I am a right handed college baseball pitcher and have an extremely tight Left ITB. The only time it is extremely painful is when I do squats, it locks up at parallel. I foam rolled all of the parts of my leg for months, which helped a lot. I now roll with a PVC pipe and stretch it numerous times daily. My chiropractor showed me how to release pressure by sticking my left forearm behind my knee and with my right hand bulling the left foot to my left hamstring and it makes a snapping sound, but releases a lot of pressure.
My question is that when I do a lot of hamstring curls added into my routine all the ITB problems subside within a few days, except some minor tightness. I just have no idea why this happens, especially the whole physiology aspect of why hamstring curls fix this problem, and if anyone has any suggestions please.
TFL is a hip flexor. Hamstrings are hip extensors. Through reciprocal inhibition, hamstring curls decrease neural tension on your hip flexors, which explains why your TFL feels relieved when you do hamstring curls.
Have you gone to get some ART done on it?
You should do some Swiss Ball Leg Curls on off days, and maybe some natural GHR’s on offdays as well. . . Basically anything that promotes hip extension will likely provide you some relief. Also, hip adduction based exercises may prove helpful. It’s a repetitive stress/neural hyperactivity issue you’re encountering in your TFL.
I’ll just lay out some suggestions, but be mindful that these are just suggestions. I have not been in your shoes with the problem you’re experiencing. . .
Do some light-moderate intensity hip extension activities on off-days
–Band-resisted Hip Extenion
–Birddogs
–Swiss Ball Leg Curls
–Natural GHR’s
Make sure your glutes are firing properly
–Supine Glute Bridges for time or slow reps before you even warm up
Perhaps some band resisted hip adduction. TFL acts as a hip Abductor, so you may be able to ‘counteract’ some of its hyperactivity by activating these antagonist muscles
Work on tissue quality
–Foam Rolling
–ART if you can. . . Go to the ART website and type in your ZIP code. There may be an ART professional nearby. . .
Stretch the hell out of TFL&piriformis
Try the runner’s stretch. . . Runners stretch for the piriformis muscle - YouTube
It’s what the dude in the video is doing except from a lunge position. If you don’t understand what I mean, imagine doing a lunging hip flexor stretch and then putting your forward-most leg into the position his is in
I hope this is at least of some assistance to you. . .
Well I ll try to explain what I think about that, hope you 'll understand cuz english is not my first so it 's gonna be tough for my restricted anatomy vocabulary (in english of course…lol)
What you say just makes me remember the principles I learned last year in my neuro-muscular facilitation ?courses?
These principles (found and applied by a Belgian physiotherapist) are just about movement predominances in humans…To make it clear, the muscles by their attachements to the bones can really have an effect on the articulations, more precisely on coaptation of the joint surfaces…For example, for baseball pitchers, the excessive use of the anterio musculature (pectorals, subscapularis,…) can make the humerus slip a little bit out of the glenoid cavity to reach a slightly anteriorised position…
These “deformation” are often reduced with single pressure applied to the articulation by the physiotherapist, I ve seen peoples gaining as much as 10 degress in their ROM just after the physiotherapist appled this pressure…
For you, well I will have to have a look at my notes and my gray 's but i think the hamstrings by repetitive contractions, several times a week can really “move” the articulation faces…Here I talk about the tibia (superior part) sliding posteriorly, with a light external rotation movement too…This may have a positive effect on your Ilio-tibial band syndrome, just as long as you keep on doing hamstring curls…AS I said earlier, it take 1 minutes to replace the articulation faces but the movement predominances (remember the pitcher) will have a negative effect, desynchronizing the faces again…So It will take months of reeducation to replace all that shit definitely lol
Flyasmike brings up a good point concerning joint articulations and muscle hyperactivity.
Is it your anterior hip that hurts, or the TFL musculature / IT band itself that hurts? Maybe Both?
You’re going to have to put in thousands of reps of hip extension type activities to ‘reprogram’ your body to balance the hip flexors / hip extensors neural tension out as much as possible. That’ll be your best bet for minimizing pain
Thanks for all the insight, I have gotten some ART done recently and plan on getting more done. The pain is lateral left knee pain ONLY when I am squatting to parallel. I do some myofasical release w/ self massage and a lacrosse ball on my TFL and ITB, sometimes it helps alot, sometimes not at all.
[quote]CoolColJ wrote:
hammer and release all the stuff attached around the IT band. The IT band is not a muscle, so it doesn’t make much sense to hit it
ie Glute Medius (the main culprit), glute major, TFL, Piniformis etc
use a hard ball against the wall first, then later on move down to the floor[/quote]
Individuals with ITB band syndrome tend to have many trigger points along vastus lateralis as well. Also, friction can result from ITB band’s rubbing up against vastus lateralis. Foam rolling the area can help release these problem areas and improve the overall tissue quality of, if not the ITB band itself, vastus lateralis.