The past five weeks have presented a new challenge for me: ITBS. The last time I was in so much pain that I couldn’t run I had a stress fracture in my foot, but that was almost 10 years ago. ITBS, however, is not as cut and dried as a stress fracture. A stress fracture just requires time to heal, and then you’re pretty much good to go. ITBS, on the other hand, requires much more than that to treat it. Rest is only part of the solution; if nothing else is addressed, there’s a very good chance it will just flare up again.
ITBS stems from a combination of hip tightness and weakness, resulting in the IT band pulling at the knee and causing pain and inflammation. Common remedies include icing the knee to reduce swelling and massaging/stretching the IT bad itself in order to relieve the tension. However, I found these to only address the symptoms rather than the cause, leaving me foolishly optimistic and frustrated before and after every attempted run. Upon further research and experimentation, however, I did find a solution that seems to be working for me!
Like I mentioned earlier, ITBS ultimately comes from hip weakness and tightness. To solve ITBS, you need stronger and looser hips. For the sake of simplicity, I’ve narrowed my routine down to one strengthening exercise and one stretch to perform every day.
Runners are very good at moving in one direction: forward. Put a long-distance runner in a pick-up basketball game and they’ll be sore the next day. This comes from hips that are very weak in terms of lateral movement and stability. A very quick and easy exercise to incorporate into your training is the sideways shuffle: bend down into a squat and step sideways (shuffle) 4 or 5 steps to your right and then repeat to your left. Go back and forth 4 or 5 times for each side, activating your hips and butt to move in a way that they typically don’t.
Follow this up with the “iron-cross” stretch: lie down on the floor on your back, arms stretched out to either side. Bring your left leg across your body and try to touch your left foot to your right hand, feeling the stretch along your hamstring and glutes. Hold for 5-10 seconds and switch, bringing your right leg across your body and touching your left hand. Repeat as many times as comfortable. I like to turn this into more of a dynamic stretch, rolling back and forth and switching each side as soon as I touch.
One other element that might help as you work through this is the use of an anti-inflammatory to keep the knee swelling down. I’ve started taking 200mg of Naproxen Sodium every other day to keep the swelling down as I work on strengthening and stretching my hips.
These three things have helped me go from 0 miles per week to start feeling like I might have a chance at running well at the Boston Marathon this spring. Time will tell, but I am (foolishly?) optimistic.
Fare forward,
Coach JJ
Johnson Endurance Co 