Hang with me here: Tis the season for IT Band symptoms look-a-likes.

Especially as mileage increases and we have some speed or tempo work thrown into the mix...

Hips can get niggly. In a lot of different ways. Our brains immediately jump to "outside hip pain must be IT band or TFL tightness".

It could be...However the "oops" lies in "I'll rest or cut my next run short and be sure to foam roll..."

Now, I'm not goin to yuck in anyone's yum. Our bodies are NOT Excel spreadsheets. So if this approach works for you, keep on keeping on. HOWEVER...

If you've repeated this same cycle 3-4x over....and there's no change but continued ouchies, I'm going to need you to re-think things.

Here's my short mini checklist for the sake of keeping the email "concise".

It's probably NOT IT Band pain if...

• you really only have symptoms like deep soreness, aching, maybe some tightness along the outside of your hip
• you can actually poke the exact spot on the outside of your hip and it's tender (or your symptoms)
• Your hip actually hurts or at least starts talking back when you get in certain stretching position that are supposed to stretch the outside of your hip (aka: these do not really feel good)

Because true ITBand pain is more likely to linger along the outside of your knee, maybe even towards the center of it and sometimes give you this insatiable urge to stretch your knee...but you have no idea how. (Neither do I. Knees don't stretch).

So who murdered Colonel Mustard in the drawing room with the candlestick?

All Clue jokes aside...you might be experiencing a cranky glute meduis tendon.

Notice I DID NOT say "you have hip drop and for every extra 1 degrees of hip drop you have an increased 80% risk of injury..."

That's just...no. No.

The whole reason I even bring this up, is to arm you with the knowledge that if you feel prone to repeat outside hip pain and you've been thinking it's IT Band syndrome...maybe you've even done traditional PT for it but with questionable results...

It could be something else entirely. And while I've personally seen and treated MALE runners with this exact presentation, this is MOST COMMON in female peri to post menopausal women.

And I don't think it's talked about enough. Because instead of the internet coming at it with objective helpful information, sometimes all the algorithm pumps out is terrifying "hip drop will make your leg fall off" content.

So what I did this week was give you the run down:

• a more in-depth checklist so you can assess yourself and find out "is THIS what's going on with my hip?"
• Exact exercises to begin addressing both the hip mobility and strength component
• and some quick, very easy changes you can make to your running gait that are ACTUALLY supported by research to help decrease outer hip pain so you can keep training while your rehab

Whew, I know. That was a lot. But I felt I had to get this information into your hands. Until next time friends,

Dare to Train Differently,

Marie Whitt, PT, DPT //@dr.whitt.fit

P.S. DL;DR -- It's not actually IT Band. So you can stop foam rolling. And do these exercises instead ;)

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