Daily Mobility Exercises by Dr. Kelly Starrett › Forums › Knee › Persistent IT band problem – now in both knees › Re: Persistent IT band problem – now in both knees

05/04/2014 at 11:18 am #74581
AvatarNathan Richer
Participant

wow a lot here! first, i would buy the book Becoming a Supple Leopard. it is a great read and will change some thinking about how you will recover.  Kstarr is coming out with a book for runners soon so look for that.

starting out can be overwhelming.  i wrote a blog post about it here as a suggestion: http://www.dshen.com/blogs/training/archives/mobilitywod_quick_start_guide.html
i would stock up on the bands, and massage tools like Supernova, lacrosse balls, etc.
re: videos on running – i would watch these, since you are runner:

this may be very relevant to you:

Knee pain on stairs and hills

there is a lot to work on. i would go through these videos and try some of the smashes and mobilizations. don’t overwhelm yourself trying to do everything at once.  work on a few things instead. sometimes you will find that the other things correct themselves out because everything is related.

i would however take a break from running for now.

regarding orthotics – the feet are very important and we’ve destroyed them in a number of ways, especially for women who wear high heels and those thin pointy shoes.  i would not graduate to running without them just yet, but i would work towards not needing them.  to that end, i would recommend walking around in barefeet around the house whenever possible, and finding shoes with wider toe boxes to give your toes room to spread out.  i’m not sure if you can get these in the UK: Correct Toes: https://correcttoes.com/correct-toes but they are amazing and work great. you can wear them during the day or all night or both.

fixing foot mechanics and function is one part of the solution. the others are all upstream.

i suspect that your sitting all day has shut off your glutes, which is a contributor to your problems.  your glutes help maintain the arch way down below at your feet. if they are off, your feet will collapse on the arch and hence the need for orthotics.

one small point to look at re: glute bridges and pistol squats. does your knee move inward when you do them? you should be having a bit of external rotation in them, meaning the knee is biased slightly outward. this protects the structures around the knee.  if your need starts drifting inward, this puts a lot of stress there and can inevitably cause pain and injury.

try this and report back!