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RADIAL NERVE
ENTRAPMENT

By Jamie S. Dreyer

You may be aware that a good portion of my work has focused

on teaching people how to heal their elbow tendonitis.

It’s an injury that greatly effects many people’s life for months or years,
and yet the solution to healing it is so relatively simple and shows
results so quickly!
But every now and then I’ll get a message from someone who did
everything I suggested but had next to no improvement. I can feel their
frustration and very much want to help them gure out what’s missing.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on The Elbow Tendonitis
Toolkit. It’s my de nitive resource for helping people with elbow
tendonitis.

And one of the key sections is dedicated to these people. You see, after
many conversations I’ve realized that the reason why the elbow
tendonitis exercises don’t work for many of these individuals is
because they don’t actually have elbow tendonitis.

They have another elbow injury that is very similar. I’ve covered two of
these injuries before; bicep tendonitis and tricep tendonitis.

But while doing further research for the toolkit I came across a third
injury in which the pain can resemble tennis elbow…

RADIAL NERVE ENTRAPMENT

It’s caused by a tight supinator muscle that refers pain to the lateral
epicondyle, making it feel like lateral epicondylitis.

But there’s a few other things you may notice with this injury that you
wouldn’t with tennis elbow…sharp or burning pain and possibly even
tingling or numbness on the back of your hand, thumb, index and
middle nger.
The image below let’s you see where you’d feel a radial nerve
entrapment.

This post focuses on helping the yellow and red areas. If you’re feeling
things in the blue or green areas, look at my post on thoracic outlet
syndrome.

Here we go…

5 STEP PROCESS TO FIX

YOUR REPETITIVE STRAIN INJURY

STEP 1 – IDENTIFY OFFENDING ACTIVITY

For radial nerve entrapment in the forearm there is one muscle that
seems to be the main culprit here…the supinator. And this one muscle
only does one movement. It supinates.

Hold your hand out in front of you, palm facing down. Now turn your
hand over, as if you were to hold a bowl of soup. That is supination.

If you do a lot of twisting manual work, that’s your offending activity.

STEP 2 – REDUCE  OFFENDING ACTIVITY

For this type of injury you don’t need to stop the offending activity.

But it would be good to do less of it for a little while until you’ve

strengthened the opposing muscles. We’ll cover that in step 5.
STEP 3 – RELEASE TRIGGER POINTS

You can dig into the trigger points of your supinator best with the
middle nger of your opposite hand.

How to Release Trigger Points in Your Forearm Supinator

With your thumb in your elbow pit, take a pinch of the meat just below
the fold of your elbow. Start digging your middle nger into the
muscles, pressing against the bone.

When you nd a tender spot, keep the pressure on it for upwards of 30

seconds or until the pain goes away. Then move around to nd any
other spots and repeat.

If you see a massage therapist or acupuncturist, this would be an ideal

task for them to help you with.

STEP 4 – STRETCH TIGHT TISSUES

Once the trigger points have released it’s time to get proper length
back into the muscle with a PNF stretch.

How to Stretch Your Forearm Supinator

And now that you’ve stretched the supinator to take pressure off of the
radial nerve entrapment, let’s take this opportunity to do some nerve
glides. This will help release any sticky adhesions holding onto the
nerve so it can move freely when you twist and reach.

Radial Nerve Glides

Want the guide I mention at the end of the video? Here you go.

STEP 5 – STRENGTHEN WEAK TISSUES

Earlier, I said that you don’t have to stop your offending activities but
you do have to compensate for the muscular imbalances they create.

So if your supinator is being overworked, you need to strengthen the

pronator muscle to balance the joint out. And that’s pretty darn easy.

The easiest way to do this is with a Flexabar like so…

Pronator Strengthening
Two sets of ten reps every other day should do the trick.

FURTHER READING
If you don’t get all the relief you were expecting from focusing on the
forearm, then you should consider the possibility of thoracic outlet
syndrome.

Thoracic outlet syndrome is the compression of veins, arteries and the

nerve structure called brachial plexus.

The brachial plexus is where the nerves for you arm make their way
from your spine, through the muscles and bones in your neck, between
the clavicle and rst rib and then through your armpit.

Learn more about what you can do in the next 5 minutes to possibly
reduce pain from thoracic outlet syndrome in this post.

Or perhaps you have tingling and numbness in your pinky and

ring  nger. Check out my post on ulnar nerve entrapment.
REFERENCES:

Examination of and Intervention for a Patient With Chronic

Lateral Elbow Pain With Signs of Nerve Entrapment Journal of the
American Physical Therapy Association, Richard A Ekstrom, Kari
Holden Published November 2002

Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual

Volume 1. Upper Half of Body Janet G. Travell, M.D., David G.
Simmons, M.D. ,1999 Williams & Wilkins

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