Tennis Elbow Recovery Success Story - Sports Massage therapy & Physiotherapy for the best outcome!

Sports massage plays an effective role in helping maintain injuries in everyday life. Tennis Elbow, often thought of as an athletes injury, is in fact one of those injuries that can happen to anyone. Everyday life, repetitive use, and repeated patterns are all factors that can be contributed towards a repetitive strain injury such as Tennis or Golfers Elbow.

So what actually is Tennis Elbow?

It is also known as lateral epicondylitis, where overuse of the arm muscles and tendons in the elbow causes pain and tenderness over the outer part of your elbow.

Symptoms may be worsened with gripping, moving your wrist, and/or lifting or bending your arm. Swelling or tenderness may also be present around the elbow, with pain in the forearm, and difficulty to fully straighten your arm without being in pain. In some more complex cases the pain can be more than just a mild discomfort and can start to affect your sleep due to the radiating pain.

It is commonly seen in athletes, but as well in people with jobs that involve vigorous use of the forearm muscles such as desktop work, labour/tradesmen work, and even overuse of gym equipment in the gym.

How can I help manage my Tennis Elbow?

Massage therapy and a Musculoskeletal (MSK) physiotherapist play a role in helping you get the best treatment possible. An initial assessment with a physiotherapist is recommended for a full assessment to help rule out any other causes or contributing factors, and is able to provide appropriate exercises to help stretch and strengthen all muscles and tendons around the wrist and arm that will be causing strain on the lateral epicondylitis. Depending on the severity of the case, your physiotherapist can then make a referral to the in house massage therapist working alongside your physio on your case and help massage to encourage the muscles to loosen up and relax off. The recovery phase varies between person to person, but with all the appropriate treatment and following recommended treatment recommendations, patients should start to feel their symptoms elevating after 6 weeks minimum.

With effective treatment and management this has allowed one of our clients to successfully come back into the maintenance phase from their acute injury phase. This client initially booked in for a sports massage session, where after an initial consultation and hands on treatment there was signs indicating there could potentially be tennis elbow, especially with the radiating pain the client was phasing and keeping them up at night. From there, the client was then booked in with one of our MSK physiotherapists for an assessment and opinion, where it was confirmed to be tennis elbow. The client was given appropriate exercises to help improve and manage their symptoms, and were then referred back for sports massage therapy sessions to help release off the muscle tension.

Together with both hand in hand, the client seen a massive improvement, and the difference was day and night from when they initially came in to the clinic just four weeks later. It doesn’t mean to say though that is it all fixed, it is important to keep up the maintenance with continuing the exercises and having monthly massages. That is what we are all about here at Home Physio By Nicola, helping you to move better, feel better, and live better.

A few words from our client: “I cannot recommend Claudia enough, for the care and attention she delivers. She took the time to listen and assess my specific injury. Her techniques and knowledge have made a huge impact with great progress after only 7 weeks. Claudia is a highly skilled and knowledgeable professional and comes highly recommended.”