If you’ve been diagnosed with golfer’s elbow or medial epicondylitis, this is the video for you. At the elbow joint, you have a lateral epicondyle and a medial epicondyle, just a fancy word for a bony prominence where muscles can attach to. So on another video that we did, we talked about the extensors and how they attach the lateral epicondyle. And you call that tennis elbow. On the inside we have the medial epicondyle, that bony prominence where all the flexor tendons attach there. So what happens is when we over use or we have weak flexor tendons here or flexor muscles, it becomes very, very inflamed there. And what happens? The tendons start to pull on that bone. So you start to get inflammation there. And later on, lo and behold you’re diagnosed with golfer’s elbow or medial epicondylitis. So what causes that. Well we said that it can be repetitive use. So basically anybody who’s constantly going to the gym and using, you know, dumbbells to hold that weight there, sometimes there can be an inherent weakness. And if you carry too much load at that moment in time, you are going to basically create micro tears that are creating an inflammatory response. The other thing is, is that anything repetitive in terms of construction work, somebody who’s always carrying something heavy and on top of that racket sports as well, golf definitely can create this.
So it’s all a matter of working the muscle, because if that muscle gets weak or is weakened, you are going to pull and you’re going to have an issue. So what we’re going to do today is we’re going to show you how to get rid of that and minimize the pain and increase your quality of life. I’m Doctor Clayton Roach from Double Doc Talk. And every week we talk about a specific condition and we have much fun doing this. So if you’re feeling the same and you’re loving these videos, make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube. You can follow us on Instagram, on Facebook as well. And we put out great content that hopefully is helpful to you. So how do you fix Golfer’s elbow? So like I said, if you have golfer’s elbow, chances are good that your flexors have become weakened or are weakened. So the thing with the muscle is that it will cross the wrist joint and the elbow joint. So what we need to do is exercise both an extension and flexion of the wrist, and also extension of the elbow and flexion of the elbow. So I’ve got here a very simple resistance band that you can pick up anywhere. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to start off with wrist flexion.
So what you’re going to do is you’re going to tug on that resistance band and you’re going to create wrist flexion and you’re going to go down and up. So you’re going to do eight repetitions here. So you’ll be able to feel this. Now we’re going to go into wrist extension. So arm flat. And you can lay it on a table or you know at the gym on the bench and what you’re going to do with a dumbbell or resistance band. You’re going to bring the wrist up into extension. So now we’re doing a to DS. So what we’ve done now is we’ve worked flexion of the wrist and extension of the wrist. What’s next up in the kinetic chain is going to be your elbow. So now we’re going to work elbow extension. So from here with an exercise band or with weights. And you can do them overhead as well. You’re going to do elbow extension. So this is going to be elbow extension. And then what you’re going to do is you’re going to do elbow flexion. So these are the typical curls where you’re going to basically roll your wrist and bend at the elbow. So here’s the key. With this you should feel about 2 to 4 out of ten pain at the golfer’s elbow area. And that is okay if it’s more than that or the next day you wake up and it’s exacerbated, meaning that there’s more pain there, it means you went too much.
So what does that mean? Too much? Probably not the amount of times you did it, but the amount of weight that you chose or the amount of resistance and the band that you chose. So the key eight repetitions of flexion and extension of the wrist, followed by extension of the elbow and flexion of the elbow. You do eight each and you do it three times. So you do it all over again once, twice and three times. And you do this every day and you’re going to see that elbow pain start to disappear. Ice is always your friend. Never heat that area so you can do icing if it’s in flame. And again, you never want to work the muscle at more than 2 to 4 out of ten. Pain in that area. Again, hurt versus harm. It’s okay to hurt, but it’s not okay to harm. How do you know you harmed it? The next day you wake up and it’s exacerbated. Reduce the amount of resistance, reduce the amount of weight. And that way you’re on your way to recovery. This has been another episode of Double Doc Talk with Doctor Clayton Roach. Look forward to seeing you next time.
