If you've got a throbbing pain that you can literally put your finger on
right there, that feels like someone's stabbing you right in the elbow. Guess what? You're on the
right video and the right place because we're going to get rid of that once and for all.
What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com. So, if you ve got that pain right there,
Tennis Elbow. I don't care if you don't play tennis because most people that have this actually
don't. What can you do about it? Well, I made a video a while back where I discussed what the
actual cause of tennis elbow was, and it wasn't actually your elbow just getting blamed for it.
It's coming from either mechanics of the shoulder and the shoulder blade that aren't in place,
or maybe even down below that at the hip or even somewhere distal here in the wrist that's
not functioning the way it should that causes this elbow to bear the brunt of the issue.
Well, as I mentioned before, most people get this not from tennis,
although it came from the fact that when people did the backhand, they would experience that pain.
But we're talking about what's happening right here in the gym
because our problem is oftentimes caused right here in the gym, and I can almost point my finger
at one particular exercise that does this. It s the side lateral raise. I love the side
lateral raise. I program the side of lateral raise in almost every single program I do.
However, there are some key points that you want to make sure that you're focusing on
to do it right, so let me show you what we're talking about. When we do that side lateral raise
one of the things, I preach so many times is that this zone right about here for most people,
it's sort of the dead minute zone, right? Because what happens in this range is we try to take a
weight that's basically appropriate for what we're trying to accomplish, which is a raise
on the dumbbell out to the side. But it exceeds the ability of these extensor tendons to manage
that way, especially as the arm gets longer and longer and held out further from our body.
Whereas down here, it's really where we want to focus your efforts, the light side
of the rack. But when you do that, as I pointed out, you use these intensity techniques that
take the light weight or the weight that feels maybe a little too light to you right now, and
it ups the overall intensity of the effort you're doing so you still get the gains you're seeking.
Things like one and a half reps, right? Slow motion reps, that's where you want to live. I
will also show that when you go down this end of the rack, you actually can handle that as well.
But there's ways that we do that with a cheat lateral that actually is almost pointing towards
that ultimate solution for tennis elbow because we're getting some other things contributing.
You can see that right here. Hips, lower body, other things contributing. So, if I were to take
a weight that was too heavy for me to handle as I go out here, I'm basically asking for isometric
contraction here of the wrist to hold that weight from falling down, right? We could see it could go
into a really light weight so I could demonstrate even better. Right here, I'm preventing this from
falling so that isometric contraction is wholly responsible from the extensive here, the risk that
all bundle up and attach that that one point that ends up hurting you. And it doesn't have to happen
over the course of many, many, many, many workouts. You can exceed the capacity of these
extenders, a one single rep which can cause this problem. So, it's not necessarily an overuse more
of an over taxation of these muscles that can't handle that. So, what I've told you before to do
is turn the arm up a bit, right? No longer poor in the pitchers but turn the arm up a little bit. And
we talked about the benefits of what that does for the shoulder by creating more room and less
impingement. But what it also does is it takes the extensors from being what are primarily preventing
that dumbbell from falling down and it now turns it a little bit like this, which allows more of
the radial deviations of the wrist this way to take off some of that load. That change alone
will help most people who are doing the exercise who feel like it's causing pain in their elbow.
But again, let's say you already got the problem. You've already got the pain. How do we solve that?
That's where we interestingly go back when we look at something like the cheat lateral for
the true solution. So here it is. Instead, we want to grab this. You can use a dumbbell if you want,
but a kettlebell works perfectly here. And the exercise that you want to start incorporating
three times a week. If you already have a raging case of Tennis Elbow, believe it or not,
is a kettlebell swing. And why this works is because we need to start training the body to
work as the kinetic chain that's intended to be. Meaning that this spot here that was overloaded,
that was thrown the responsibility of maintaining a weight that it couldn't handle because the
rest of the body wasn't participating. We need to start to reintroduce the rest of the
body to that move. And the best way to do it is to take it from the side and bring it to the front,
which still causes the same stress here at that point of the elbow and give it the support that
it needs with the other muscles. So, what the kettlebell swing does is it loads us into hip
flexion, right? We're getting into this hip flexion position and then allowing the extension
of the hips to assist the weight as it comes up, keeping the isometric control here, but again,
offloading this and giving it some additional support. So if we can continue to do something
to work on getting over the injury rather than putting everything away,
packing up your gym bag, going home and staying home and hoping it gets better.
Or worse, rubbing on it, icing, ultrasounding it, throwing a brace on it. Everything
I said not to do in that last video. That's not going to be a long-term solution.
That's why you keep going back and getting this problem over and over and over again because
you're never working on actually strengthening the muscles that need strengthening and incorporating
the entire kinetic chain. So, what we do is we start with two hands on the kettlebell,
right? In this position here. You can see that we have to have this neutral wrist position,
which requires activation of the extension of the forearm. So, if I'm in here and I perform a swing
where I load up and here load up posteriorly, you can see at the top, it's driven by the hips.
But the arm is staying in this extended position and the wrist is staying in this extended
position, which is creating that stress. But the good form of stress to that extensor tendon
wad up here and the elbow and maintaining the mechanics in the support from below. So I do
swings, I do them three times a week for, let's say, 50 swings at a time, increasing it to 75,
100 swings, gradually increasing the load that you use each time you do it,
or at least the volume of the swings that you do and then gradually increasing the load.
But one thing you can do without having to actually increase the
load of the kettlebell you're using is then switch to a single arm version of it. So,
the same thing here load through the hips and pop up. Again, even if you have a raging case
right now of a lateral epicondylitis or Tennis Elbow, you'll find that that doesn't really
stress that. It gets blood to the area, it's doing much more for you in terms of a long-term solution
than doing any of that rubbing or throwing a brace on it a short term Band-Aid.
The next thing you could do comes from looking towards that cheat lateral again. Why are people
able to handle loads, even if again, you have a raging case of Tennis Elbow right now,
you could likely do a cheat lateral with heavier weight far more than you could do strict lateral
with that middle of the road weight, like I talked about here. That's because you're getting
the assistance of the lower body in terms of loading and assisting that weight on the way up,
supporting those extenders, not leaving them out on an island. So, if we know that we can
get help by rotating and loading into a hip, you could also do an offset version
of a kettlebell swing. So, I drop it down to the side and I come up like that.
So now I'm loading these hips to be able to drive up through internal rotation and then
forcibly into external rotation here at the top. The fact is, how you perform your swing
is going to be up to you. Again, to handed to start single arm down the middle,
single arm off to the side. But the more you start to incorporate kettlebell swings into your
overall routine, the faster you're going to get to not only a permanent solution to this problem,
but actually some immediate relief. Because these muscles need to still be worked, they just have
to be worth the right way, and they need to get the support that they're looking for in need in
order to function the right way without pain. If you guys are looking for programs where we put
the science back in the strength, we put the thought into how we program the things we do.
Make sure you head over to Athleanx.com and check out our plans. In the meantime,
to find the video helpful, please leave a comment. Let me know how incorporating the swings
have helped you to finally get rid of this pain once and for all, despite all the other
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so you never miss a video when we put one out. All right, guys, see you soon.