Tennis elbow at work
Tennis elbow, otherwise known as lateral epicondylalgia, is a common injury we see in the clinic. Sometimes it will be as a result of playing tennis but more often, the cases we see, are associated with a manual work injury. A large component of treatment for this injury is to alter the way the individual works. This may be adjusting their work environment or how they do things.
What is Tennis Elbow
Tennis elbow is an injury to the tendon type tissue which connects the outside muscles of the forearm to the outside of the elbow. Several muscles converge at the same point (common extensor origin) making it susceptible to overuse injury. These include muscles that extend the wrist and fingers.
What causes Tennis Elbow
The main cause of tennis elbow is an abrupt increase in the amount of use of the above-mentioned muscles and the resulting load on the attachment point to the outside elbow. This could be because you have been asked to do a new task at work or a lot more of that task eg pruning vines in vineyards. This work is very seasonal and repetitive at certain times. A different way to overuse the same muscles is if you are doing the same amount of work, but perhaps your work environment has changed, leading to an inefficient over-recruitment of those muscles. For example, perhaps you normally work at a desktop computer but you had to work on a laptop meaning your elbow and wrists were at a sub optimal angle, in turn, over stressing your extensor muscles.
How to fix it
There are several physio, manual techniques we can use to calm down the pain and spasm which can develop around the elbow. However, to make a full recovery, exercises and a change in behaviour is usually necessary.
Check out some of the progressive loading exercises for tennis elbow >>
Here is a link to our guide to good workstation set up If you’re having to work on a laptop at a computer, you could be over stressing your extensor muscles if you don’t have the right workstation set up. Check out our tips for a consistent workstation set up >>
