THERABAND FlexBar, Physical Therapy, Flex Bar, Elbow, Exercise, Twist, Blue | Tennis elbow therapy bar that helps relieve tendonitis pain and improve grip strength

This is something that should be issued to every human being who is blessed with hands. I am shocked that it is not found in every single physical therapy clinic in the world. I honestly believe that this little device, used literally a minute or two a day, could offer relief and prevent so many lower arm use injuries including carpel tunnel. I have had tennis elbow for awhile. I saw a couple doctors and a very reputable specialist. I saw a PT who gave me exercises and stretches. While it would get better for a small time, I was still back to cortisone shots to keep me able to do what I wanted to. This little bar has brought me relief and increased my hand, and wrist strength tremendously. I am shocked that none of these professionals recommended it. It is such a simple idea. It is a hard rubber bar that you twist, bend, shake, etc. The results are noticeable almost right away. You will get relief from wrist and elbow pain and you will begin to see a strength increase in almost your entire lower arm and hands. My elbow still hurts from time to time but it is drastically better after using this device for a couple months. I now use it when I am at my desk, when I am on the elliptical at the gym, or even when I am watching TV. I pick it up and bend it a couple dozen times and I have really gotten results. There are several exercises that you can perform with the Flexbar. These are demonstrated on-line and a link to them comes with the bar. You can also find a lot of info on YouTube about the Flexbar. With dozens of videos, I found one negative thing said about the bar on YouTube and it was from a guy who said it "could" case shoulder pain. I disagree. I think he was just trying to find a reason to not like the bar and was really reaching. Two things to note. First, the bar comes in different resistance levels. I bought both the green and the blue. The green is medium resistance and the blue is heavy. The blue is probably too stiff for beginners and many women. Even for athletic people I would recommend buying more than one resistance level and working up in difficulty. Second, this is a stiff rubber device and it can rough up your hands if you don't maintain a very firm grip. I have gotten some callouses below my fingers from using it. I actually consider this a benefit but for people with soft hands, you will want to use a resistance and do exercises where you can maintain a firm grip or consider using weight lifting gloves when using the bar. I just moisturize with good cream a few times a week and I have suffered no negative effects. I love the Flexbar. I have suggested it to many friends including a PT and a Fitness Trainer. Both love the device and now use it. I will always have one of these in my house.

This item is great and has not only helped my Tennis Elbow, but it has strengthened my arm so much that my arm fatigue in general is much less. This means that late in 2 hour or longer matches when my shots used to get sloppy, I am still nearly as precise as I was at the beginning. This is huge. It has been a big advantage over my opponents. Amazingly, all I have to do is 3 sets of 15 repetitions of the Tyler Twist spread through the day, every day to get this benefit. To be clear, when my elbow was acute I was using the red bar and not playing for about 2 weeks then I started playing again but only at 40% of skill level. Lots of shots and serves were too painful to make. In another 2 weeks I got to perhaps 60% of skill level and progressed to green. After 6 weeks I was at 95% of skill level and using blue once a day. A month later I was using blue all the time. The first twist sometimes hurts a bit but it gets better as I warm up. At this point I thought I was OK but I found out that the lingering pain was a warning that I still should not be playing everyday. Hard matches on consecutive days set me back to where I had to drop down to using mostly the green bar. But after a few days back on green my arm felt good enough to come back to blue. It has been four months now of using the Therabars and most of them I have been playing a couple or a few days a week. I am hoping regular use of the blue bar combined with modifications of my strokes to be less stressful to my arm will get me back to where I can play as much as I would like again. 5 months in and yesterday I played an intense singles match for 2.5 hours. I just did my 15 twists on blue with just the barest amount of discomfort and I plan on playing again tonite. Plus my arm no longer hurts at all doing day to day things. I think my tennis elbow is a thing of the past, thanks to this amazing device.

I have been eyeballing this item for a while, and had so many questions about it that I couldn't quite pull the trigger on purchasing it, so hopefully my review helps clarify some things for you. First question I had was about material. Last thing I wanted was foam that would tear, break down with heavy use, and generally lose it's usefulness quickly. Glory be, the FlexBar is made of good quality rubber! Thera-Band has a good reputation in the physical therapy/fitness world, so it makes sense that they would use quality rubber in this product as well. My second question was more along the lines of whether the strongest FlexBar would be a sufficient challenge as to be useful. I have been a weight lifter for 23 years and competed in strongman, power lifting, and other strength and endurance competitions. I like to think of myself as slightly more astute than the typical gym rat, and there are products out there that just don't work for my experience level. Second fear put to bed. In just a short time of playing with it out of the box I knew this was going to be great, and I may consider even getting a lighter resistance as well for some warm up work. Lastly, products have to be something I would use enough to give them regular time in my training schedule. There are lots of great tools out there that don't match up with my goals. That is to say that buying a painter the nicest hammer you can find probably won't have him using a hammer anytime soon. For me, this has a lot of potential to meet my goals. I specifically put a lot of stress on my hands and wrists, and this tool will help keep those areas in good health. To that end this would be a good tool for anyone in a ball handling sport, rock climbing, golf, or just looking to keep their hands in good working order.

