JesseJarj

Has anybody gone through this?

I have now been off the bike for 6 weeks, I've been seeing an athletic therapist twice a week for ultrasound, massage and stretching. Streching everyday and massaging on my own and doing light leg workouts every second to third day to help prevent muscle imbalance. AND I still feel like I have made little or no progress.

Living in Canada I have about four to six weeks left in the season, and also being Canada I have about 6 weeks left before I can get to see a sports medicine doctor (made the apointment in mid-July).

Has anybody been through this? Do you think I can realisticly expect to get some riding in before the end of the season? Anything I should be doing to help remidie this that I'm not alread doing?

On a similar note has anybody noticed a corelation between rage levels and time of the bike? I know mine are shooting through the roof!

JeremiahW037

I've dealt with this injury a few times in the past. Mine was injured because of distance running rather than biking though. Sadly, there is no quick fix for this, rest and ice are the two best things you can do, besides rest. It took me about a month of rehab to be able to run over 4 miles without terrible pain. Its one of the most annoying injuries to have because it takes a relatively long time to heal.

aham23

mine is flaring up right now as i recently started running a bit more. rest is the only true fix. i tend to ride through it, but limit the mashing and/or harder rides. at the end or 2007 training and running a marathon resulted in some serious IT band issues for me that had me on the self for 3 months. lucky for me it was winter.

rest, strecth, ice, massage AND the foam roller are your friend.

later.

fastbub

Been there. Mine was from too much hard riding too quickly after time off the bike. Back it down, high cadence and low resistance riding. I was able to ride through it. It took two months or so to be 100% again. Ice, massage and stretching daily!

urbanknight

+1, especially with the stretching. Time off the bike did nothing for me until I found the right stretches to do.

chrisvu05

1) Stretching
2) Naproxen
3) FOAM ROLLER!!!!!!
4) ice
5) try to spin easier gears if you can.
6) Get your friggin cleat alignment checked! If you have a fixed cleat system you might want to rethink that. When I had this issue I went from SPDs to speedplay X/2 (unlimited float) then over time I switched to Speedplay Zeros and now can dial in my float in proportion to my cleat alignment. This probably helped the most...followed by the foam roller!

chrisvu05

On another note...cut down on the steroids...they can't be helping

wanders

Mine flared up last year at this time when I started working up to a double century in late October. As others have mentioned, stretching, less mashing and higher cadence got me through it. It went away after about 2 months. ymmv.

Good luck.

FlashUNC

Stretch, stretch, and more stretching.

Ice helped me a bunch, and sticking to exactly what the PT's told me to told. I still foam roller regularly and stretch every morning, and when I'm sitting at the desk for long periods.

crispy010

You mean your IT band, right? If so, the best thing I've found is a rolling pin (yeah, the thing you use to roll dough). Sit kinda sideways on your hips, support your foot on a stool or something a little lower than your hips and bend your leg slightly. Press the rolling pin down on your IT band and roll up towards your hip, starting at the knee. If you do it right it hurts like hell, the you can feel the muscle loosen up. Sometimes it helps to get another person to do this because they can get more leverage than you can.

Also, take your pants off so the fabric doesn't press into your skin.

riff

+1. Mine started up after years of ultra-running, then came back (milder) with cycling, after I was hitting 700-800 miles/week.

All of the above - stretching includes quads, hamstring, glutes, and IT specific ones. Switching to Speedplay zeros was a huge plus.

mfav7

Foam roller....then graduate to a rolling pin or pvc pipe. My pvc pipe may have been the best biking related purchase I've made in a long time.

bmfsiii

Been there also. Rest, Advil (worked for me), switched to speedplay pedals x5, and stretching (#3 on the following link) https://www.nismat.org/ptcor/itb_stretch/ Also using a higher cadence.

All of the above worked for me. Good luck with your treatment and I hope that something works for you.

Mose

Good advice here so far... the only thing I'll add is, spoken by someone with ridiculously tight muscles all over, ITB's are the devil.

