Super worried about my IT Band and my knee at the moment. Championship season is coming quick and I can’t run without pain. I haven’t run pain free In almost a month now. And I’ve ran about 5 times.
If you’ve had IT band issues, please help me out! Thanks
Your problem is not your knee, that’s just where the pain is. It’s likely a hip imbalance (though without seeing you and how you run that’s just an educated.guess). Roll out the glute medius, make sure your hamstrings are loose. And do heavy squats with good form past parrallel if they don’t hurt.
Thank you! I will!
Order a lacrosse ball now and use it to roll your glute right where it attaches to your hamstring and your hip abducters. Really anywhere you feel some tenderness. Start with the attachment points and then work your way through the rest of the muscle. Try to find knots and roll them. Do this at least 3 times a day until you have things under control. Then maintenance mode after that maybe once a day or even week if you solve the imbalance that is causing the issue.
Start back running slowly 15 minutes at a time. Add 5 minutes each day. If pain then revert back to the prior days time for a couple of days. Then go back to adding 5 min.
Before your run do some glute and hip activation movements. I really like standing hip openers.
Start some single leg deadlifts and hip thrusts to fix the imbalance. 2x week should be good.
Get well soon.
Don’t forget to stretch your IT band and maybe check your shoes/orthoticks.
Your problem is not your knee, that’s just where the pain is. It’s likely a hip imbalance (though without seeing you and how you run that’s just an educated.guess). Roll out the glute medius, make sure your hamstrings are loose. And do heavy squats with good form past parrallel if they don’t hurt.
This! I’ve had IT band issues for 20 years. It first manifested as knee pain. I started taping the knee for stability, which just moved the problems on up to glutes. Don’t do that!
What’s helped is several things.
-Rubber band leg exercises to strengthen glutes. Stiff exercise band between ankles. Work both legs while flat on your back on the floor, and one leg at a time while on your side. Try doing the latter with the upper leg pointing slightly to posterior to engage glutes better.
-One leg stands on the balance disk. Try maintaining balance for 60 seconds then switch legs.
-One leg squats in front of a mirror. Don’t let the knee wonder around while doing this. Careful. You can injure doing these squats.
-Of course the foam roller.
-Yoga block step downs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMf6G4M7f9U
Step downs is a small thing that if done consistently will lead to big positive changes.
I’m going to go against what others have said and say don’t foam roll it down the side of the quad. I’ve had better success rolling the glute where tender, as someone else stated. Here’s a strength routine I follow, I have had multiple run-ins with ITB pain:
Tippy Bird- 30 each leg, don’t touch your back foot between reps
Clamshells- 30 each side
Hip thrusts (upper back on a bench, legs out at 90º making a table-top), dip down and use glutes to raise back to table top-add weight and/or do single leg- 30/leg
Happy Feet (surgical tubing across feet at arches keep legs relatively straight and move horizontally about 25 feet) 3x25 ft each way
Physio Ball Hamstring curls- 30 if doing both legs, 20 if doing singles
Do this routine every other day add more sets if form is good and you feel stronger after a week. There are more, but these are the main exercises I stick with when ITB pain creeps up on me.
Before each run do some glute activation. I do 30 body squats and this: Stand on one leg and slightly bend the opposite leg. Using only the glute of your bent leg, do small thrusts backwards-30 of them. I keep my hand on that glute to make sure it’s firing.
Thank you!
Thank you for the tips!
Thanks! How long does it usually take for you to get back to Running?
Your problem is not your knee, that’s just where the pain is. It’s likely a hip imbalance (though without seeing you and how you run that’s just an educated.guess). Roll out the glute medius, make sure your hamstrings are loose. And do heavy squats with good form past parrallel if they don’t hurt.
This! I’ve had IT band issues for 20 years. It first manifested as knee pain. I started taping the knee for stability, which just moved the problems on up to glutes. Don’t do that!
What’s helped is several things.
-Rubber band leg exercises to strengthen glutes. Stiff exercise band between ankles. Work both legs while flat on your back on the floor, and one leg at a time while on your side. Try doing the latter with the upper leg pointing slightly to posterior to engage glutes better.
-One leg stands on the balance disk. Try maintaining balance for 60 seconds then switch legs.
-One leg squats in front of a mirror. Don’t let the knee wonder around while doing this. Careful. You can injure doing these squats.
-Of course the foam roller.
-Yoga block step downs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMf6G4M7f9U
Step downs is a small thing that if done consistently will lead to big positive changes.
I echo all of this - same issue for me and these exercises combined have helped keep ITB issues at bay for me (knock on wood).
