Dr. Alexis Colvin is an orthopedic surgeon and Assistant Professor of Orthopedics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Her expertise is sports medicine. Her clinical and research interests include knee, shoulder and hip disorders, as well as injuries and treatments.
Dr. Colvin is the Chief Medical Officer for the USTA and has served as a physician for the USTA during the U.S. Open. She is also the medical advisor for the U.S. Fed Cup team.
Q: What are some of the more common injuries for recreational players?
A: I’ll start with the shoulder first. So, with the shoulder you get tendonitis, since we have the rotator cuff. Usually you’ll feel the symptoms when you’re doing overhand motions, like with serving.
Tennis elbow is another common one. You usually get it on the outer part or the lateral part of your elbow. Tennis elbow is also known as lateral epicondylitis, which is yet another tendonitis injury.
With the knees you can get tendonitis in the patella tendon, which is more from overuse. Or you can have an acute injury.
And then for the ankle, there’s ankle sprains, one of the more common ankle injuries.