A friend of mine was doing some bow stretching exercises to prepare for the upcoming archery season, when he must have bent his elbow the wrong way and out of nowhere he felt an extreme, shooting pain on the outside of his elbow. The one question he had for me after getting an ice pack on the pain was:
Can archery cause tennis elbow?
Yes, as it turns out, archery can indeed cause tennis elbow. A couple of the most common reasons for these types of injuries are improper form, and archers not stretching and preparing their muscles adequately before shooting their bow.
As a general rule, most archery related injuries can be avoided with proper form. To avoid tennis elbow in the future, as you get back to archery practice, have a trainer or an experienced archer check to see if you are drawing back your bow string without bending your wrist. Your shoulder and back muscles should be doing all the hard work, and not your wrist or elbow.
Practice Proper Archery Form
Right from the start, practicing the correct form and stance as you shoot will protect you from a lot of potential bad habits and injuries down the road. Once your muscles get used to shooting correctly in the proper archery form, muscle memory takes over and you will protect yourself from any injuries much better than anyone who didn’t learn and practice correct form from the beginning.
When you’re shooting, stand up straight with your shoulders relaxed. They should be at about the same level as they are when you’re standing normally. Be sure to distribute your weight evenly between your feet, and keep your torso upright.
If you have incorrect posture and stance, you will be straining your elbows and shoulders, which causes most people to attempt to compensate for this by raising their front shoulder or leaning backward, both of which could lead to injury.
Try to keep in mind to avoid locking your elbows at any point. When you lock your elbows, this adds a lot of strain and can lead to injuries. There shouldn’t be a lot of pressure on your elbows when you’ve fully drawn back your bowstring.
Be conscious of the way you grip your bow. When you wrap your fingers around the bow, the alignment of your arm may need correction. Rotate your hand so that your knuckles are at a forty-five-degree angle from the riser and keep the fingers off the riser. There should be firm pressure on the pad between your forefinger and your thumb.
Warm Up Exercises Can Help
Once the weather starts to get nice, most archers can’t wait to get out there and start shooting! They check their bows, arrows and other gear, maybe even have them tuned up – and rush out to get some shots on a target. The one problem with all this is that they’re forgetting to check the most important thing… themselves.
After a winter of inactivity for a lot of people, it can be easy to injure yourself when you go full force into any physical activity. Couple this with the fact that many archers don’t stretch properly before shooting and you’ve a recipe for archery related injuries!
Then comes target practice, and drawing back bows which have a pull weight of forty, fifty, or even sixty pounds or more. The higher the draw weight of your bow, the easier it is to injure yourself if you’re shooting improperly.
Needless to say, a lot of tension and strain will be going on in various muscular groups that have been unused for quite some time. Shoulders, forearms, fingers and your elbows are going to be tested to the limit. What most new archers don’t realize is that a lot of them are going to have to deal with either tennis elbow or some other inevitable muscle injury that comes along with archery.
With tennis elbow, as the lateral muscles are stressed when you straighten your arm, the pain gets much worse. That’s because where muscles are attached to the humerus bone, the muscle has been torn and is also inflamed. Needless to say, it’s painful.
If you keep shooting in this condition, or without allowing it the time to heal fully, you’ll only worsen the injury – and extend the amount of time that your body needs to heal as well!
The less you injure yourself, the less total time you’ll need to recover.
If you push it and go shooting with an arm that’s not fully healed, you’re not doing yourself any favors!
When it comes to common injuries that plague archers, elbow pain is usually at the top of the list. Some feel tenderness outside of their elbows while others feel like they will never be able to pull back the bowstring again due to the pain. The good news is that shot modification and a few easy exercises will help you get back on your game in no time.
What Exactly is Tennis Elbow?
Also known as lateral epicondylitis, tennis elbow is pain and tenderness on the lateral (or the outside) of your elbow. Specifically, this is in the muscle band that crosses over the joint of your elbow to connect to the humerus, or the upper arm. These muscles are called extensors and their job is for wrist extension, or to pull your wrist backward, almost as if you were holding up a tray.
For tennis players, tennis elbow is a normal condition that they get when they swing a tennis racket backward powerfully and then swing it the opposite direction rapidly. In archery, the primary cause is not using your powerful, large muscles exclusively for drawing the bowstring and instead pulling your elbow back and bending your wrist in the process.
Of course, there can be other causes for the pain that you feel in your elbow. These might include radial pain that travels down your wrist into your hand, cervical spine problems, poor posture, joint degeneration between the humerus and radius bones, and the like. A few tests can be used for determining whether or not tennis elbow is indeed what you have.
