Resolving Running with IT Band Pain
If you’re a runner, there’s a good chance you’ve experienced knee pain. It’s the most common type of discomfort that occurs in runners. There’s two spots on the knee that this discomfort typically develops – the front and the side.
When discomfort is present on the front of the knee, it is typically either patellofemoral pain syndrome or patellar tendinitis. The discomfort on the outside of the knee is called IT band syndrome, more commonly referred to as IT band pain.
IT band pain is an active-person injury. This means it almost exclusively occurs in those who are pushing their bodies in some capacity. We see it a lot in runners, cyclists, and gym athletes.
Because IT band pain is an active-person injury, it requires a specialized skill set to treat. If you have IT band pain and are seeing a physical therapist who doesn’t have extensive experience with treating active individuals, I’d highly encourage you to seek a different physical therapist. This is particularly true for runners with IT band pain.
How Running with IT Band Pain Develops
While IT band pain used to be thought of as a friction-injury (the IT band was rubbing on a bony part of the knee), recent research is showing this to not be the case. Instead, IT band pain, particularly IT band pain associated with running, is now thought to be caused by too much compression, not too much friction.
Why is this important?
Because the cause of the injury dictates what we do to fix the injury. If there’s too much friction, we’d want to reduce friction. But, since there’s too much compression, the best way to address this is by reducing compression. Fortunately, decreasing compression is much easier than decreasing friction!
Reducing Running with IT Band Pain
We reduce IT band pain primarily through alleviating compression. This means we make space around the knee where the IT band is compressed. We can do this directly (right at the knee) or by indirectly (reducing compression along the IT band).
While some injuries are well-treated with exercise, IT band pain is one that gets better results from hands-on treatment. Our two favorite types of treatment to use for this are dry needling and cupping. Hesitant to try dry needling? It’s not as scary as it looks!
Dry Needling for Running with IT Band Pain
Exercises for Running with IT Band Pain
Despite the fact that hands on treatment is typically more effective for running with IT Band pain, we’d be remiss if we didn’t include a few exercises. Physical therapy performed at a high level combines a myriad of hands-on treatment, exercises, and modalities in order to achieve the best results.
Those that struggle with running with IT band pain often have tight quads and their outside hip muscles often need a bit more strength. Here’s an exercise to address both of those!
Tight Quads
Strengthening Outside Hip Muscles
Wrapping It Up
If you’re a runner and you’re frustrated by running in circles with your pain, we’d love to help! We are runners who work with runners; we get how frustrating it is when you can’t run and how running makes everything else feel better. If you’d like to get back to how running should feel, schedule a free consultation.
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