I am Mark Laurensse. I am a physiotherapist, and I spend a lot of my time thinking about your forearms.

If your elbow hurts, there is a high probability that your finger and wrist extensors are to blame. Why? Because of your daily grind. Maybe you type all day. Maybe your job involves constant gripping. When you do the same thing for years, your muscles contract in a "shortened range."

They get tight. They develop trigger points. And then, they start shouting at your elbow.

But how do you know if tightness is the culprit? You have to stretch it to find out. Over the years, I’ve seen people try all sorts of ways to get relief. Most of them are missing the mark.

Here is how I look at it.

The "Worst" Way
You have likely tried this yourself. You stick your arm out straight and pull your hand back.
To be honest, this is the worst one. It is not effective because you aren't incorporating your finger extensors. You are stretching, but you are missing the most important part of the machinery.

The "Okay" Way
A step up is crossing your arms. You use your good arm to pull your affected wrist down.
This is better because your good arm does the work. But there is still a problem: I’m really not flexing my fingers as optimally as I can in this position. We are getting warmer, but we aren't there yet.

The Broomstick Test
If you really want to know what is happening in that arm, go grab a broomstick.

Reach it behind your arm so it sits behind your elbow. Grab the top of the stick behind your head. Now, hold it there.

Do you feel that tension on the back of the wrist? Do you feel a good pull running through the muscles? If you do, you have found the problem. That tension is your body telling you those extensors are tight.

The Best Way (The ArmLock)
To actually heal that tissue, we need three things to happen at once:

1. Your fingers need to be maximally flexed.
2. Your wrist needs to be flexed.
3. We need a little "ulnar deviation" (a specific tilt).

This is exactly why I created the ArmLock. It holds you in that perfect position so you don't have to wrestle with a broomstick. You can just sit back, watch TV for half an hour, and let the device do the work.

It gives the tissue a "low load, prolonged stretch." That is the secret. That is what stimulates the cells and lengthens the tissue for healing.