Is It Really Tennis Elbow?
To check if it is indeed tennis elbow, with your palm down, hold your arm out straight in front of you. Have someone carefully push your wrist down gently as you try bending it back. If you have tennis elbow, you should feel pain in your elbow.
You can also ask someone to gently push against the back of your fingers as you attempt to push them upwards towards the ceiling. When you have tennis elbow, you will usually feel a shooting pain in your elbow. Next, with your palms down and your arm raised forward, slowly and gently pull your wrist downwards to stretch your forearm. When you feel elbow pain, and that your wrist is not flexible, this is typically tennis elbow.
Remember, when serious medical attention is necessary, always seek advice from your health care professional. If you feel numbness or swelling, or can’t tolerate the pain, get immediate medical attention!
If in any doubt, always consult your health care professional and follow their advice.
Is it Safe to Practice Archery with Tennis Elbow?
Not really. You could aggravate your already painful condition if you do. At least, what you should do is to rest for 2-3 days with an ice pack regularly applied to the area where it hurts. Wait for the pain to subside and then you can begin to do light exercises once the pain goes away.
Ice and a lot of rest should cure your tennis elbow. If your symptoms persist beyond a few days, call your health care professional and have an X-ray done to rule out arthritic joint pain. Two or three times a day, use an ice pack on the affected area for about ten minutes at a time. Rubber tubing or some of these can help strengthen your arm later on to make you a better archer.
In the recovery process, some lightweight dumbbells could help as well. Once you can start holding your arm out in front of you again, push your wrist upwards against someone else who’s gently pushing down. If you can do this without seeing stars from the pain, you can start using dumbbells and Therabands to slowly build your strength.
Simply put, treating tennis elbow means letting your arm heal fully, taking a break from shooting for a while, and then preventing re-injury later on. Rest and time are your friends when you’re dealing with tennis elbow.
This means no archery at all for a while. Resting your arm, along with most over the counter pain medications are pretty much the only treatments while you chill out and let that arm heal. Not until all pain has gone completely for a period of a few days can you slowly and carefully start shooting again.
And when you do, be sure to go easy and take it slowly!
Use a Elbow Brace to Avoid Re-Injury!
There are a few simple things that you can do to not only speed up your recovery time, but also prevent re-injuring your elbow.
Drop your draw weight down (this is especially easy if you already have a take down bow) and try shooting a bow with less shock to the hands. That means that you’ll probably want to stay away from most traditional, wooden bows – unless you’ve got one that’s very gentle on the hands!
A tennis elbow brace can be helpful, as they tend to cut down on vibrations from the bow being sent into your hands. They can also help to prevent re-injury if you’ve had tennis elbow in the past.
Additionally, you can protect the affected area from any further damage by using a supporting bandage as well. You might also want to stop all activities involving your elbow, taking care to rest the injured muscles and joints. After the injury, you should rest for at least three days, although more may be needed.
When you’re not shooting, the injured area could also be compressed to limit movement and swelling that could cause further damage. Compression bandages like these are ideal for this.
As the pain of your tennis elbow gets better, you can slowly and carefully build up to a full range of pain-free motion. If you feel pain, immediately stop everything you’re doing. Call your health care professional if the pain doesn’t start to get better in a few days.
Tennis elbow is one of those injuries that you simply have to wait out. Although it can be frustrating not being able to shoot your bow, be thankful that time, rest and some pain meds is all that’s needed to heal your injury!
Only in very rare and extreme cases does the damaged tendon need to be removed using surgery, as an absolute last resort. Most of the time, rest, enough time for the muscles to heal and not re-injuring the area while it’s healing will resolve most cases of tennis elbow.
Consistency Helps – Preventing Future Tennis Elbow
A consistent exercise routine is the most effective rehabilitation program for tennis elbow. Stretching before and after shooting your bow with a lot of rest and ice in between is important for recovery and repair.
Exercise (only if you’re not feeling any pain in the area) with Therabands or tubing before you begin to actually start shooting again. Be sure to slowly stretch all the primary muscles involved in shooting: Your shoulders, upper back muscles and the rotator cuff muscle group. Get in the habit of always taking a couple of minutes to stretch before you shoot.
Give it some time, rest and some ice packs and soon your tennis elbow should be no more! Make sure you practice proper form when shooting, always stretch before you shoot and use an elbow brace along with a compression bandage to prevent any further injury to your elbow.