Show Off That Elbow Strength Part 2

So, you’ve worked on your elbow’s mobility and it’s doing better. Now what? Once you have gained that full mobility, you should strengthen your muscles within your acquired range of motion. You don’t want to use it because it isn’t as easy to get it back.

The strength exercises that are used to treat outside elbow pain utilize two forms of muscle contraction: concentric and eccentric. A concentric contraction is when the muscle shortens to create movement, while an eccentric contraction is when the muscle lengths to control flow. Kinda cool, huh?

Here are some exercises I’ve come across to help the elbow and the wrist get stronger.

Movement 1 - Flexbar Eccentric Twists

• Hold a flexbar in hand with your injured arm with it sticking straight up with your wrist extended back fully.
• Grab the other end with your other hand and twist it with that hand. Don’t move the injured one.
• Bring both arms with the flexbar straight out, elbows straight maintain the twist in the bar.
• Slowly untwist the bar with the injured arm by rotating the wrist forward. Let the tension in the bar flex the wrist forward.
• Do three sets of 15 up to 3x per day.

This exercise targets the wrist extensors eccentrically that insert into the lateral epicondyle. Research has shown eccentric exercises can strengthen the tendon and decrease pain.

Movement 2 – Bottle Drops

• Rest the elbow of the affected arm on a table, with your forearm upright. Turn your forearm so that the palm of your hand is facing away from you.
• Grab and hold a full bottle of your choice in the affected hand.
• Gradually lower the arm with the bottle, making sure not to bend your wrist.
• Allow the bottle to fall into your free hand and move the affected arm back to the upright starting position.
• Pass the bottle from the free hand back up to the affected one.
• Do 10-15 reps up to 3x per day.

Movement 3 – Wrist Lowers

• Hold a weight in your hand. I don’t have one, so I’m using my frying pan again.
• Rest the affected arm on a table with your palm facing down, allowing your hand to hang off the edge of the table.
• Use your free hand to bend the affected wrist back as far as you can while lifting the weight/pan.
• Gradually lower the hand with the weight/pan in it.
• Do 10-15 reps up to 3x per day.

It’s best to do strengthening exercises three times a day if possible. You don’t want to overdo it, but you need to get the strength back up.

Once we get our elbows back to normal, we need to prevent ourselves from getting injured like that again. So, how do we do that? By watching our movement on the wall and relearning how to move in the last part of this series.