For most people, the elbow is a means to the hand for the shoulder- for lifting, pushing, pulling, and holding items. For certain jobs, it is integral to performance with heavy objects, fine motor skills, and weight bearing. For the athlete, it is ever so important for holding instruments such as rackets, bars, bats, balls, sticks, and more. The health of the shoulder, wrist, posture and spine are all considerations with elbow pain. This is important to get to the primary issue, and to see whether the elbow is truly to blame or if underuse of the other joints is simply transferring pressure and demand down the chain.