New blog post on ITB syndrome.

thehamo

If any are interested http://www.hamiltonmuscletherapy.com/#!ITB-Syndrome-runners-knee/c2qs/1

tang1

The foam rolling bit is interesting, suffering from ITB issues myself and in another article i read regarding foam rolling, they advised to do it. So whos right? I have been foam rolling and i feel it has relieved tightness and pain in my ITB.

NetwerkErrer

tang1 wrote: »

The foam rolling bit is interesting, suffering from ITB issues myself and in another article i read regarding foam rolling, they advised to do it. So whos right? I have been foam rolling and i feel it has relieved tightness and pain in my ITB.

The ITB is unstretchable B. It's made up of connective tissue which has the tensile strength of steel and could hold a car in mid air. There is use in foamrolling though, it can break up adhesions between the quad muscles and the ITB which can make the band even tighter.

The TfL and glutes are nearly always the actual culprit.

Clearlier

tang1 wrote: »

The foam rolling bit is interesting, suffering from ITB issues myself and in another article i read regarding foam rolling, they advised to do it. So whos right? I have been foam rolling and i feel it has relieved tightness and pain in my ITB.

IME foam rolling the ITB helps ITB pain only in the sense that the pain of foam rolling it makes the normal ITB pain feel relatively minor. However foam rolling in and around the hip area can help release the muscles that are holding the ITB tight.

@thehamo - I can't read your blog as the youtube clip is enormous. I'm running Firefox 20.0.1. When I use an old version of Internet Explorer (8.0.7601.17514) most of the page doesn't load.

thehamo

Clearlier wrote: »

IME foam rolling the ITB helps ITB pain only in the sense that the pain of foam rolling it makes the normal ITB pain feel relatively minor. However foam rolling in and around the hip area can help release the muscles that are holding the ITB tight.

@thehamo - I can't read your blog as the youtube clip is enormous. I'm running Firefox 20.0.1. When I use an old version of Internet Explorer (8.0.7601.17514) most of the page doesn't load.

Really? Wouldn't have thought it was that big its just a short clip may replace it with a pic to illustrate instead. Cheers for the heads up.

With regards to the adhesions between quads and ITB, having looked at cadavers the ITB and the vastus lateralis are so engrained they can hardly be separated. Working the muscle underneath is good for working that muscle but I wouldn't say ITB. As was mentioned, glutes and tfl are almost always the culprit

gerard_65

Good call on foam rolling the ITB. I was plagued with this a couple of years ago after a marathon. Within a week of stopping foam rolling I was back running without pain.

Clearlier

thehamo wrote: »

Really? Wouldn't have thought it was that big its just a short clip may replace it with a pic to illustrate instead. Cheers for the heads up.

With regards to the adhesions between quads and ITB, having looked at cadavers the ITB and the vastus lateralis are so engrained they can hardly be separated. Working the muscle underneath is good for working that muscle but I wouldn't say ITB. As was mentioned, glutes and tfl are almost always the culprit

Not big as in MB big, big as in wide. There's also a scripting error message but I get the same end result whether I tell it to stop or continue.hame web page.gif

Edit: I missed out the bottom scroll bar in my screen capture. Suffice to say that I have to scroll across approximately 4 times the width of my screen to get to the far side.

I'm guessing that the point about adhesions was addressed towards NE?

I've tried to skim your blog but the way that my browser is presenting it is awkward but I couldn't see anywhere that talked about how to improve movement/get muscles firing while running but your analysis of the causes did seem to identify these as potential causes. In my experience strength is relatively straightforward to achieve but the movement to utilise that strength much harder as the movement patterns that lead to ITB (and other overuse injuries) have been ingrained.

I thought that this was an interesting idea where it's posited that consciously modifying the width of your running stance to make it a little wider can have positive effects.

This isn't to suggest that increasing strength has no role to play but without movement correction I don't see how it can help much on its own.

thehamo

Clearlier wrote: »

Not big as in MB big, big as in wide. There's also a scripting error message but I get the same end result whether I tell it to stop or continue.hame web page.gif

Edit: I missed out the bottom scroll bar in my screen capture. Suffice to say that I have to scroll across approximately 4 times the width of my screen to get to the far side.

I'm guessing that the point about adhesions was addressed towards NE?

I've tried to skim your blog but the way that my browser is presenting it is awkward but I couldn't see anywhere that talked about how to improve movement/get muscles firing while running but your analysis of the causes did seem to identify these as potential causes. In my experience strength is relatively straightforward to achieve but the movement to utilise that strength much harder as the movement patterns that lead to ITB (and other overuse injuries) have been ingrained.

I thought that this was an interesting idea where it's posited that consciously modifying the width of your running stance to make it a little wider can have positive effects.

This isn't to suggest that increasing strength has no role to play but without movement correction I don't see how it can help much on its own.

Movement is absolutely key. As you say strength is useless if proper movement isn't corrected. However, which comes first, bad movement because of a weak muscle or weak/over used muscles because of bad movement patterns? The idea of widening the gait is interesting but I'm wondering if the article only alluded to people with a cross over gait? Some one who runs with a wide stance but still presents with itb pain there's something v different going on. But I wholeheartedly agree movement is key. Trying to retrain a life time of bad habits is another story altogether!

Clearlier

thehamo wrote: »

Movement is absolutely key. As you say strength is useless if proper movement isn't corrected. However, which comes first, bad movement because of a weak muscle or weak/over used muscles because of bad movement patterns? The idea of widening the gait is interesting but I'm wondering if the article only alluded to people with a cross over gait? Some one who runs with a wide stance but still presents with itb pain there's something v different going on. But I wholeheartedly agree movement is key. Trying to retrain a life time of bad habits is another story altogether!

Movement comes first IMO and IME but I expect we'd agree that it's not an either/or situation. If you continue the movement that generates pain then it doesn't really matter how strong you are in other area the pain is going to continue to be generated.

If on the other hand you get people to move correctly then that in itself will lead to a strengthening effect. The difficulty being to ensure that the training load doesn't exceed the muscles ability to keep moving in the correct way which is the reason for working on strength and movement in tandem.

You could argue that strengthening on it's own will lead to a shift in movement patterns and it might well do in the early stages of a weakness causing a movement problem but how long before a new movement pattern caused by a weakness is ingrained and how long before a runner starts trying to correct a problem?

P.S. I agree about the widening stance idea that I linked to. It's certainly not a catch all but I like the idea of trying to change the movement pattern.