Three sports that can cause pain when elbow is bent or straightened

Elbow Pain

Your elbow joints act like a hinge for various arm movements you make every day. They bend so you can lift a drink to your mouth. They straighten so you can set the drink back on the table. All kinds of normal daily movements like this rely on the elbow joints. 

Feeling pain in your elbow when it’s bent or straightened can make such tasks much harder to do. Physical therapy can help treat the root cause of your elbow pain, but therapists must first pinpoint the cause in order to treat it. 

Three sports that can lead to pain when the elbow is bent or straightened

Sports can be a valuable tool in your fight to be healthier. However, many of them also require repetitive and forceful movements that can injure your elbow. There are three sports in particular that can cause elbow pain from all the bending and straightening they require. These three sports are: 

  1. Tennis — This sport places lots of strain on the elbow. Holding the racket requires gripping the handle, which works forearm muscles connected to the elbow. In addition, hitting a tennis ball transfers force to the hand, wrist and elbow. When tennis movements are done too often, they can easily lead to elbow pain. Tennis elbow is one example of an injury that can cause you pain in this joint. 
  1. Golf — Another sport that can cause elbow pain is golf. Gripping the club, swinging it, impacting the golf ball. All these factors place stress on the elbow joint. Poor form or overdoing the movements used while golfing can lead to elbow pain. For instance, these factors can injure tendons on the inside of your elbow, and this injury is called golfer’s elbow. 
  1. Boxing — Suddenly straightening the arm from a bent position can injure the triceps tendon where it attaches to your elbow. Such movements are common in boxers. Additionally, the repeated arm impacts during boxing can lead to injuries in other tendons, and these injuries can cause elbow pain as well. 

Whatcom Physical Therapy can help you bend and straighten your elbow without pain

Do you have pain when bending or straightening your elbow? Our Whatcom Physical Therapy team is ready to help you treat it. We offer free screenings designed to reveal the source of your elbow pain. With this cause in hand, our team can build you a personalized therapy plan to treat your injury, and your plan could include therapy techniques such as: 

 

Take the next step to start getting our help with your elbow pain. Contact our team today for more information or to schedule your free screening.