This is a really awesome medial and lateral elbow strengthening exercise that I started incorporating into our athlete’s pre-throwing protocol. You can purchase your own Flex Bar to keep in your training bag!
It was designed by Tim Tyler, a Physical Therapist in NYC using the Flex Bar, but if you don’t have one, you can always use a rolled up towel and still get some great results. I’ve also modified the exercise with some pronation movements to resemble something a little more specific to the throwing motion. We are not forcing or trying to train pronation, because pronation is a natural motion coupled with shoulder internal rotation/adduction. We are just strengthening through movement.
This exercise strengthens the flexor/extensor and pronator muscles of the forearm and can have a tremendous impact on how you strengthen the medial and lateral aspect of the elbow! Below are a few other variations in how we use the flex bar with our athletes.
Reverse Eccentric Twist – Medial Elbow Strengthening
Flex Bar Twist w/ Eccentric Throttle
Flex Bar Cross Twist w/ Pronation
According to a study done by Tim Tyler et. al., 21 people with chronic, debilitating elbow pain were selected for this study. 10 of them were assigned to standard physical therapy treatment for tennis elbow; this was the control group.
The other 11 also received physical therapy, but in addition were taught a choreographed exercise using the rubber Flex Bar that they practiced at home. After less than two months of treatment, the researchers terminated the experiment.
The early results had been too unfair. The control group had showed little or no improvement. But the Flex Bar using group effectively had been cured. Those patients reported an 81 percent improvement in their elbow pain and a 72 percent improvement in strength.
“We couldn’t believe how fast and well the therapy worked,” says Timothy Tyler, PT, ATC, a clinical research associate at the Nicholas Institute and one of the authors of the study. “We were seeing improvements in five weeks, even three. It was crazy.”
Medial Epicondyle Muscle Origins
If you’re wondering what the big deal is about these muscles and more specifically, the flexor-pronator muscles, well it shares the same origin site as the UCL!
Sets & Reps
The Flex Bar is just another tool we can use to help our athletes strengthen the muscles surrounding their UCL, reducing the risk of an elbow injury. Using this as a pre-activation drill, perform 1-2 sets of 5 to 10 repetitions.
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