Tennis Elbow Massage: How to Massage Tennis Elbow Like a Pro, and Why It Works

When you feel Tennis Elbow pain, does your other hand intuitively migrate to the painful area to give it a quick massage? That’s quite effective for quick pain relief on the spot. But what if you could supercharge that self-massage and get the same therapeutic benefits as you’d get from the deep tissue work of physical therapy?

It’s possible! The benefits of a pro-level self-massage go beyond temporary pain relief - it’s a proven way to help the tissue heal properly and resolve the root cause of your pain.

Tennis Elbow is a repetitive stress injury of a tendon in your forearm, called Extensor Carpi Radialis Brevis (ECRB). With overuse, the tendon develops microscopic tears, which turn into scar tissue during the natural healing process.

Both the initial tears and scar tissue weaken the tendon, cause pain, and reduce your grip strength. Worse, the weakened ECRB tendon is more susceptible to further injuries, making you more vulnerable to flare-ups or re-injuries.

These physiological changes in the tendon are the root cause of Tennis Elbow pain. This is why one of the key elements of physical therapy treatment for Tennis Elbow involves working on the damaged tendon to bring about a positive change in the tissue itself.

When done right and consistently, massage (soft tissue mobilization is the technical term) is an effective way to help the tissue heal the right way.

Some physical therapists still use their hands to give therapeutic massage, but many use stainless steel instruments. These instruments are designed to accomplish a few purposes:

• They have just the right amount of friction without snags or slips

• They give the PT tactile feedback so they can feel the difference in healthy and problematic tissue to adjust how they work the tissue

• They make it easy to apply deliberate pressure on the exact spots

There’s some debate over whether or not the description is quite correct, but it’s an intuitive way to understand what happens with Tennis Elbow massage: it breaks up scar tissue that causes pain and limits your function.

Scar tissue is a product of the normal healing process, but it’s quite different from healthy tissue you had before injuries:

• In a healthy tissue, the fibers are lined up parallel to each other; scar tissue is much messier

• Scar tissue is weaker: it doesn’t have the same amount of power output as healthy tissue (thus the lower grip strength many people experience with Tennis Elbow)

• Scar tissue is also more brittle: compared to healthy tissue, it’s more vulnerable to further aggravation even at lower activity levels

• Adhesions can develop around scar tissue, leading to tightness, limiting your range of motion, and causing pain

By directly manipulating the problematic tissue, massage can help resolve these problems associated with scar tissue on the ECRB tendon.

Importantly, fixing the problematic tissue (combined with strengthening the supporting tissue through Tennis Elbow exercises) is the only way to prevent flare-ups.

Of course, the benefits of massage isn’t limited to resolving the scar tissue problem.

• It releases tension that accumulates throughout the day

• It can increase blood flow to the injured area, promoting tissue healing

• It serves as a stimulus that’s different from the pain signal, partially masking pain and helping combat the pain narrative that your brain develops when you have a chronic pain condition

You can use your hand, but the easiest and most effective way to give yourself a forearm massage is to use our Tennis Elbow Massager (included in the Tennis Elbow System).

Here’s the step-by-step:

1. Set up the Tennis Elbow Massager at the edge of a table and sit next to it.

2. Find the ECRB tendon. Fold your affected arm in a V shape in front of you. Wiggle the middle finger, and look for a spot in your upper forearm that flickers as you wiggle. That’s where your ECRB tendon is. (This one’s easiest if you watch our how-to video below.)

3. Place the nodule of the massager against the ECRB tendon.

4. Lean your upper body into the massager, with the nodule pressing into the ECRB tendon or surrounding tissue.

5. Apply acupressure-like pressure in hot spots and/or glide along the forearm muscles - whatever feels good!

Many users describe the sensation as the “good hurt.” Massaging Tennis Elbow and other chronic injuries can feel quite painful, like acupressure, or if you've had one, physical therapy massage.

Think of it not as a relaxing massage at a spa, but as something you're doing to fix a problem. It's a good kind of pain where you know you're fixing something.

If you've had a lot of tension built up in your muscles and tendons, you'll feel the release and your forearm will feel looser and lighter, like it can finally breathe.

You might also find sore spots that you didn't know you had. Pay attention to those, and make sure to work on those areas as well. As you dig into the newfound hot spots, you should be able to feel it working immediately.

Test-intervention-retest is a simple and powerful concept (but so often not followed by doctors and PTs alike): you do a quantitative assessment of your pain and function level before you do an intervention (massage, in this case), do the intervention, and do the same test afterward to see if it made a difference in your pain and/or function.

Your pain level may be 7 out of 10 before your massage, but may go down to 5 after. You test and retest consistently with every massage session, and with daily tracking, you’ll be able to tell whether your daily work is reducing your pain over time: your pain level may be around 7-8 when you start, but within 2 weeks, it may come down to 4-5.

Massage is one of the three pillars of Tennis Elbow self-care. (The other two are load management with an elbow brace, and Tennis Elbow-specific strengthening exercises.) When practiced consistently as a part of your recovery routine using the Tennis Elbow System, it's very effective. Typically, our users experience a 40% pain reduction within the first 2 weeks of the program. Within 6 weeks, the average pain reduction is 60%.

Here's more on the three pillars of Tennis Elbow self-care that uses the Alleviate Method: Our System was built to make it simple for anyone to follow this method (which is based on the gold standard of physical therapy) for full recovery without PT or doctor visits.

Alleviate was founded by a patient-clinician duo to bring the effective chronic pain treatment from physical therapy offices to everyone's home. With the all-in-one Tennis Elbow System, you can use the Alleviate Method to treat your elbow pain, without the hassle of traditional physical therapy.

For most people with symptoms lasting more than 2 weeks, we recommend the System, but if you are unsure, take the elbow pain quiz to see which Alleviate tool fits your needs the best.