How To Massage The Trigger Points For Tennis Elbow
The muscles in the forearm are tightly wound near the elbow. This is both a reason why tennis elbow can develop, and the point where you can massage the trigger points to relieve the pain. Trigger points in the forearm often go unnoticed longer than say, in the neck.
Its easier to notice pain in your neck and makes a bigger impact on your life. Likewise, its easier to keep typing or playing tennis through pain due to the need to keep doing these activities. This just inflames the problem and makes it a lot more difficult to resolve.
There are couple of different methods that are effective self-massage for tennis elbow techniques. These are as follows:
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Can You Really Learn These Techniques And Use Them Effectively
Now, I understand that, right off the bat, you may be skeptical and are wondering to yourself:
How could I possibly learn these methods and apply them as effectively as a professional, like yourself, Allen!?
Well, you can’t instantly become as proficient as I’ve become with these Massage Therapy techniques after decades of experience. Obviously. I’d be lying if I said you could…
BUT you don’t have to be! The upside is that once you get the basic hang of it, you have all the time in the world to work on yourself.
Instead of going in for just 1 or 2 treatments a week in a therapists clinic, like mine, you can apply these powerful therapies anytime you want, anywhere you want.
- You don’t need to master these techniques to be effective…
- You just need to apply them with some consistency!
That’s a powerful thing! Knowing what to do and doing it regularly
Here are some of the success stories some of my student/members have been kind enough to share as evidence of the effectiveness of this self-help treatment program:
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Spot No 5s Dramatic Tennis Elbow Connection
Perfect Spot No. 5 is probably a major cause of or contributor to tennis elbow, technically known as lateral epicondylitis, which commonly afflicts typists as well as racquet sports players . Tennis elbow is regarded by most health care professionals as being a tendinitis of the common extensor tendon at the elbow immediately to the North of Perfect Spot No. 5.
Instead, tennis elbow may be entirely the result of either the pain of TrPs themselves, or due to the fact that muscle knots are placing extra stress on the tendon . Regardless, the quickest path to relief in many cases is to massage Perfect Spot No. 5. Self-treating them is a low-cost, low-risk method. For more information, see the tennis elbow tutorial.
Tennis, meet elbow
Tennis is the traditional way to get a case of tennis elbow, but it is not actually the most common. Keyboard usage is undoubtedly by far the more common cause of the condition these days.
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Symptoms Of Tennis Elbow
The condition usually develops through overuse or repetitive use of the forearm. Putting too much load on the muscles and tendons in the forearm and around the elbow joint, causing some pain and discomfort to start.
The symptoms usually start with:
- Feeling pain when bending your arm at the elbow
- Feeling pain and finding it difficult to grip and lift small objects
- Feeling a throbbing pain in your forearm and elbow
- Feeling pain when making twisting motions with your arm
- Experiencing a reduced range of motion and not being able to extend your arm fully
Treat A Tennis Elbow /epicondylitis Lateralis Yourself:
Can you really treat a tennis elbow yourself?
The question is a valid one, especially given the number of people sufferering from it and the often disappointing results of their treatments.
Mostly this question can be answered with a yes. You can treat your epicondylitis yourself and usually very successfully.
All that you need is some rudimentary knowledge about this very widespread complaint.
This site is dedicated to the effective treatment a epicondylitis , which is what most of you are looking for. Whats most important to me is you are able to apply the given information.
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When And How Often Should You Massage
Massaging the area after a tennis elbow diagnosis can be done soon after the initial injury period. Since its unsafe to massage certain conditions or if blood clots are present, its always important to check with your doctor to clear you for massage. Your massage therapist will work with you to help you determine a safe massage schedule. It will likely be multiple times a week to help relax tense muscles.
Brachioradialis Trigger Point Symptoms
Patients with an active Brachioradialis trigger point have very similar symptoms to those with Supinator trigger points, mainly tennis elbow or lateral epicondylitis pain.
What distinguishes the Brachioradialis trigger point is a weakness in the grip, causing patients to drop things from their hand. The thumb pain component is often absent with this trigger point too.
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The Strange Relationship Between Perfect Spot No 5 Wrist Pain And Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Surprisingly, a lot of wrist pain is either caused or complicated by myofascial TrPs in the forearm musculature, especially the extensors of the wrist and fingers, of which Perfect Spot No. 5 is the most common. This is mainly due to the phenomenon of referred pain, in which trouble in one spot is actually felt somewhere else. Sore forearm muscles, weirdly, often feel like wrist pain.
