You should not feel the contraction on the front of your hip.Ĭlam shells are another effective way to target your side glutes. You can place your hand on the side of your butt just above and behind the hip bone to feel when the glute medius contracts. Don’t let your hips roll open and don’t engage your front hip flexors. Build up to three sets of 10 repetitions for each leg. Hold at the top of the lift for 2 or 3 seconds, and then relax.
Raise your top leg straight up, and move it forward and back in a controlled motion. Bring your top shoulder forward with your arm and elbow toward the ground to prevent your hips rolling backwards. Make sure your hips are stacked and your leg is straight-most people need to consciously pull their leg backward at the hip to get into line. Then, bring it forward and back so that it forms a straight line from your shoulder to hip. Lying on your side, lift your upper leg up. The side leg lift is one of the best ways to strengthen the gluteus medius and minimus, but you have to be mindful of your form to keep from cheating by recruiting larger muscles, like your quads. Hold for 15 seconds, and repeat 10 times. Lower your arms down to your ankle on the inside of the bow, extending the stretch. Your body should form a bow, with the IT band stretched across your hip. Fullem says the best stretch is to cross your sore leg behind your other leg, reach up to the sky, and lean away from the injured side.
It band stretch series#
“If you don’t address that weakness, taking time off isn’t going to make it go away.” What Movement Best Combats ITBS?įullem recommends a series of exercises aimed at strengthening the glute medius and minimus, the key muscles involved in controlling what goes on from the hips down to the feet. “The stretching and tightness of the ITB is really coming from the weakness,” Fullem says. When the TFL muscle and IT band take on too much of the work to stabilize your hips and keep your knees and feet from collapsing inward with each stride, they get strained and over stretched. “That’s when the IT band kicks in and takes more stress than it can handle.” To add insult to injury, and pile on the postural problems, those very gluteal muscles tend to be weak in most runners. “When we’re bent forward, the gluteal muscles get overworked,” says Brian Fullem, DPM, a sports podiatrist and author of The Runner’s Guide to Healthy Feet and Ankles. Problems begin when the poor posture you adopt from sitting hunched over a keyboard persists even when you’re on a run. The TFL works with the glutes to stabilize the hip.
The iliotibial band is a tendon that runs from below your knee to above your hip, where it attaches to the small tensor fascia lata muscle (TFL). Research finds that strengthening the muscles around the hips is the most effective way to prevent and treat ITBS, as the cause of the pain stems from hip weakness. While stretching, foam rolling, and taking time off are important steps in relieving the symptoms, they won’t solve the issue. Left untreated, it could debilitate you and make running nearly impossible. The condition is called iliotibial band syndrome or ITBS, and it’s the second most common running injury. It gets worse as the run goes on, sometimes moving up to the hip. It starts as a nagging pain on the outside of your leg just above the knee.