Preventing Golfer’s Elbow During Sports, Workouts, and Daily Activity

Wade Folske
May 25
2 min read

Why Golfer’s Elbow Often Starts Gradually

Golfer’s elbow develops slowly rather than from a sudden injury. Repetitive gripping, lifting, pulling, swinging, and wrist movement gradually overload the tissue of the forearm. Those wrist flexor muscles originate on the inside of the elbow. Many people first notice irritation during workouts or sports, then eventually start feeling discomfort during simple daily tasks.

Tight Tissue Slowly Changes Movement

The forearm muscles handle constant force production during gripping and wrist movement. Once those muscles become overworked or restricted, movement mechanics start changing. The body compensates to keep activity going, but those compensation patterns usually increase stress on surrounding tissue. Several movement issues commonly contribute to golfer’s elbow:

Poor shoulder mobility during upper body movement
Excessive gripping tension during lifting
Restricted forearm tissue mobility
Repetitive wrist flexion under load

The tissue eventually loses the ability to tolerate repetitive stress efficiently. Pain develops gradually because the dysfunction develops gradually.

How Eccentric Strength Training Changes the Approach

Many people focus only on rest or stretching once elbow pain begins. Those approaches may temporarily reduce discomfort, but they do not necessarily improve how the tissue handles force during activity. Rest rarely triggers tissue to heal and stretching only puts more passive stress on a tendon that is already breaking down.

Eccentric strength training focuses on strengthening the tissue while it lengthens under load. This type of training helps improve the tissues ability to handle shock during real activity. Instead of simply trying to calm symptoms temporarily, the goal becomes improving how the muscles and tendons tolerate stress long term. Training muscle to open while under a load with stimulate the tendons to strengthen/thicken and thus heal the microtearing and tissue hypoxia (decreased blood flow) that is what we call “Golfer’s Elbow.”

Rest Alone Usually Creates a Cycle

Many active adults stop workouts or sports completely once elbow pain appears. If symptoms return with activity, the cycle of repetitive trauma has begun. Rest reduces stress temporarily. Once activity starts again, the tendon has been on a regressive path called atrophy and applying the same repetitive force will result in more tissue breakdown at the elbow.

Intervention

Active Release Technique breaks up the fibrosing we call scar tissue and allows the muscle to move through its greatest Range Of Motion. When a muscle fiber can fully contract it will generate more power and the tendons will be able to absorb more shock. The injury cycle is broken and activity will trigger tissue strengthening and hypertrophy instead of breaking down.

Strength Training is crucial to preventing forearm injuries like tennis elbow and golfer’s elbow. Instead of focussing on the muscles of the forearms, simply performing arm curls, rows, lateral raises and front raises will all help to repair the tissue. When using a heavy weight to strengthen the larger muscles of the shoulders and back, our wrist flexors contract isometrically to maintain grip. It’s a great way to heal and strengthen the muscles of the forearm.