Aaargghh - I.T. Band AGAIN!!!

joker77

I'm in the process of recovering from an ankle ligament injury (deltoid), which has me out of football action for the last 2 months nearly. I haven't even been able to run. Earlier on in the year, Jan/Feb I think, I was doing road work and got I.T. Band Syndrome, pain was around the knee and it put me out of action for a long while. I was back playing football in the summer, going grand and no bother with the IT band, until yesterday, went to the gym and got on the threadmill to run for the first time in 7 or 8 weeks, knee started to feel a bit warm, so I stopped after about 15 minutes. Cycled home, knee again didn't feel right, then last night the dreaded twinge came on.
Really disconcerting, don't want to be out for any longer - it's already been a couple of months with the ankle and I'm getting the nickname "sicknote".....

Anyone any help on how to get rid of I.T. band syndrome?

slicus ricus

The threadmill is one of the worst thing you can do when you have knee problems due to the impact: apparently theres more impact from running on a treadmill than from running on conrete. This impact puts a lot of strain on the knee and sends shock up from the feet to the knee.

Regarding the specifics of I.T Band Syndrom, im not sure: but running on a hard impact surface is not good for the knees full stop!

tribulus

I got this too when playing football, at first thought it was just a knock but got more and more painful.

Go to a physio definately. I went and after one session it felt fine!!! Apparently, the itb comes from the glutes and inserts into your knee, physio said the pain was due to stiffness in my glute. So just loosened it up with digging her elbow in there and using some machine with two warm pads on it (can't think of the name)

That and a few sets of stretches before any decent amount of running and ive never had a problem since

Transform

Use a tennis ball or one of the white foam rolls (rolling on it) to massage and break up the affected areas. For most people its the glute, calves and along the IT band.

This should be done BEFORE training or stretching as it will break it up first then stretch then run at a very slow speed e.g. 8-10kpm

joker77

Transform wrote:

Use a tennis ball or one of the white foam rolls (rolling on it) to massage and break up the affected areas. For most people its the glute, calves and along the IT band.

This should be done BEFORE training or stretching as it will break it up first then stretch then run at a very slow speed e.g. 8-10kpm

Interesting, cheers for the advice. I don't think I'll be running till after Christmas, so hopefully over the holidays I can just remember to stretch the f*ck out of it every day, and use the tennis ball as well to try and break it up.

Transform

Using the rolling is more important than the stretching - its like trying to stretch a knot out of a piece of rope. Pulling on either end wont work unless the knot is broken down also.

Best of luck