.

Many people don't know but the medical name for tennis elbow is lateral epicondylitis. It is primarily caused by repetitive stress on the muscles, tendons, and elbow joint near the forearm due to overuse.

Tennis players are considered high risk when it comes to getting tennis elbow. Hence the name tennis elbow. As the first ever reported case was by a tennis player.

If you want to spend more time on the court and not on the sidelines, here are some tips on how to prevent tennis elbow from happening to you and ruining your day:

• Agility training can help improve your sense of balance. Thus, you can prevent lots of falls that might land you on your elbows and would help you avoid traumatic stress to the area.
• There certain backhand techniques that will have minimum stress effect on the muscles near the elbow. Stick with the two handed backhand as opposed to the one handed version. Also make sure that you completely follow through when you hit a backhand. Stopping short puts way too much stress on your elbows.
• Choose the right grip size of the racket. A grip that is both too small or too big can equally cause you to develop tennis elbow. Simply because both will require you to squeeze too tighly on your racquet.
• You should avoid rackets with small heads or those with excessive string tightness. An ideal racket would be the stiffer graphite-type with a large head.
• Strength and flexibility exercises should be done to help develop better resistance of the muscles, tendons, and joint to stress while playing. Tight muscles are more susceptible to injury than elastic ones. Think about when you blow up a balloon - you stretch it first because it's easier to blow up.

If you already have some pain and tenderness on the outside of your elbow and it hurts even to shake hands with someone, then you most likely already have tennis elbow.

The best thing you can do is implement these exercises fortennis elbow. They will help strengthen your injured tendons and muscles and help them repair quicker.

So try the tips above and you'll be shouting "40-Love" instead of "Sorry, I can't play - I'm injured".