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MSK Health
Brighton & Hove and West Sussex
Brighton & Hove and West Sussex
Elbow pain is a common complaint. The discomfort is usually caused by irritated tissues (tendons and muscles). This can spread further into the arm making gripping and lifting activities difficult. Although this pain can be worrying it is rarely due to anything serious. It will likely get better by itself with time.
It is best to keep using it, but to make some adjustments to how you use it: There are some things that you can do to help your elbow when it is painful.
How to Protect Your Joints Leaflet
It is safe to exercise even if your elbow is sore. Exercise can really help to This can really help to regain movement and strength. If you continue to go to the gym, an exercise class, or swimming you may want to change how much you do for a time. There are some examples of exercises to do below. You can use our symptom tracker to check if what you are doing is helping you to improve.
X-rays and scans can help for a small number of people and in certain situations. However, most of the time it shows us things that are normal for the age of your elbow and are not related to your pain. These sorts of findings will not help the elbow get better. This is why your GP or clinician may say that it is not needed.
Most elbow pain will settle naturally in time with little or no help. Occasionally you may need some extra help to get your elbow better.
If you feel you would like to talk to a healthcare professional to help you further with your elbow you can fill in a self referral form.
Exercise is often used to help you improve your symptoms by increasing your muscular strength. We all need to improve our muscle mass (the amount of muscle we have) before being able to increase our strength, power and endurance.
Strengthening is a process that requires us to challenge our bodies with activity to be able to drive a change. These changes are not immediate and strengthening will take at least 6-8 weeks before we notice big changes.
Below are some ideas of how to choose what repetitions you should be using. Remember that you need muscle mass and strength before you can improve your power and/or endurance:
This is the process where we build muscle mass.
Rep range tends to be greater.
3 sets x 12-15 repetitions.
Improve your strength with lifting heavier loads.
Improve your strength by lifting more repetitions.
3 sets x 3-5 repetitions with a heavier load.
3 sets x 8-12 repetitions slowly.
Hard work (80%)
When you are ‘strong’ you can increase the speed at which you move a load.
4 sets x 4-6 repetitions.
50% maximal effort.
Explosive.
The goal is to be able to improve the amount of time that you can keep going for.
3-4 sets x 15-25 repetitions.
Light resistance.
Do you find it too difficult?
Is your pain worsening
Do you lose good technique/movement patterning?
If Yes, Regress.
Reduce the load.
Reduce the repetitions.
Reduce the depth of the movement
Have you just recently progressed?
Do you feel that there is still a challenge but your pain does not worsen?
If Yes, Maintain.
You might need a bit longer doing what you’re doing.
Do you find it easy?
Can you complete your whole program without a challenge?
Do you not have any flare ups?
If Yes, Progress.
Increase the weight.
Increase the repetitions.