In June this year I developed pain on the outside of my knee when running … IT band syndrome. I was training for the The Big O, a 19km trail run. Towards the end of my longer training runs I had a bit of pain on the outside of my knee but I didn’t think too much of it. In the last 5km of the event this pain became quite intense. In the following 2 weeks the problem got worse, even after several days rest it would become painful after only 1km of running. I had been stretching my IT band and using a foam roller on it but this didn’t seem to be helping.
The solution turned out to be strengthening my glutes. After a few days of strengthening exercises the problem disappeared completely! Remember that up until this point the problem had been getting worse.
Strengthening my glutes worked because it allowed me to keep my pelvis/hips level as I was running rather than swaying too much to the side. When your hips move to the side it puts a lot of tension on the IT band which can then rub on the femur causing inflamation and pain. One way to check if hip stability is likely issue is to stand one leg and see whether your hips remains level. If your hip drops on the unweighted side its a good indicator that you may have a problem. There is no guarantee that you’ll do the same thing when standing on one leg as you would when running but its an easy way to check. You can also try to check hip stability yourself when running or have someone else observe you.
Strengthening the Glutes
Hip Hikes are an excellent exercise. As well as strengthen the glutes, hip hikes will make you more aware of the alignment of your hips.
Lateral Leg Lifts provide more of a challenge for the muscles but they don’t allow you see the effects on your hip stability in the same was that hip hikes do.
These two exercises make a good combo. Work your way up to 30 leg lifts and 50 hip hikes on each leg. Do these daily.
Do the exercises consistently and give them a chance to work. They may not be fun but they really can help you get back to pain free running.
Returning to Running
If there is swelling or a lot of pain you will need take a break from painful activities until this subsides. You can still do the strengthening exercises during this time. Once the swelling has gone down and you’ve been doing the exercises for a few days try a short run again. Stop the run as soon as you feel any pain, you may need more rest to allow the swelling to subside or more time doing the glute exercises.
If you haven’t seen improvement after doing the strengthening for 10-14 days it could be that the glutes just aren’t activating when running. If this is the case you could try consciously altering your form, one way to think about this is to lift the unweighted hip if its dropping. This is similar to doing hip hikes but not so exaggerated.
Additional treatments
Stretching and Foam rolling of the IT band definitely works for some people. In my case glute strength seemed to be the key but perhaps the foam rolling and stretching helped too.