Hi everybody, it’s Mike Ricchiuto MPT, EMT-P  with Physical Therapy Now in Cranberry Township, PA. A lot of people ask me about tennis elbow and some of the things that they can do to help with tennis elbow once again, tennis elbow, along with all other hand, wrist and elbow problems has to be evaluated before anything can be decided as far as treatment.

But there are things that are indicators for tennis elbow. Here are those indicators. Once again, there’s usually pain on the outside edge into this bone. People think that tennis elbow is that there’s something wrong and they have a fracture of their humerus and that’s simply not the case.

Extensor carpi radialis brevis is one of the targets of having tennis elbow and this is actually plays a stability role when we have actions where we’re picking up a ball maybe with a wide grip like this. If you’re picking it up with a straight elbow, people with tennis elbow cannot really do this that well, also if they start to extend their hand and also, if they bring their hand into into radial deviation, that also brings pain to that elbow.

We see this a lot with typing when people are typing. One key concept is that when you’re going from an elbow bent position to a straight position, and we create length into a shortened inflamed tendon, that’s when people find pain. So if you’re extending your elbow out, usually that will hurt if you’re picking something up, usually with the digits being extended, that’s another position that really hurts for tennis elbow.

Well there you have it. If you believe that you may have tennis elbow, we certainly can take a look at your shoulder complex, elbow, wrist, and hand complex. You can call us at (412) 794-8352. Thanks. Have a good day.