​Tennis elbow or lateral epicondylitis is a common condition physical therapists typically see.  More often than not, tennis players are not the primary patient population with this condition.  Instead, its the desk worker or handyman.  Tennis elbow can be tricky to treat as a young clinician or when you do not have much experience with it.  

Understanding what tennis elbow really is and how to explain it to your patient correctly is important to establish a proper treatment program.  As with other overuse injuries, most of the recommendations I give to patients include finding what activities produce the most pain (triggers).  I wrote in more depth on tennis elbow is this article below.  Check it out for information on the condition and home exercise treatment options for your patients with tennis elbow.  

http://blog.paleohacks.com/tennis-elbow/

Brian Schwabe, PT, DPT, SCS, CSCS
​Board Certified Sports Clinical Specialist in Physical Therapy/Strength & Conditioning Coach/Fitness & Medical Writer
Sports Physical Therapist  in Los Angeles, CA

How many of you deal with athletes post injury and are looking to test out your athletes for return to sport?  Chances are you want to use some objective criteria to back up your reasoning for returning an athlete to sport.  While not all inclusive, return to sport tests such as the hop tests begin doing just that.  Many other factors go into return to sport testing such as unplanned/reaction training, power training, sport biomechanics, position specific training, fatigue training, and more.  However, objective criteria still plays a role in our return to sport testing of our athletes.  If you are unfamiliar with the more common tests from the research I would encourage you to see my site dedicated to providing video demonstrations and literature to support return to sport testing.  Do you use any of these tests in the clinic?  Why or why not?  

Want to learn about all inclusive return to sport testing?  Check out the Insider Access pages for how to prepare your athletes for return to sport and what is NOT in the literature. 

  http://www.thesportsperformancept.com/functional-tests.html

- Brian Schwabe, PT, DPT, SCS, CSCS