Many tennis players often experience an injury called "tennis elbow" without realizing it. However, can tennis elbow cause hand pain or numbness?

Tennis elbow is when the tendons that connect the forearm muscles to the outer elbow get inflamed. This usually happens when the muscles in the forearm are overused and the tendons around the elbow joint are exhausted. Tennis players usually develop tennis elbow because of the repeated use of muscles. In fact, half of all players end up dealing with this condition during their careers.

Tennis elbow can cause hand pain or numbness. The most common pain that occurs is outside the upper forearm, immediately underneath the bend of the elbow. This pain can travel all the way to the wrist and can be felt when performing basic tasks, such as gripping objects or even writing.

Tennis elbow can also be felt if you try twisting your forearm. It can become a nuisance as it interrupts daily life chores, such as opening a car door. This is because there are small tears in the tendon which is connected to the elbow.

Here, we will help you understand how tennis elbow causes hand pain or numbness, how you can deal with it, and what precautions you can take to ensure that you do not suffer from this condition.

Can Tennis Elbow Cause Hand Pain or Numbness?

The connective tissues found between your bones and muscles are known as tendons. They are strong and flexible, and depending on where they are located, they can be big or small. Tendonitis is a condition when the tendons get irritated, inflamed, or have small tears.

Tennis elbow is also commonly known as lateral epicondylitis. It starts with pain emerging from the back of the forearm and elbow that travels all the way down to the hands and wrists. This is why you might have issues bending your wrist or feel some sort of numbness when dealing with tennis elbow.

When the ECRB (extensor carpi radialis brevis) muscle found in the forearm gets damaged, it leads to tennis elbow. The ECRB is important in helping you raise your wrist. Constant stress can cause the ECRB muscle to weaken, causing miniscule tears in the tendon that connects to the outer elbow. These tears cause pain and inflammation.

Tennis elbow can also be caused by using incorrect technique when swinging a racquet. When you play tennis, you might end up rotating from the wrist rather than the shoulder or elbow joint. This places pressure on the tendon and leads to inflammation and irritation. When this tendon breaks down, the extensor muscles start to hurt, leading to hand pain and numbness.

What Other Factors Can Cause Tennis Elbow?

While tennis elbow is a condition that is commonly found in tennis players, this injury can be experienced by anyone who overuses their tendons. There are some daily activities that could cause tennis elbow if you are not careful.

These include:

• Gardening
• Using scissors
• Swimming
• Manual labor such as typing, plumbing, or any other kind of work that repeatedly uses the tendons that allow the wrist to turn or lift.
• Sports in which you have to throw with power
• Cutting hard vegetables or other kinds of food

How to Know if You Have Tennis Elbow?

The most common symptom of tennis elbow is feeling discomfort around your elbow joint. This is usually one area that you feel pain in when you touch it but the pain can travel down the entire arm. Using your elbow joint vigorously enhances the pain. Athletes will usually talk about stiffness, swelling, hand pain, and numbness.

Keep in mind that if the pain is from the inside of the elbow rather than the outside, this is not a symptom of tennis elbow. Instead, this is an injury called golfer’s elbow, also medically known as medial epicondylitis. Even though it is less common, it is just as painful.

If you are suspicious that you might have tennis elbow, all you need to do is stand behind a chair and put your hands on its back. Face your palms downwards and keep your elbows straight. Now, try lifting the chair. If you find that pain is radiating from the outside of your elbow, you probably have tennis elbow.

Other severe conditions, such as an elbow joint injury or arthritis are also conditions you might face. However, to rule these out, an MRI scan or x-ray is recommended. The doctor will probably test your range of motion before asking you to get these tests done.

An MRI is usually better than an x-ray because it takes into account injuries in the muscles, tendons, and soft tissues found inside the arm. Your doctors will probably recommend conservative treatment if you have an injury but if the pain in your outer elbow does not disappear after a year, you will have to get an MRI done. You might also have to get electromyography (EMG) done in case the doctor thinks that your nerves are being compressed.

