A Cure for Golfer's Elbow & Tennis Elbow
MASSAGING AWAY THE PAIN?
NOT CC0 - from some guy's blog - easy to take
Admittedly, massaging the area of pain even right on the inside elbow bone itself made me feel like it should help. What do I mean by that? Rubbing the elbow pain at the source would certainly alleviate the pain while massaging and for a few seconds after stopping. But each time I thought the pain relief would extend longer, the elbow pain would return immediately. It just felt so good to rub the area and gave me that hopeful feeling, perhaps you’ve known this false sense of hope with your golfer’s elbow or tennis elbow.
Massaging it myself with my non-dominant left hand always did feel like I wasn’t able to dig into the elbow enough. I have no idea why I felt that a deeper massage would be the elbow pain solution, but it’s often the case that when something feels like it could work but isn’t, you feel you should just do it harder.
So I set off on a quest to find ways to reach deeper into the source of elbow pain. Along the way, I got advice about exactly where and how to massage.
I had an old massage stick at home – if you haven’t seen one, it’s literally a hard plastic stick with handles and bulges along the side where you can really dig. I would stand the stick upright firmly while I slid my right forearm and elbow against the stick. I definitely would feel the effects more as the plastic is very hard but still no elbow pain relief beyond a few seconds.
The massage stick fell short of being pinpointed, it simply couldn’t reach into the tiny nooks and corners of the elbow where the pain was most obvious. And so the next idea of a foam roller, the magical solution to so much rehab and recovery, was another waste of time. Softer and more comfortable with that relaxing, rolling feeling, the foam roller could deliver a pain-free elbow.
By this point, I knew that if I could get deeper into the corners of the golfer’s elbow and tennis elbow, I could reach the source of pain and work out the “knots.” So many people along this journey mentioned swelling, tendonitis, scar tissue, knots that I believed those really were the source of the elbow pain and to be pain-free, I would need to find a way to work those out.
I hadn’t yet spent the thousands of dollars I eventually would and wasn’t ready to make a heavy investment. So when I saw a YouTube video suggesting a lacrosse ball as the perfect tool for working out knots especially for golfer’s elbow and tennis elbow, I had to try it. Being a tennis player, I had plenty of those balls around and they didn’t do it. But a lacrosse ball must have something magical that would do the trick. Made of smooth, semi-hard rubber, I knew it would feel perfect against my skin and “conform” to the spaces in my elbow to really reach deep into the tissue and tendons.
The day the lacrosse ball arrived via Amazon, I couldn’t wait to get home to try it. As expected, the lacrosse ball felt perfect – easy to use with nothing strenuous required, it felt smooth like a second skin and even a gentle roll would find pressure into every pocket in the elbow with firmness and pressure. Yet, pain relief was temporary again – how could this be? It was like an itch you only can barely reach it’s border – there is a split second relief followed by a frustrating return of the elbow pain along with the feeling that if I could just get right on the center of the pain, there would be permanent relief.
It was time to start throwing the bank at the elbow pain, I was starting to feel more desperate and frustrated. If I couldn’t self-reach those important areas, I would let someone else. I tried every type of massage focused on the elbow from deep tissue to sports to shiatsu and more. Some masseuses were in nice spas, others from China with no credentials but a wealth of convincing knowledge of the human body.
There were masseuses who convinced me that the pain was showing up right on the elbow bone, but that the source of the pain actually was swelling or scar tissue that formed in my forearm. Or my upper arm. Or my shoulder. One masseuse suggested that a pressure point in the scapula was the source of the pain. With each check I wrote, I so wishes I was one massage away from being pain free.
Not CC0
While the human massages felt amazing – the idea of being completely relaxed and exerting nothing and yet having muscles and tendons worked felt really great. I gave a lot of feedback to each masseuse and they tried to work out the deepest, most hidden recesses along my forearm and elbow, shoulder or scapula. And while the elbow pain relief was a little longer lasting, it always came back within a day and I wondered if their deeper massage was causing numbness rather than a cure allowing me to feel pain free for a few hours.
So with much trepidation and hundreds of dollars later, I gave up hope of a cure for golfer’s elbow and tennis elbow pain through massage.
