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Tennis elbow

Tennis / Popular

Manage and rehab lateral elbow pain.

What coaches agree on

  • Rebuild the tendon's capacity with progressive resistance work for the wrist extensors — wrist curls, isometric holds, and slow reps with gradually increasing weight over several weeks.
  • You can confirm it's tennis elbow with a simple test: with the elbow straight, pain when you resist wrist extension, resist straightening your middle finger, or grip hard points to the tendon on the outside of the elbow.
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Common mistakes

  • Ramping up load faster than the tendon can adapt — a new lifting routine, daily tennis right after joining a club, a heavy week of house projects, or jumping a rehab exercise's weight up too soon — is what triggers or re-aggravates the injury.
  • Treating only the sore spot on the elbow itself — icing, rubbing, or isolated wrist exercises there — while ignoring shoulder posture, mid-back strength, and how the rest of the body shares the load, misses the actual driver for a lot of players.
  • Chasing relief with rest, ice, and anti-inflammatories alone, without also rebuilding the tendon's strength, just repeats the cycle — it eases up, you go back to play, and the pain comes right back.