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Advanced member
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Can Poly Strings Cause Tennis Elbow?
i read some articles on the internet that poly strings are not elbow-friend and that it causes tennis elbow? is this true? some of my tennis friend said that maybe your grip and swing greatly affects your elbow and not the racquet string.
Can i have your comments on this? Share your thoughts and experiences on the dreaded "Tennis Elbow"
Cheers!
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Advanced member
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RE:Can Poly Strings Cause Tennis Elbow?
There is no true definitive answer to that. Will a polyester string cause tennis elbow? The fact that almost every single pro on tour uses polyester in at least half of their stringbed would indicate that, no, it will not cause tennis elbow. Can it be a contributing cause? Definitely.
Tennis elbow is typically caused by a number of things, one of the most important, and most often overlooked, is poor technique. Any excessive and repetative motion can lead to inflammation, which is exactly what tennis elbow is. It is inflammation of the tendons and muscles along the outside of the forearm, near the elbow. One major cause of tennis elbow is from players with one handed backhands who over-rotate trying to get topspin, as well as making contact late. No matter what racquet and string you use, if your technique is wrong, you have put yourself at risk for tennis elbow.
Now let's assume that you have perfect technique and regularly make contact at the right point along the swing path. What else can contribute to tennis elbow? One thing that greatly contributes is shock and vibration from the impact itself. This is where strings can come into play. Stiffer racquets tend to transmit more of the shock and so can be worse on the arm, ignoring various manufacturer's shock absorbing technologies of course. One of the most important things is lessening the number of times the arm has to absorb that shock, because that is repeated abuse of important muscles and tendons, and will easily lead to tennis elbow. One way of doing that is to hit the sweetspot, which is the area of highest string deflection, which will not only result in better feel and more power on your shots, but less shock that will travel through the racquet into the arm.
Polyester strings are notorious for being stiff. This works against being arm friendly in two ways. By being stiff, they do not deflect as much, and you get a smaller sweetspot and less margin for error. They also transmit more of the vibration and shock without any mitigation. So how do professionals play with polyester strings and rarely seem to have problems? Multiple reasons really, but the two biggest are that they hit the sweetspot a lot more often than the average player and even more importantly, is in how they string. While most average players want to string a stiff string tight for "more control" and they will use it until it breaks, most pros string quite a bit looser than you would expect, and restring often. This is because of the nature of the string materials. After the initial process of being strung, the string will undergo an initial relaxation. After this initial drop (typically overnight) the string will continue to slowly lose elasticity and tension. The tension drop is not the problem, it is the loss of elasticity that creates a problem. Without the string being able to spring back quickly, the player experiences less power, and thus, they begin swinging harder to make up for it. This leads to even more mishits, which combined with a stiff stringbed and little shock absorption, can create a huge problem.
There is of course more to the whole tennis elbow debate, and this is only a very small piece of it. So in short, polyester strings will not be the one and only cause of tennis elbow, should you be unlucky enough to get it, but they certainly are not going to help you avoid it. In fact, I would go so far as to say that a large number of average players do themselves a great disservice by believing that polyester strings are the way to go.
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Advanced member
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RE:Can Poly Strings Cause Tennis Elbow?
geez, thanks for the reply! this is really informative and can be shared to other tennis fanatics out there. personally, i really don't have any problems with my elbow but I am planning to buy a HEAD youtek radical MP and string it with luxilon big banger alu rough 16, hopefully I wont get any tennis elbow w this setup.
cheers!
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