Iliotibial Band Syndrome of the Knee – Exercises and Stretches

Chris Andreano demonstrates two foam roller stretches to help relieve Iliotibial Band Syndrome of the knee.

Full Video Transcript

Okay folks. So, as promised I’ve got a couple of quick tips for you to try at home today, to help you with that problem we talked about in the last video which is related to the ITB problem that occurs down the side of the knee, now, the friction syndrome that I explained with the picture on the wall. Now, the two things that I want to show you today, both quite simple things that don’t really address the problem in its entirety, but they’re just a good place to start.

And one of the things we really like to get people to do is to reduce the tone and the activity in the muscles that feed into the IT band. And in particular, two big groups of muscles are the quadriceps that run down the front of the thigh, okay. And the gluteals that sort of wrap around into the ITB, from the side, okay. So, using the foam roller to start with today, I’ll show you guys how to do a little bit of that, okay?

So, the first one I wanna show you. You roll it down the floor, you have yourself a seat, right onto the roller, onto your bottom. Now, I want you to fold your right foot up on your left knee, okay, and you lean into your right buttock and you’re rolling around on your right buttock with your weight down through the right arm behind you, okay? It’s usually good to do this for at least a minute, okay, up to two minutes, if you have the time, all right. And you’re just trying to knead out any of that tight, sort of irritable tissue in there, in the glutes there, and try and create some mobility and relax the muscles a little bit, okay?

So, that’s the first one. And in terms of the quadriceps, this one can be a little bit painful when you first try, but it’s very important. And you pop the roller down, okay, straight onto the front of the legs here, okay. And I usually want people to try and get their weight onto one leg, okay. And you’re rolling up and down the front of the leg here, all right.

And again, you’re just trying to knead out some of that tight tissues and through the muscles there, okay. Again, I think about a minute is a good place to start. As you get better, you can find something like this which is a lot more firm, and a bit more aggressive and it hurts more, but you should get a bit more out of this sort of trigger ball. All right, guys, give that a try, see how you go.