With tennis elbow therapy from Sepp Baumgartner you can play pain-free

Many of you know it from painful experience: tennis elbow. Painful, often tedious and annoying. Anyone who has ever had tennis elbow knows how difficult it is to find suitable therapy. For some, a new racket or softer stringing is enough. For others, one therapy follows the next. One of our tennis hoteliers has developed a very special tennis elbow therapy that deals with all stages and forms of tennis elbow.

Sepp Baumgartner very happy and very successful to pass on this tennis elbow therapy to those affected in his tennis camps at Lake Waginger Because it is often possible to use various measures to calm down the tennis elbow and put it aside permanently. You can find out how this is possible in Sepp's tennis elbow therapy.

Preventive measures

Don't skimp on your technique training. Perfect hitting technique is particularly important. Additionally, additional compensatory training alongside tennis is recommended.

Tennis is a one-sided sport and the muscles are strengthened on one side. The spine is subjected to unequal stress and pain can radiate into the arm. The back, abdominal and shoulder muscles in particular must be trained on both sides.

Warm up before the game.
Choose suitable material.
Your trainer will be happy to provide you with advice.

You should consider the following factors when purchasing your racket

• good vibration dampening
• Beginners play softer racket frames
• Choose grip strength so that at least one little finger fits between the middle finger and the ball of your thumb
• Choose a good synthetic string or, best of all, play natural gut strings. Beginners string softer than experts.

Stretching after training is particularly important. Although the muscles become stronger through training, they tend to shorten. The consequences are often muscle cramps or strains and tendonitis. Therefore, stretch the particularly stressed areas immediately after training, preferably in a warm shower.

Acute tennis elbow

Acute tennis elbow occurs when the irritation is still fresh or very intense.

Experience has shown that the following measures have proven effective for acute tennis elbow:

• Immobilize the arm. The longer the symptoms persist, the longer and more difficult it is to get rid of them. In addition, anti-inflammatory treatment is advisable.
• Cooling with cold running water or ice for two to three minutes as soon as symptoms occur has a particularly positive effect. Important: Continue to cool several times a day and stretch your muscles. After cooling, always keep the arm warm, but under no circumstances heat it artificially or massage it, as this increases the inflammation.
• If the pain is extremely severe, you should definitely see a doctor. Minor symptoms that do not go away after several days should also be treated by a doctor.

Caution is advised after immobilization and especially after injections. Carefully dosed advanced training is absolutely necessary, as a relapse can be very problematic.

Only when the pain has largely subsided and the arm is able to bear weight through the retraining can you carefully start playing tennis again, ideally under the guidance of a trainer.

Chronic tennis elbow

Chronic complaints are when the irritation has lasted for months or years, but has subsided to such an extent that the arm can be put under strain again. In the case of chronic illnesses, immobilization or injections are often ineffective. Heat-active-cold stretching therapy offers good prospects of success here. When used correctly, the combination of heat, building training and cold stretching creates optimal conditions for recovery. Heat and training promote blood circulation and stabilize the arm, cold stretching inhibits inflammation and loosens the muscles.

The following tips can promote the healing process for chronic tennis elbow:

1. Heat therapy
   Heat is particularly important for chronic inflammation.
   
   Keep your arm warm during exercise, but also during the day and night. Before intense stress, e.g. B. before playing tennis, the muscles should be warmed up with special exercises (see arm exercises below). You can also massage in an ointment that promotes blood circulation.
2. Active therapy
   Train your arm and shoulder muscles daily (see arm exercises).
   If you have chronic inflammation, you can also train your arm by playing tennis. However, the prerequisite here is a targeted warm-up and good hitting technique. Through daily, dosed training, ideally once or a maximum of twice a day, in conjunction with subsequent stretching and cooling, chronic inflammation heals more quickly than with conventional immobilization. Caution: Stress without subsequent cooling increases inflammation!
   
   
3. Cold stretching therapy
   Immediately after exercise, the muscles and tendons must be stretched and cooled, as the irritated muscle has a tendency to shorten or even cramp and constantly overload the tendon.
   This is how to cool: First, pre-stretch in the warm shower for about 20 seconds, then stretch for about two minutes under the cold shower or by rubbing with ice cubes.
   Cold stretching keeps the muscle long and the inflammation subsides. This is how to stretch while cooling: If you have discomfort on the outside of your elbow, close your fingers into a fist, stretch your arm and turn it inwards so that your thumb is underneath.
   
   If there is pain in the elbow, stretch the inside of your arm and fingers and turn them outwards so that the palm of your hand is on top. After cooling, keep the arm warm with clothing (e.g. angora socks).
4. Relaxation of the muscles
   Relaxing the muscles in the arm and especially in the shoulder and cervical spine area with massages often greatly promotes the healing process.
   
   
5. Healthy diet
   A varied diet (with little sugar, salt, fat) and avoiding alcohol and smoking strengthen the inner healing powers.
   
   
6. Tennis elbow bandage
   If the arm is under greater strain, the strain can be relieved with a special tennis elbow bandage.
   
   The “Epico-med” bandage is recommended because its pressure can be easily varied using a Velcro fastener, thereby completely avoiding circulatory problems.
7. Further tips
   Other treatment options that can have a positive effect on the healing process include professional massages directly at the point of pain, acupuncture, reflexology therapy, current, laser, X-ray shock waves and stimulation therapy. The last solution, when all therapies have been exhausted, is surgery.

Exercises for daily training and pre-game warm-up

Attention: Only perform all exercises so intensively that you only feel slight pain!

• Arm muscles : Alternately bend the affected arm up to your chest and stretch it completely. The free hand reinforces the exercise with measured counter pressure. Each exercise 20-50 times.
• Finger muscles : Alternately stretch your fingers and arms completely 50-100 times and then bend your arms and close them into a fist.
• Shoulder muscles : Elbow circles 20-40 times on both sides clockwise and counterclockwise. The free hand is attached to the elbow and thus intensifies the exercise. This exercise involves loading one shoulder and stretching the other.

Duration of the healing process

As a guideline, the healing process takes just as long as the previous duration of the illness. In around 95 percent of cases, the chronic inflammation has largely subsided after six months. About 40 percent of them are then symptom-free. After another year, around 90 percent of the damaged tendons have regenerated and are fully resilient.

Finally, it should be emphasized once again that the most important prerequisite for preventing or healing tennis elbow is perfect hitting technique. So visit a well-trained trainer who takes your personal style into account. For example, if you tend to do the backhand slice but do it incorrectly technically, you should not switch to topspin, but rather improve the slice.

Author: Sepp Baumgartner

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