I like most people went digging online to find out how to cure my Tennis Elbow. I went to my dr who told me that is what I had and likely developed it by starting a TRX class and going too hard too fast. She wanted me to go to physical therapy and I wasn't interested in going to, mainly didn't want the expense nor the time out of work. So I did research online and found these Thera-band bars were used for effective means of therapy. So I started with the RED, then GREEN and finally BLUE over a 5 month period. Did the exercises I found online 3x a day, 15 reps each time, advancing to the next color only after each set got easier and easier. Every time I started out on the next color bar the exercises were difficult and couldn't do the 15 reps initially, I built up to that. WOW. Am I impressed. I have absolutely no pain whatsoever now. None. It was so painful for those first few months that I thought I was going to have to live with this for the rest of my life. It even hurt to take walks as when my arm was swinging blood was restricted by the injury and it made my lower arm and hand hurt so badly. For that I purchased a therapeutic arm band and that got me through it, but boy, it was tough going at first. I can say now I believe I am 100% cured. Can't wait to see my dr again in January as she was very skeptical about me doing this on my own rather than going to physical therapy. It took approx. 5 -6 months where I have absolutely no pain. I am back to lifting weights, full workouts and no issue whatsoever. Very very happy!

With moderate Golfer's elbow from drumming every day and rock climbing every other day, I wasn't sure what color to get. I got the blue because I figured by hands are pretty strong - but I wasn't sure if it would be too much for the injured one. For reference I am 5'9" male. Here are my suggestions for colors based on your build/strength/injury. My SO is 5'2" female UNINJURED and the blue is way too much for her. red - probably worthless, for cowards only (j/k), or those with BOTH severe injury AND weak grip. yellow - start here for severe injury rehab or moderate injury with small hands/weak grip. green - start here for moderate injury with moderate grip strength. Small/weak hands will progress to this one. blue - "the blue beast" - start here for light/moderate injury for people with strong grip. Might be a little tough at first but after a week you will be able to twist this thing like a pretzel - it really builds strength! I frequently use it as pre-hab for my uninjured arm as well. Chances are a lot of people buying this thing are injured because of overuse, which means you already have an iron grip, it's just messed up right now. For you - if the injury is just moderate - I recommend starting with the blue (larger hands) or green (smaller hands). As for the product, I'm two weeks in and it's helping my injury immensely. A+ would buy again if it wasn't ultra-durable...but it is.

Overall, this is a good product. It's more time consuming to use than I would have thought (10-15 minutes/day). At it's work. I'd compare it to hard-core stretching, and so needless to say, it can be a hassle to stick with it daily. My elbow strength is improving, and yesterday I was able to do a couple of sets at a moderate rate on the bench-press. This was after about 10 days of therapy over a 15 day span. I expect it will take about a month or two to really see significant improvement. The other reason for the 4-star (as opposed to 5-star) is that most people will need to buy at least two of these bars to build up endurance. I started with the heavy one (blue), but I wish the price would have allowed for the next step down as well. My injury is about a 5 out of 10 with tennis and golf elbow. Be patient when experimenting with the different grips. It takes several days to figure out exactly where to place your hands, degree of twisting, etc. But I would clearly recommend this product.

I didn't know this product existed until several years back when my wife broke her wrist when she slipped in a stream in part of the Amazon jungle in Ecuador. The therapist back in the US after the surgery finally worked her up to using the TheraBand Flexbar. The are extremely expensive for what looks like a piece of rubber with grooves down the side. But after using them myself, it was clear that this is an amazingly simple but useful tool to get a full work out on your hands, wrists, and forearms. I have two of them with this one having more resistance. They Blue has more resistance than my green one. I use them while riding my stationary bike or watching TV to twist, bend, and squeeze to keep my forearms and wrists and hands strong. There are all kinds of individual pieces of exercise equipment you can buy to work out all those different parts of your arms and hands. This simple piece of equipment does it all, if you are willing to work it. Of course, none of the rest do it by themselves either, but the simplicity of this and the ease of moving from one exercise to the other is sheer genius, at least on my end for buying it, but I'll give some credit to the TheraBand company for making it!! I would recommend starting with a green one to warm up and then use the Blue. No I don't own stock in the company.

Last year I got tennis elbow after a long day of yard work. I tried the arm brace and different stretches and exercises for months with only small improvement, then reinjury over and over. Someone at work said this flexbar worked for his tennis elbow, so I tried it. I did 10 reps of the exercise 3 times a day, and after 5-7 days, my tennis elbow wasn't bothering me much anymore. I kept using it off and on for a few more weeks, and now I only feel the pain in my elbow very rarely after certain strenuous activities. Then I use it again for a couple days and it goes away. I highly recommend this flexbar to anyone with tennis elbow.