Shin splints can be really frustrating. They can ruin an entire season of running if not kept in check. Also known as Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome (MTSS), can be described as pain bellow the knee along the inner part leg. Shin splints occurs most commonly in runners, but can affect anyone doing high impact activities including dancers, and military personnel.
Here are 7 Tips to Help
- Prevention, prevention, prevention!! – The easiest way to avoid the irritations of shin splints is to make sure your doing everything to stop them occurring in the first place.
- Train Steady – Build your exercise program gradually, and allow good time to recover between sessions.
- Lower the Impact – A cardio workout doesn’t have to be high impact to get the same fitness gains. Mix up your training with some low impact sessions (eg. cross-trainer, cycling, swimming).
- Look After Your Feet – Good footwear is essential to the bimechanics of your lower limb, pelvis, and spine. Make sure your footwear is suitable for you, not causing over-pronation of the foot, and fits well. If need be, visit a specialist to have your gait and biomechanics assessed, and shoes or orthotics recommended based on the finding.
- Take a Break – If your shin splints have just occurred, then rest is advised.
- Two Weeks Off – This might sound a lot, especially if you are training for an event. Your body needs time to recover, with out any impact to aggravate or worsen the condition. Try cycling, swimming or cross-training to keep your fitness up in the meantime.
- Gradually Reintroduce the Impact – Picking up where you left off may set yourself up for a return in the symptoms. Instead; gradually build up the impact combining your training with low impact cardiovascular exercise.
- Ice – Help alleviate the pain and inflammation by icing your shins (use an ice pack wrapped in a tea towel) . Ice for no more than 10 minutes every two to three hours for up to 48 hours.
- Stretching – Stretch of your calf muscles and the muscles at the front of your shins. This will help ease muscle tension, improve range of motion and ultimately reduce the stress on the area.
- Strengthen – Improve strength and endurance capability of your calf and shin muscles to help reduce the stress on your shins. This will help the muscles long term by giving them the strength to get through those longer runs.
- Massage – Self massage through your calf and shin muscles to ease tension. Regularly get massage treatment to further help.
- Manual Therapies (Osteopathy, Physiotherapy Chiropractic) – Speak to your manual therapist about shin splints. Let them assess; your posture, gait, and biomechanics to highlight and treat possible predisposing factors.