Treating Tennis Elbow

There are several things you can do to treat tennis elbow. However, for severe pain, we would recommend talking to a medical professional and following their advice.

1. Resting

When you feel pain in your arm or hand, it is important to rest it. Take a break from any vigorous activity so that the tears in the tendon can start to heal. In case of serious injuries, you can use anti-inflammatory drugs, ice, stretching exercises, as well as ultrasound therapy.

If your muscles are too damaged, your doctor may recommend that you wear a brace to limit movement and speed up healing time. Providing additional support to the area might help realign any muscle fibers that got dislocated because of the injury.

2. Ice Massage

You can use an ice bag or cold pack on your elbow. You should put mild pressure and only use the ice for 15 minutes. You can ice your elbow three times a day to ensure that the swelling goes down.

3. Physical Therapy

A physical therapist is trained to use a number of techniques and exercises to help strengthen the upper arm, shoulder, and abdominal muscles. This will reduce pain in the hands and wrists. You may also be given muscle-stimulating treatments to help the tendons heal.

4. Shock Wave Therapy

Even though this is an experimental treatment, it has proved to be highly successful. This involves delivering sound waves to the elbow to boost the healing process and encourage the tendons to align properly.

However, only try shock wave therapy if your doctor recommends it.

5. Steroid Injections

Doctors may recommend using a corticosteroid medicine and injecting it directly into the injured muscle. This will help get rid of inflammation in the tendons.

However, once you get a steroid injection, you must keep your arm rested so that additional strain is not put on it.

6. Ultrasound Therapy

Ultrasound therapy involves putting an ultrasound probe over the part of your arm that is hurting the most. The probe will then send high-frequency waves, allowing them to find their way into the tissues. This helps reduce inflammation, and boosts the recovery process.

7. Surgery

If you find that despite going through a series of treatments over a year your arm has still not recovered, you might be asked to get surgery done.

Your doctor will be able to decide whether surgery is the best option for you or if there are any other experimental treatments you can try first. After all, between 80 to 95 patients who suffer from tennis elbow are able to recover without needing surgery.

The Tyler Twist- An Exercise that Helps with Tennis Elbow

Look for a thin, long object that you can hold comfortably using both your hands. We would recommend using a flexible item that can be twisted but offers some amount of resistance. Usually, people use a FlexBar for this exercise.

Here is what you can do:

• Vertically hold the object and keep it in front of your chest.
• Use both hands to grip the object. Make sure that your hands are facing the same direction. Your wrists should be extended fully or bent back.
• Bend the wrist forwards around the object. Make sure to use the arm that is injured.
• Rotate the object horizontally, almost like holding the bars of a cycle. Keep your arms out straight so that your elbows are not bending.
• Rotate the unaffected wrist so that it joints the injured wrist.
• Repeat this step 15 times and do it thrice a day till you see an improvement in your symptoms.

How to Prevent Tennis Elbow

If you want to prevent injury, you need to pay particular attention to the techniques used when exercising. Moreover, it is important not to overexert yourself.

We would recommend spreading the weight to the muscles in the shoulder and upper arm rather than using your wrist and elbow as the muscles found here are smaller and weaker.

Here are other things you can do to prevent tennis elbow:

• Warm up: Before you participate in a sport that repeatedly uses your arm, such as squash or tennis, it is essential that you take the time to warm up. Do some gentle stretching exercises so that your muscles do not get injured during a game.
• Make use of light tools: If you are a tennis player, use lightweight racquets and other sport tools. Moreover, your grip size should be large so that you are not placing too much strain on your tendons. We would also advise you to not use damp tennis balls or old balls as these provide unnecessary load on the arm.
• Strengthen your forearm muscles: The best way to prevent tennis elbow is by performing suitable exercises that will help make your forearms stronger. The stronger your muscles are, the less likely they will be to break down.