A general formalism is presented to study hot carrier relaxation in the valence band of strained and unstrained semiconductors. The approach is based on a six-band k⋅p description of the valence band and an anisotropic Monte Carlo method. We show the results of our studies for the Si–Ge system. Carriers are initially injected in the split-off band and the carrier distribution is followed in time. Results are presented for energy-dependent energy relaxation time. The relaxation times for Si are about 10−13 s while those for Ge are an order of magnitude higher. To study the effect of biaxial strain produced through epitaxy on energy relaxation times we present results for Si0.8Ge0.2 on a {100} silicon substrate. This work is of relevance to the interpretation of pump-probe experiments, which are primarily dependent on the relaxation of the average of the carrier energy.