The cause or complicate rule applies even with injuries: if you damage your wrist, muscle pain in the forearm is probably going to be a factor in recovery, and often accounts for stubborn symptoms long after the injury is otherwise healed.
Carpal tunnel syndrome is one of those conditions with such a grandiose reputation, such over-the-top popularity, that it is usually suspected and diagnosed no matter how wrong the symptoms are. Something wrong with your wrist? Must be carpal tunnel syndrome! Whether it makes sense or not!
Even when Spot 5 is not the actual cause of wrist pain, it is often such a significant complication that relieving it will come close to solving the problem. In fact, even in cases of actual carpal tunnel syndrome, where all the signs and symptoms really do fit with a diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome, treating trigger points in the forearm often seems to resolve the problem.
The Complete Cause Of Tennis Elbow
As well as creating stress upon the attachment at the lateral epicondyle the repetitive activities cause muscles to tighten and develop trigger points. As discussed below these:
- cause tension at the elbow, and
- cause pain the mimics tennis elbow.
Causing abnormal tension
As discussed, trigger points can cause tennis elbow by causing abnormal tension in the forearm muscles that attach to the lateral epicondyle at the outside of the elbow.
Causing pain that mimics tennis elbow
As shown in this diagram trigger points from some muscles can refer pain to the elbow region, so they can mimic or add to the pain of a tennis elbow injury.
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Are Trigger Points Involved In Your Tennis Elbow
If you have tennis elbow we have two simple tests for trigger point involvement. The first is to simply check for trigger points to see if you have them. The second is to see if treating the trigger points relieves your tennis elbow. here are the details.
This simply tests what happens if the tension caused by trigger points is temporarily removed.
Step one: check your elbow for pain and soreness
This is to simply do the basic tests for tennis elbow already described. Try gripping something or bending your wrist back against resistance to reproduce the pain, then examine the outside of your elbow for tenderness.
Step two: temporarily relieve the trigger points
Temporarily relieve the tension in your forearm muscles by treating the trigger points using either of the two methods in our video
Step three: re-test your elbow to see if has made a difference
Repeat the same tests that you did in step one. If your elbow is less tender or the tests cause less pain this means that the trigger points are a problem, and now what you need to do is get rid of them.
Rolling Your Muscles With Massage Rollers
One method that seems fairly popular is using a Massage Roller tool or “stick to roll over the muscles involved.
I don’t think it brings much to the party, though. Again, like basic massage, it’s better than nothing, but I also think it’s too limited
Rolling over these sticky, muscular adhesions we’ve been talking about is not an efficient way to release them.
Just pressure pushing down on the muscle and rolling over it is like trying to separate Velcro by crushing it.
Vercro is a good analogy for adhesions millions of little hooks, hooking together and keeping it all stuck together.
Techy explanation: We’re really talking about Collagen, here.
It’s the common protein that tendons are made of and it forms the matrix that muscles inhabit and pull on.
And Collagen has an innate ability to ‘cross link’ and bind to itself.
But the downside is, that ‘cross-linking’ tendency becomes a liability when it happens too much in the wrong place.
And that happens a lot in muscles when they are too tight, overworked, and biochemically stressed.
In the earliest stages, ahesions can simply be stretched out and/or massaged out with minimal effort and prevented from getting more dense and stuck.
However, as this process progresses, it becomes more and more difficult to release and separate them.
Past a certain, early stage, you can’t just easily stretch, strengthen or lightly massage them away.
And this is usually the case, once someone has developed Tennis or Golfer’s Elbow.
Recommended Reading: Tendons Of The Wrist And Forearm
Tests For Trigger Point Involvement
Simple palpation
This is simply examining your forearm muscles for trigger points. This can be done using the technique demonstrated in our video on forearm muscles. If you find trigger points they will certainly be causing the muscles to be tight, so they will be involved. If pressing on them causes your elbow pain it also shows that they are indirectly causing pain as well.
Tension relief test
This simply tests what happens if the tension caused by trigger points is temporarily removed.
Step one:
Try gripping something or bending your wrist back to reproduce the pain, then examine the outside of your elbow for tenderness.
Step two:
Temporarily relieve the tension in your forearm muscles by treating the trigger points using either of the two methods shown below.
Step three:
Re-test your elbow by doing the activity that previously caused pain and by examining the side of your elbow. If the activity is less painful or the tenderness at the side of your elbow is reduced it is a sign that tension due to trigger points is contributing to you tennis elbow.
