10 september 2014 kl 11:48
Har följt dessa goda råd!!
How to strengthen your iliotibial bands
To truly strengthen your ITB area, simply perform 'Walt Reynolds's ITB Special' on a nearly daily basis. Walt's ITB-saver is easy to carry out. The only equipment you'll need will be a wall or railing for support and some kind of four- to six-inch elevation (a bench or aerobic step will work fine).
Here's exactly what to do. Stand on the aerobic step or bench with your involved leg (the 'involved' leg is the one with the ITB problem), holding on to a rail or the wall with the opposite hand for support. Your legs should be fairly straight as you do this.
Now, with both knees 'locked,' lower the opposite, non-involved foot and hip a few inches toward the floor (of course, the non-involved leg is between the involved leg and the wall you are using for support. As you do so, your involved hip will move upward somewhat, so that it is actually higher than the non-involved hip. Your involved hip should also move a bit in a lateral direction (toward the outside). This 'swivel-hip' action is crucial to the exercise - and in fact is exactly what happens to the hips during the 'stance' phase of the gait cycle.
Next, attempt to shift most of your body weight to the inside part of the foot of the involved leg. This simulates the natural pronation of the foot which occurs during running, and it also engages and puts tension on your tensor fascia lata and iliotibial band, exactly as it would when you run. Make sure that a fair amount of your body weight is directed through your heel, not just your toes.
You've now come to a crucial part of the exercise. Bend your weight-supporting, involved knee slightly (about 10 to 20 degrees), but keep the non-involved foot off the ground or floor. Now, move the involved hip forward about four to six inches, while keeping the involved heel in contact with the step and your weight on the inside of your involved foot. As you do this, all of the action should be at the hip! Your knee angle should stay about the same throughout the exercise (eg, don't try to rock forward at the knee - do it from the hip). If you think of your pelvic girdle as a bowl of milk, that 'bowl' is rocking backward (ie, the bottom of the bowl is coming up and toward the front as the top of the bowl goes back slightly). As your involved hip moves forward, your upper body should move backward.
Very key points: as your involved hip moves forward, make sure that it stays in a lateral position (if it's your left hip, your left hip should be shifted to the left), and also be certain that your involved hip is higher than your non-involved hip. After you've moved your hip forward, move it straight backward - making sure it goes back four to six inches beyond the straight-up, starting position (the total hip-movement distance in this exercise is around eight to 12 inches, four to six inches toward the front and four to six inches back).
As your hip moves backward, your upper body will tend to bend forward. This action may seem strange to you, especially when you realize that in effect your hip is swinging back and forth over your foot in two different planes of motion - front to back (the sagittal plane) and also sideways (the frontal plane). Most runners envision the biomechanics of running quite differently - and tend to think that the key action during running is the swinging of the foot back and forth around the 'anchor point' of the hip.
However, the truth is that when the foot is on the ground, the foot is the anchor point, and the hip essentially rotates around the foot, not vice-versa. It's this action which puts mega-stress on the ITB, and that's why Walt has rather brilliantly designed this exercise to mimic the hip rotation involved in running and maximally fortify your iliotibial bands. It is this same back-and-forth motion which occurs 85 to 90 times per minute at each hip when you run - and which can turn one of your iliotibial bands into a tattered, complaining mass of red-hot tissue.
As you do the exercise, you should feel the burn - or if not the burn at least some pretty heavy-duty pulling and stress - up toward the side of your hip. If you don't feel anything happening, go back to the basic position and try again, making sure that your involved hip ends up in a lateral position and higher than the other hip - and also making certain that your weight is shifted to the inside of the involved foot. As your weight shifts to the inside of the foot and your hip moves laterally, your thigh is adducted, exactly as it is when you run, and your iliotibial band must work hard to control this adduction as your hip moves back and forth.
Try these advanced versions
Once you get really good at doing the exercise, you can try the advanced versions of Walt's Special, getting the arm on the involved side of the body into the act.
First, move the involved arm laterally and forward as your hips swing forward. Then, try moving the involved arm forward and over the front of the body as the hips begin to swing forward.
Of course, if your iliotibial band syndrome is red-hot right now, you'll have to wait a bit before you try Walt's Special. Otherwise, the remedial exercise itself might exacerbate your flare-up. If you're on the road to recovery from an ITBS setback, do the exercise as your symptoms allow, being careful not to overextend your iliotibial bands (start with just a few reps).
If you're basically symptom-free now but have had trouble with ITBS in the past, you can be fairly aggressive with this exercise. Start with 10 reps per day on each leg, and gradually build up to a set of 20 to 30 reps - carried out at two different times during the day. If you do so, your ITBS problems will become distant memories.
If you've never suffered from the agony of ITBS, do 10 to 15 reps of the exercise three to four times per week, anyway. And always use the exercise as an injury prophylactic during the weeks leading up to a major increase in your training (remember that ITBS tends to occur when the volume and/or intensity of training increase).
For example, if you are in a 'base' period of training but are planning to sharply increase your miles as you begin preparing, say, for a marathon, do at least one set of 15 reps of Walt's Special twice per day on each leg during the last three weeks before your training volume begins to rise significantly (this should be done almost daily). The same would apply to a shift from high-volume, 'aerobic' running to an emphasis on speed work.
Walt's unique exercise will keep you out of ITBS trouble in the future; as it bolsters your iliotibial bands, it will enhance your ability to control the adduction and rotation of your thigh bones (femurs) during running, reducing both fatigue and muscle soreness. As you gain greater control of your hips and thighs, there's also a good chance that your running economy will improve. Remember that you do not want to carry out the exercise only on the leg which has given (or is giving) you trouble. To balance your strength properly, do the same number of reps on each leg, even though one leg may be trouble-free.
