Ups and Downs

An IT Band injury is not like having a sore muscle where, if left with minor involvement, your body will typically repair the damage. An IT Band injury is like wounded pride. There's no ignoring no matter how busy you get. You must "baby" it and tend to its every need to make it "release" and unwind. Ask your leg for forgiveness every day! Stroke its ego if you have to....or in other words, massage the muscle daily and combine that with any outside therapy that money can provide. 

Yes, according to a couple of IT Band-related articles I've read, it can take anywhere from three to six weeks to heal, work on it properly, and not make it worse. One crazy website (written by a running enthusiast) was trying to suggest running schedules to stick to while the muscle heals. Forget that! I'm lucky if I can make it up and down the three flights of stairs to my apartment without a twinge of pain. 

In preparation for a vacation I just got back from, I worked that muscle and was dedicated to it to the point of madness and it paid off. In between continuous stretches, I had an enjoyable vacation. There was minimal walking compared to my usual gallivanting around on weekends, but I nary had even an ache. I received a Sports Massage during my time off and that really set the recovery wheels in motion (for a little while, anyway). The therapist remarked that my bones tended to pop a lot and while I agreed with her, in that I have been able to easily pop my joints since childhood, I had been noticing that my right hip (with the injury) pops a bit more than the other. Is this a sign of things to come?

Unfortunately, from the time I came home until now (about five days), I've almost gotten back to square one, simply because I stopped working the muscle daily. And why is that? I got lazy, or distracted. One of the two. As soon as the weekend came, I started to feel that all-too-familiar twinge in my hip. My knee seemed to be fine, which is where most people describe the IT Band pain. I'm not sure if mine is severe enough to have reached the knee, so the pain sits gingerly around my right hip. The one professional therapist I had inspect my injury said that it wasn't too bad because the entire IT Band was not damaged. Only the part around the gluteus was constricted and knotted. 

Now, as of today, I'm clawing my way back onto the recovery wagon and using the foam roller again with daily stretches. I've learned the hard way of what happens when you stop the regiment..you start feeling like your hip is going to dislocate.