Top 3 Self Treatments For Golfers Elbow And Tennis Elbow
We are continuing to discuss treatment strategies for common diagnoses that leave us scratching our head. In this post, we are going to give you some tools to treat that irritating elbow pain. In the process, we want to make you confident in being YOUR OWN First Line of Defense when dealing with aches and pains. Hundred dollar words like epicondylitis or epicondylagia leave us scratching our heads. Today you are going to get your own soft tissue treatment tool kit. If it doesnt work, a physical therapist or other qualified medial provider can put their degree to work. If the term golfers elbow and tennis elbow are more familiar, it is all the same THANG!
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Why Massage Therapy Is The Missing Link In Tennis And Golfer’s Elbow Treatment
#1: The ‘Pin And Stretch Technique’ THE best Tennis Elbow self-massage method
And reversing that nasty, vicious injury cycle that few things touch Literally, few things TOUCH at ALL, except, possibly in the most superficial way.
Because nothing else get’s into the muscle and tendon restrictions at the root of it better
Nothing gets into and releases the issues in the tissues, like good, old-fashioned, hands-on Massage Therapy.
I do, however, well remember being taught in my basic Massage Therapy training 30 years ago, and later repeatedly reading this same, stern prohibition
You shouldn’t massage these kinds of tendon injuries because they’re inflamed and swollen!
And I wouldn’t be surprised if you were a little concerned about this, yourself, but that’s a misconception you don’t actually need to worry about!
However, believing that mistaken idea, many less-experienced Massage Therapists may avoid your Tennis Elbow injury and tell you not to disturb it yourself…
Inflammation! Oh, NO!!
But nothing could be further from the truth. Most cases of Tennis Elbow are in desperate need of literally being disturbed!
Liberated from their constricting, claustrophobic braces and mobilized, released stretched and strengthened.
Now, you would not actually do deep massage on an area that was truly inflamed, significantly swollen and/or recently injured
However, that is almost never the issue with Tennis or Golfer’s Elbow.
Pain At My Elbow Is Not Getting Better Despite My Laser Like Focus With These Strategies
Now you need to decide if you are going to an orthopedic specialist or your local physical therapist. Here is the 411. Your physicians first line of defense will most likely be medication or a cortisone injection. Medication is by no means a problem solver, its a pain masker. Cortisone has been shown to speed up recovery. However, one study found that people who received a cortisone injection actually did worse over the course of a year . They also had an increased risk of re-occurrence of elbow symptoms.
If for some odd reason surgery seems necessary , most surgeons will encourage you to attempt a course of physical therapy first. Unless your LCL is completely gone. In that case you are a champion for even being on this page right now.
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Given These Varying Causes And The Misconception That This Is Primarily An Overuse Injury It May Not Be A Surprise For You To Hear Of A Number Of Personal Stories Where People Did Not Improve With Treatment Took Many Months To Finally Improve Or Their Pain Never Completely Resolved This May Be Because The Treatment They Received Was Not Targeting The True Cause Of Their Problem
The successful treatment of these various causes is not the same. For example, stretching tight wrist extensor muscles may be helpful in someone that has a muscle condition, but it will aggravate a nerve condition. Similarly, working to fully straighten an elbow that is stiff may aggravate it if the joint is pinching and jamming from joint restriction. While strengthening weak muscles is generally helpful, it can aggravate a muscle that has a hyper irritable trigger point.
Our success in treating lateral elbow pain comes in taking the time to uncover the true source of the pain. Each persons case and each persons story are unique, and we treat no two cases the same.
How Effective Is Trigger Point Massage For Tennis Elbow
I’ve seen a fair amount of talk online about Trigger Points relating to Tennis Elbow and the strategy of using massage to treat these trigger points. But I’m not a big fan of the Trigger Point treatment model and here’s why…
Yes, there is a real, medically-verified Neuromuscular phenomenon, called a ‘Trigger Point.’
Trigger points are said to be highly excited, irritable spots in bands of tight muscle tissue, which often cause pain and other sensations in predictable patterns that are specific to each muscle and trigger point.
And they are usually very tender or outright painful when pressed on.
Trigger Points are also well known to cause or ‘Refer’ pain up to a significant distance away from the point itself
And as a Neuromuscular Therapist, I’ve found and occasionally worked on many Trigger Points in my patients over the years.
However, I have never focused on or chased them down, or even looked at them as primary, causative sources of any given injury or pain pattern.
I regard them as secondary symptoms As in symptoms that cause other symptoms Not the primary cause. Not the root of the problem.
Now, I’m not saying that it doesn’t work to locate Trigger Points and press on them until they calm down.
This does often work. The problem is that the pain relief is typically temporary.
From my perspective and understanding, dysfunctional muscles often have or form Trigger Points
Trigger Points do not cause dysfunctional muscles.
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