When starting to run again, stop frequently for ITB stretches and work your way up. Most importantly, maintain your program. I do these exercises to this day
Cold laser therapy on whole ITB area (super stimulates healing);Trigger Point Massage Roller (https://www.tptherapy.com/...ct/GRID_FoamRoller); Don’t do imitations; NFI for me… just experience;Adductor exercises (leg squeezers);Straight-leg dead lifts to strengthen glutes and help ITB track better.Stretch all hip & leg areas.Walking lunges.
Do not try to “run through” this injury. You absolutely need to address the CAUSE and not just take time off.
God bless!
Ray
Depends on how bad/tender it is. If I feel it in normal day activities I don’t even try a run. Otherwise, I’ll start a run and if it gives me any trouble after 10 minutes, I pull the plug. If you can get in the pool for some deep water running, try that-just be sure to run with good form.
When I started doing the routine I wrote down, I rebounded much quicker though. Whatever you do to release the glute/ITB, make sure you get some strength exercises in! You’ll come back much sooner than without.
You can get a cortisone shot to get you through racing but after that you have to correct the underlying problem.
After my race, I did the following.
-took 4 wks off
-lowered my FTP by 10% and no VO2 workouts
-no running for 8-10 wks
-what really fixed it was weight lifting. Squats, deadlifts, bridges, that hip adductor and abductor machine that girls use in the gym.
You got to make the posterior chain stronger. That took about 6-8 wks.
Be patient and good luck.
See my responses about fixing your IT band in these 2 threads:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/?post=2482618#p2482618
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/?post=3047480#p3047480
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I had ITBS problems for 20 years. I echo the stability / core work already prescribed. That is absolutely what worked for me in the long term. I haven’t had any recurrences in the last years.
However, no one has really addressed the acute phase. You’ve got to stop running—for at least a week, maybe two. And, you’ve got to commit to NEVER running in pain again. A cortisone injection doesn’t “fix” anything. I’ve had numerous injections and continued to run/bike because I “felt” no pain…only to have it come back worse than ever. It simply masks the pain for a while (maybe). But, the injury processes will continue until you actually FIX the cause and let the tendons heal. If I can’t run pain-free without drugs of some kind (cortisone, NSAIDs, analgesics), I don’t run .
My experience is that ITBS healing is measured in weeks (1, 2, 4, 8 weeks). The longer you have trained through the pain, the longer it is going to take. My own rules of thumb have been:
- Feel pain once, stop immediately. Take a week off.
- Return to training in small doses. Feel pain a second time, before returning to pre-injury volume? take two weeks off.
3-x. Return to training in small doses. Feel pain an Xth time, before returning to pre-injury volume? take X weeks off.
During the recovery phase, do any/all exercises listed above you can do pain free, if it hurts don’t do that. Foam rolling / stretching seems to have mixed results.
Resuming training:
As mentioned above, start very modestly (eg, 15 minutes per day). However, I would NOT add 5 minutes per DAY—that’s likely too aggressive for anything that you have trained through for any length of time. I would progress much slower than that. But, that depends on how long you trained through the injury. Worst case, when I’ve let it go for months until I literally can’t walk on it:
Week1: 15 minutes per day (3x), every other day.
Week2: 15 minutes per day (4x), do 2 days back-2-back (eg, M-T-Th-F).
Week3: 15 minutes per day (5x), M-T-W-th-Sa
Week4: 15 minutes per day (6x)
Week5-X: progress ala an accelerated BarryP schedule…eg 10% increases per week.
All of the above is while continuing to work your core and stabilizers as described by many others (nickwhite, et al).
Thank me later! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydcy3dPf__M
Super worried about my IT Band and my knee at the moment. Championship season is coming quick and I can’t run without pain. I haven’t run pain free In almost a month now. And I’ve ran about 5 times.
If you’ve had IT band issues, please help me out! Thanks
I think I have the same thing going on here. Has anybody had any success with one of those IT band compression straps?
I think I have the same thing going on here. Has anybody had any success with one of those IT band compression straps?
Don’t do that. There are no shortcuts to fixing these problems. Do the exercises posted earlier. Do them 4-5 times a week and you’ll see big differences after a few months.
I had it for a while a couple years ago, and it was a rotated Femur Head. Chiroprator fixed it and the difference was night and day. I still have to get it fixed once in awhile, but now I know the initial symptoms.
In reality I think that all stems from stability/core issues though, since I suck at doing that work regularly, and when I did do that work it appeared to stay away longer.