But I suppose it's important to have one. Or two, actually.

Impoliticus

I had ITB pain for over a year. The biggest reason that it lasted that long was I didn't get serious enough about fixing it in the beginning. It took me a lot of stretching, strength training, and staying off the bike for several months for the pain to disappear. Hopefully you can nip it in the butt early enough so ya don't have to stay off the bike for months. Good luck!

P.S. This might be unrelated, but after I rid myself of my ITB pain, I switched to 165mm cranks. I've never had an ITB pain problem since.

aham23

fyi: the foam roller is a necessary torture device for all IT band pain sufferers. roll it nice and slow! man that hurts just thinking about it. later.

cshell

I had that a year ago (from running).

Foam roller and an IT band strap that goes above the knee.

I was fixed in a week, and back to running 25 miles a week.



And these \/

aham23

^^^^ where did you get the strap? later.

lshaped

i suffered with IT band pain last winter- I had some discomfort in October of last year and it really ramped up when i started running in December. I went to see a sports medicine doc and he gave me a list of stretches, told me to lower my bike seat a bit to prevent the leg from straightening and the band from rubbing over the side of the knee and also recommended a foam roller which i purchased over the internet

I decided to stop running altogether not wanted to jeopardize my cycling season. After 2 weeks off of all activity i started back slowly on the stationary bike. if i started to feel any sort of tightening or pain i stopped immediately. The roller also helps but initially was a torture device- it hurt like hell. i got back on the bike in March and have had a pretty good season thus far riding approx 3000 miles. the key is to be careful, stretch and go slow. out of all the injuries i've had this was probably the most frustrating. i've also not raised my bike seat back up to where it was before

late

Get a pro level fitting. When I did they had me put on Knee Savers (now called pedal spacers).
https://www.bikefit.com/products.php

That helped me a lot. You may need something different. You could try different things for years, or you can find out what will work.

dark13star

Mine flared up after the Triple Bypass (a 120 mile ride with 10K' of climbing here in CO) and I have had a tough year since. In addition to the foam roller, I bought a trigger point massager, which works the individual trigger points more. You can get it here.

I have a leg length discrepancy and I have addressed some of the difference with a wedge under my cleat. I already ride with 3mm of valgus correction in that shoe, so I put two wedges offset (neutral) between my cleat and shoe.

Finally, I switched to the red Kleo cleats for more float.

These changes and getting off the bike to stretch the ITB every hour have gotten me back up to some fairly strenuous rides.

Good luck with it.

cshell

Actually, there are two places where it can hurt. Above or below the knee.

So you need to figure which is which, first.

Here's the one I have now (I now use this very strap to wrap around my down tube and between the spokes of my front tire to keep my wheel aligned straight and not spinning while it's on the car bike rack. Multi - use).





Below the knee

jdon

Rest is good, Stretching is a must, Roller is great for a massage and stretch. I massage the insertion pionts of the IT Bands (no lotion) for 20 minutes, then ice them. If you don't know the insertion points, go see a good RMT and have him/her show you. BTW, the cycling season doesn't end in Canada, just the warm cycling season does.

breeze

I started getting pain this summer while running. About 20 minutes in it would really start to act up an continue for the rest of the day after the run. Cycling didn't bother it much, though if I concentrated on it during a ride I could feel the pain coming on.

Based purely on reading a few articles, I changed my foot position to point my toes slightly outward to try and reduce pressure, as my natural tendency seems to be pointing the toes slightly inward. I also stopped running for a couple of weeks. Since that rest period and slight foot position change I have run a few times, up to 1.5 hour duration, and have not had the issue return. I can't say if that was the fix but I seem to have been able to over come it for now...

~breeze

Innes

Has anyone found a foam roller at local store? I want to get one, but I hate to wait for things to ship from online stores.

Anyone seen these a national retailers? Target? Wal Mart? Big 5? Or should I just order it and wait?