5 Professional Athletes Who Recovered from Elbow Injuries
Enerskin empowers you to play like a pro – protecting your muscles, enhancing performance, and enabling unrestricted movement. Enerskin is the gear for serious athletes, but even though our patented hybrid of compression clothing and medical taping is proven to reduce injury, there is obviously still a risk associated with any physical activity. Whether you’re a professional athlete or a fitness enthusiast, you may still be prone to injury—no matter how remotely.
Enerskin elbow sleeves are designed to enhance, protect, and heal—using medical-grade silicone taping printed directly onto our futuristic GASTEX fabric. They increase elbow strength and shock absorption, helping you stay resilient to injury and recover from injury when it does occur. Perfect for tennis players, shooting guards, and pitchers, Enerskin promotes healing after injury should you overexert yourself or suffer an accident.
Injuries happen, but perseverance, dedication, and discipline are indestructible. If you want to play like a pro, you need the resilience and grit that’s helped define the careers of some of the most legendary professional athletes of all time. Don’t believe us? Check out these five legends who refused to let an elbow injury hold them back.
Tiger Woods
Back in 2012, Tiger Woods—an athlete whose name has become synonymous with golf itself—became the second on the PGA Tour’s all-time wins list. The following summer, however, Woods announced that he would be unable to defend this title in the AT&T National. He had suffered a strained elbow, and despite trying to tough it through the U.S. Open the week before, fell out of contention due to elbow pain.
Woods’ physicians advised him to take a few weeks off to rest and be treated for his injury. After all, an elbow injury is highly restrictive in the game of golf. Nonetheless, he persevered, and later that season, was back in the game for the British Open.
Serena Williams
Living legend and world-renowned tennis star, Serena Williams, made headlines earlier this month for her recently announced pregnancy. But Williams, a 21-time Grand Slam singles champion, made headlines in the summer of 2015 for a much different reason. During practice, she injured her right elbow and had to pull out of the Swedish Open. Having dominated her first round match in the Swedish Open, the injury took fans across the world by surprise, as Williams withdrew ahead of her second round match.
The decision to withdraw was, in Williams’ own words, “really, really difficult”, but it was for the best, and after a few weeks to rehabilitate her injured elbow, she was back on the court for the rest of the season.
Allen Iverson
Basketball icon and Sixers’ point guard, Allen Iverson, was a famously aggressive player who took no prisoners in any game he played. He was famous for his signature fashion statement, a single arm sleeve worn around his elbow. But in actuality, the arm sleeve was a necessity, after suffering numerous injuries to his shooting elbow over the course of his career.
Iverson’s aggressive style may have made for a riveting game to watch time after time, but it also exposed his body to injury. While playing hard is a given, consistently pushing your body to the limits as Iverson did before his retirement is not without risks. In 2001, during the NBA Finals, he played through 11 injuries—including a right knee sprain, a left ankle sprain, a right hip contusion, partial right shoulder dislocation, and a particularly painful case of right elbow bursitis.
Rajon Rondo
Back in 2011, one athlete’s elbow injury caught national attention. Rajon Rando, point guard for the Boston Celtics, fell to the floor in a game against the Miami Heat, and suffered a dislocated elbow. The injury was horrific—it buckled in front of the entire crowd, and as he got up, appeared to be grotesquely deformed. Embodying perseverance, however, Rondo defied all expectations and continued playing through the rest of the game. Fans, commentators, and his fellow athletes, were shocked by the horror of the injury, and equally stunned by his resilience.
John Cena
WWE phenomenon and perpetual internet meme, John Cena, was kept off the mat for a brief period in 2012 after an elbow injury that was actually the result of repeated trauma. As a wrestler, Cena exposes himself to grueling physical strain night after night. In a condition known as osteochondritis dissecans, fragments of bone had chipped off his elbow and were floating around the joint. The injury causes inflammation and pain overtime, and the loose chips of bone must be removed—which is what happened in Cena’s case.
