Meet Warren. He’s a 70-year-old retired wealth advisor from one of Canada’s big 5 banks. And he is very active in retirement. He moved out of the big city, and spent a lot of his time outdoors, from gardening, to home improvement projects, and more. But he had one big problem: IT band syndrome.

                Basically, he had major pain along the side of his thigh, which was causing a lot of issues:

  • He was hobbling around the house
  • He couldn’t walk straight (and walking hurt anyway)
  • He felt like a hunchback.
  • He couldn’t go for walks with his wife.

He didn’t like that. It got in the way of all of his activities. But in a matter of 2 weeks, the pain was basically gone.

How did he do it? That’s what we’ll talk about in this article. If you’d like to hear it straight from Warren, just check out this video.

Here’s what we’ll cover here:

  • What Warren has tried before to address his IT band pain (and how it worked – or didn’t).
  • What his trainer, Davin noticed during his assessment, that explained the IT band pain
  • The highlights of the program that Davin used with Warren to get rid of the IT band pain
  • A strange obstacle along the way
  • How Warren’s life is different now that he’s pain-free

And if you want help with a specific injury, we try to get it as good as possible, as fast as possible, in a program we call “Rapid Rehab.” If you’d like to see whether you qualify for this program, just fill out the application form on our home page.

Warren’s Life Before

                Warren has had plenty of knee issues throughout his life, including ACL problems (ACL is the anterior cruciate ligament, which connects the thigh bone and the shin bone), and a surgery. As a result, his range of motion really decreased, so his knee wouldn’t bend all the way.

                But it wasn’t that big of an issue.

                As mentioned earlier, he was quite active in retirement, until he developed IT band syndrome, which really limited his activity.

                Warren was always a do-it-yourselfer, but when that wasn’t working, he gave in and went to physiotherapy.

                In physiotherapy, they gave him stretches, plus what I call “dinky little exercises.” Needless to say, physiotherapy didn’t work (we happen to get a lot of clients for whom physiotherapy doesn’t work).

                His wife, who herself was a client of ours, saw that Warren wasn’t getting anywhere, suggested that he reach out to us, since she had such great progress herself.

                So he did. Warren saw me do a series of presentations at his bank, and liked that we weren’t like other personal trainers. We’re not task masters, drill sergeants, or cheerleaders. We’re personal trainers. We’re science-based, and we’re results-driven.

                So it just made sense for him for work with us.

                After a brief conversation with me, I paired him up with one of my top trainers, Davin.

Warren’s Initial Assessment

                Two people can have IT band pain, but the cause could be different. That’s why whenever I see any exercises on the internet that say “cure your IT band pain with these exercises”, I shake my head. Some people will indeed benefit from those exercises. For some people, nothing will change, and for a third group of people, it’ll get worse.

                Hence the necessity of assessment. You know my fondness for saying “if you’re not assessing, you are guessing.” So Davin assessed Warren’s different muscles and movements (yes, he did it all virtually, since they’re hundreds of kilometres apart).

                Here are a few things that stood out to Davin during their assessment:

  • Standing and walking hurt Warren, but sitting didn’t.
  • One of the tests that Davin had Warren do was hip abduction and a hip lift. Both of those hurt Warren.
  • Clam shells didn’t bother Warren.

Yes, there were other assessments done, but these were the ones that I want to focus on.

I know that all these probably sound like gobbledegook to you, and you’re wondering “what does all this mean?” I’ll tell you. It’s very simple. Warren had weak gluteus medius (one of his butt muscles was weak).

Warren’s Exercise Program

Once the assessment revealed the issue, what needed to be done was pretty clear. But without an assessment, we would have been throwing stuff against the wall, and seeing what sticks. An assessment allows us to save a lot of time on trial and error. So there’s more effective strategies that we can use, and less error. It’s the difference between taking months to get results, and seeing them well… as fast as we did.

So what did Davin do with him to basically get him pain-free in 2 weeks?

The exercises were:

– Dumbbell RDL

– Dumbbell Rows

– Dumbbell Shoulder Press

– Dumbbell Floor Press

– Clamshells

– Prone Hamstring curls (with ankle weight + dumbbell)

                These would be done 3-4 days per week. Plus, he was active on the days he wasn’t formally exercising.

But if you just read about the exercises, you’d miss the “secret sauce” of the exercise program – the progression model, and the workout-by-workout adjustments that were made based on Warren’s progress from the previous workout, energy/fatigue levels, injuries, and more. After all, no exercise program should be a static program, where you’re doing the same exercises for the same weights, sets and reps every single time. An exercise program should be dynamic, intelligently, purposefully, and systematically changing the exercise variables workout-by-workout to move the client forward… as opposed to haphazardly changing the program whenever you feel like it, without rhyme or reason… like a lot of personal trainers do.

Getting Warren out of pain was so fast, because to take a muscle from extremely weak to only slightly weak or average happens quickly. To take a strong muscle and make it even stronger would take a very long time.

Although Warren was out of pain in 2 weeks, he wasn’t out of the woods yet. We didn’t want to get him just barely strong enough – just above the threshold of pain. We wanted to give him a nice buffer of strength.

So Warren continued working with Davin to get the gluteus medius strong enough to have a solid buffer.

Over their 3 months of working together, Warren’s Romanian deadlifts improved from 40 pounds, up to 70. Not bad. Plus, he made progress in all his other exercises as well.

Obstacles Along the Way

                But it wasn’t all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows from beginning to end. There was just one minor obstacle along the way.

                Warren isn’t terribly tech savvy. Since the training was virtual, it was over zoom. But that was an easy obstacle to overcome. His wife is tech savvy enough to help him out there.

How Warren’s Life is Different Now

                Nowadays, that Warren’s leg pain is completely gone, he’s back to his old self again. From the outset, he didn’t have the goal of being super muscular or super strong. Just strong enough to do his regular activities, like:

  • Splitting a log
  • Dragging a canoe
  • Making a flowerbed
  • Keeping up with his wife on her walks

He didn’t need to be muscular. He just needed to be functional. And he accomplished that. Basically, his life is completely back to normal now.

If Warren’s case study resonated with you, and you want help with a specific injury, we try to get it as good as possible, as fast as possible, in a program we call “Rapid Rehab.” If you’d like to see whether you qualify for this program, just fill out the application form on our home page.