Day 2: Balance Performance Sports physiotherapist Graham Anderson at the Australian Open Tennis
Further thoughts from Graham on Day 2:
“Using the “tennis elbow” example. Often a weak wrist and an unstable shoulder is enough to set a player up for pain in the elbow.
With the force from the ball on impact with the racket going directly to the elbow if the wrist isn’t solid and the shoulder does not have a fundamentally strong foundation.
Hence treatment will often involve shoulder/scapular stability and control as well as co-contracting wrist muscle strengthening to stiffen up the wrist joint – synergistic control of the wrist.
Prevention of scapular dyskinesis and (re)developing shoulder blade stability on the chest wall is a slow process so improvements are not seen over night. Often you see some of the players on tour with coloured kinesio tape on their shoulders. This is usually for shoulder positional control – kind of like a postural muscle reminder as they play. Many tape their wrists to enhance stiffness. Buts its what goes on at home and in the gym that will make the ultimate difference.
As I said before resilience to impact and speed is the key. So maybe you need to look at a slightly different way to condition. We can certainly help you with that at Balance Performance Physiotherapy.”
Graham will be back with more blogs but won’t be back in Clapham at Balance Performance for a few weeks so don’t put it off make good use of our team.
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Probably missed something as well!