Best Tennis Rackets For Tennis Elbow

These are often in your knees, back or even arms. One of the most common injuries that tennis players face is the infamous tennis elbow.

Tennis elbow is a very common racket sport related injury that plagues many tennis players in particular across the globe.

It can be so painful that it can actually stop you playing the sport you love so much.

Whilst there are some treatments that help to reduce the pain associated with tennis elbow, oftentimes you may be better off resting.

However, there are some rackets that can actually reduce the pain that you may be experiencing, so you can still play tennis whilst managing pain.

With that being said, we will explore exactly what tennis elbow is and which are the best rackets for managing tennis elbow!

What is Tennis Elbow? 

Tennis elbow is a condition caused by repetitive use of the elbow joint that produces pain on the outside of your arm.

You may feel pain in the muscles surrounding your elbow joint and the severity of this pain may differ from person to person and on how bad a case of tennis elbow you have.

Effectively, over use of the muscles and tendons in your arm as it is straightened can cause tennis elbow.

This causes inflammation in the elbow area and progressively the pain can worsen over time and with consistent over use.

Funnily enough, tennis elbow is now always caused by playing tennis.

Of course playing tennis is a leading cause of tennis elbow as the constant repetitive twisting, straightening and shortening of the arm muscles can place excessive amounts of strain on the elbow joint and surrounding muscles.

However, you can also develop tennis elbow through other racket sports such as badminton or squash, activities such as painting and decorating, using gardening tools, playing musical instruments or even excessive typing!

So, that being said tennis elbow can actually stem from a range of different activities that you may well be partaking in on a weekly or even daily basis.

This makes developing the condition very common and may not necessarily come just from playing too much tennis!

With all this in mind, it is important to consider that you are going to want an arm friendly racket if you are playing tennis whilst experiencing pain from tennis elbow.

The reason for this is that you will want to put as little excess strain on your arm as possible, reduce the vibrations that will go through your arm and play with as big of a sweet spot as possible.

All of these factors will help to reduce the pain you experience when playing tennis with tennis elbow, whilst improving your enjoyment of the sport at the same time!

What to Look for When Buying a Tennis Racket

As mentioned above, there are a few significant factors you need to consider when looking to buy a new racket to compensate for the pain you are experiencing from tennis elbow.

Stiffness

Using an arm friendly, flexible rackets will help absorb some of the vibrations from the ball so your arm doesn’t have to.

A more flexible racket will move more on impact with the ball, meaning it will feel more comfortable as you hit.

Racket stiffness is usually denoted on the racket iself, so opting for a lower stiffness rating of around 60 and below will give you a more plush feel.

Weight

Generally speaking a lighter tennis racket will require less strength to swing it than a heavier racket.

That’s why the most arm friendly tennis rackets tend to be lighter weight, for example under 300g, as less effort and strain needs to be placed on the arm in order to swing the racket and hit a deep and powerful shot.

Most of these rackets are loaded with vibration dampening technology in order to help the racket feel more solid despite the lack of weight, so these types of rackets are specifically designed with arm friendliness in mind!

Head size

Using a racket with a larger head size significantly increases the sweet spot on the string bed.

Having a larger sweet spot means you will be able to hit the ball in the more comfortable, powerful and effortless part of the string bed more of the time.

In essence, you don’t need to have as precise timing and pin-point accuracy to still hit the ball with power and depth when playing with a larger headed racket.

Technology

Many tennis rackets will feature innovative technology which helps to improve the feel, power, control, spin and comfort of a tennis racket.

However, some of these traits can only exist in limited forms in the same racket.

For example, an ultimate control racket will tend to have a smaller head size, higher weight and a stiffer frame so you get the most clean and crisp contact on the ball.

Conversely, a very powerful racket will tend to have a much larger head size, be more flexible and be lighter to swing, so you can hit the ball with as big of a sweet spot as possible.

As far as tennis elbow goes, you will be after the most arm friendly tennis racket you can find, so you can relieve some of the stress and tension that is being placed on the elbow joint and surrounding muscles.

Therefore, opting for a more powerful racket with a larger sweet spot that will reduce the amount of effort you need to put into your shots should help to ease the stress on your affected area.

Strings

Using softer strings such as a soft multifilament or a natural gut string is another great way to relieve some of the pressure on your tennis elbow.

These strings tend to flex more and are made from softer materials than polyester or kevlar strings, so will feel more supple and pliant as you hit with them.

Also, stringing your racket at a lower tension helps to create more of a trampoline effect from your string bed.

This effectively slingshots the ball off of the strings and over the other side of the net more so than a stiff, tight string bed.

Therefore, using a softer string strung at a lower tension in your racket will also help to relieve the pain of your tennis elbow.

Best Tennis Rackets for Tennis Elbow

Picking the best racket for you is a difficult process at the best of times, let alone if you are suffering from tennis elbow!

However, we want to provide a good starting point of appropriate rackets that will help relieve some of the stress from your arm and help you step back on to the court sooner than you otherwise would.

So, with that being said here is a list of some of our favourite tennis rackets to play with if you have tennis elbow!

Takeaways

Overall, if you are looking for an appropriate racket to use when you are suffering from tennis elbow, you can start by trying out some of the models we have recommended.

These rackets will help you hit the ball with less effort, provide more shock absorption and offer more comfort compared to the more conventional models in their respective product ranges.

Therefore, by using one of these rackets that we recommend, you should be able to play tennis more often and with less pain due to their specific arm friendly characteristics.