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Your friend, the iliotibial band
Oct. 18th, 2004 11:33 amIf you like bodies and want to know how the heck they do what they do, read on. If not, feel free to skip.
The IT band is a tough, fibrous band that runs down the outside of your thigh. It attaches to muscles at your hip (gluteus maximus and a special little tiny one called the tensor fascia lata) and runs so far down that it also attaches to the head of your fibula (the second bone in your lower leg).
It tends to be especially tight in runners and cyclists (and hmm, triathletes are notorious for ITB tightness), so for years, we thought that the best thing to do if it was tight was to stretch it. Logical, right?
Except... the IT band is made of tough, fibrous connective tissue. If you removed one from a cadaver and tried to stretch it, you would probably find that it has extremely high tensile strength, and was never meant to stretch. (More than likely, it's there to provide structural support for the femur, which carries loads of 7x your body weight during running, and 2.5 to 3x your bodyweight when walking.) Hmm, do you really want to stretch out your structural support? (Maybe not.)
The best practice for knee injuries related to ITB tightness used to be "stretch and massage the ITB". Now, it's more likely to be "stretch the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and TFL, which make up the origins of the ITB". If the other end of the ITB (the one attached to the fibular head) is causing the trouble, though, I'm not so sure how much that would help. Perhaps we should add "stretch, ice, and massage the distal attachment point of the ITB, and make sure the ITB is not adhered to the quadricep muscle underneath it," to that list.
Comments from the bodyworker and gym rat crowd? ("Huh?" is a perfectly acceptable comment. So are references to any crack I may have smoked, or be planning to smoke, today. ;-)
The IT band is a tough, fibrous band that runs down the outside of your thigh. It attaches to muscles at your hip (gluteus maximus and a special little tiny one called the tensor fascia lata) and runs so far down that it also attaches to the head of your fibula (the second bone in your lower leg).
It tends to be especially tight in runners and cyclists (and hmm, triathletes are notorious for ITB tightness), so for years, we thought that the best thing to do if it was tight was to stretch it. Logical, right?
Except... the IT band is made of tough, fibrous connective tissue. If you removed one from a cadaver and tried to stretch it, you would probably find that it has extremely high tensile strength, and was never meant to stretch. (More than likely, it's there to provide structural support for the femur, which carries loads of 7x your body weight during running, and 2.5 to 3x your bodyweight when walking.) Hmm, do you really want to stretch out your structural support? (Maybe not.)
The best practice for knee injuries related to ITB tightness used to be "stretch and massage the ITB". Now, it's more likely to be "stretch the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and TFL, which make up the origins of the ITB". If the other end of the ITB (the one attached to the fibular head) is causing the trouble, though, I'm not so sure how much that would help. Perhaps we should add "stretch, ice, and massage the distal attachment point of the ITB, and make sure the ITB is not adhered to the quadricep muscle underneath it," to that list.
Comments from the bodyworker and gym rat crowd? ("Huh?" is a perfectly acceptable comment. So are references to any crack I may have smoked, or be planning to smoke, today. ;-)
