How to Recover From and Prevent Shin Splints

Audio Transcript

Danny:Today we have a great question from Claire, that I think every runner has been through or experienced at one time or another in their running journey, and that’s to do with shin splints.

Claire’s had shin splints for five months now and her shin splints have progressed over time.

She’s tried stretching, but they’ve become very painful. She’s been to a doctor and the doctor said it’s not a stress fracture.

It’s only painful when she runs and it seems to lessen after a few miles.In the past year, she has taken up to six weeks off and added cross training.

She wants to know if stretching is good or bad and is more time off from running necessary.

I think those are some good questions and I think they depend on individuals. We’re just going to go through what causes shin splints, how to prevent them and how to continue running.

I’ll also talk about, how to know if you need time off.

First off, what causes shin splints?

Research shows that it is not necessarily the muscle that surrounds the tibia more so than it is low bone density in the areas where you have pain.

A lot of people think it’s a muscular imbalance or a strain but researches have shown that localized areas of pain in the shin is a correlation between low bone density.

The difference between a shin splint and a stress fracture in this area is hard to tell, but research also shows that the area of this low bone density is over a larger area.

Research suggests that the root cause is repeated stress to the bone caused by the slight bend of the bone when it’s loaded.

To break this down, every time you plant your foot on a run, your bone slightly bends, just like the trestles on a bridge slightly bend or a skyscraper waves in the wind.

That kind of flexibility is the body’s natural way of absorbing the impact or the load. That is completely normal but obviously, 180 steps a minute, over the course of several minutes each day running, is going to develop into something a little bit more serious.

This is why shin splints are more common amongst less experienced runners.

Their bone density is not adapted yet. It’s not as strong or as thick compared to that of a more seasoned runner. This is another plug to put in.

This is why strength training is so important. The time you put in strength training the lower leg and doing weighted exercises before you get into running or before your higher mileage weeks, it’s just a way of pre-habing this kind of injury or lessening the risk of it.

Once you get into the routine of adding some strength training, the remodeling process of the bone, as the bone recovers, takes a lot longer than muscle adaptations.

The remodeling process of the bone would be between a couple of weeks to a couple of months, depending on an individual and how much you rest and how much you still work out. There are a lot of variables in there.

Next is how to prevent them without taking complete rest.

Obviously, complete rest is always the best medicine but a lot of us just don’t want to. The priority should be reducing the amount of stress on the tibia.

Obviously, that means runningless volume at a higher intensity. The faster you run, the more force you put in the ground, which means more force will comeback up your leg. Reducing the impact load is a top priority.

Another way of reducing the impact load, in addition to cutting back volume and intensity, would be to try to increase your stride rate to get closer to 180 steps per minute.

180 steps is not a magical number but the closer you can get to 180, the more likely that your foot is landing underneath your hip or at the very least, a little bit out in front of it. It means you’re not over-striding.

Secondly, you should work on strengthening the calf as well as the shin muscles, everything in the lower leg that can help absorb and take some of the stress and shock off the tibia.

More importantly than taking some of the strength off, increasing the muscle strength and making the muscles around the tibia stronger is also going to allow the tibia to respond, by becoming more dense and stronger over the course of time.

Working on things like calf strength and shin strength is something we could do while you’re taking some time off or cutting your mileage back.

For instance, if I had shin splints, I would cut the last mile off a lot of my easy runs, and in that 10 or 15 minutes, add in some exercises.

I would also do some strength training exercises to isolate and specifically work on the lower leg, strengthening those muscles.

So you’re doing a little bit of resting as well as adding in a little bit of stress training, all at the same time.

A good way of going about some corrective treatments for shin splints is to reduce stress on the tibia.

Rest is always the best medicine.

Try to increase your stride rate as close as you can by 10% to start with, or if you’re close to 180 steps, try to get on 18 steps per minute. It just reduces the excess of impact.

Include things like calf raises several times a day, 10 to 15 reps on each leg.

I love to incorporate things in my daily routine and my warm-ups. Even though I haven’t had to deal with shin splints for a long time, but these kind of exercises and this kind of routine prevents that from happening.

I like to do a lot of heel walks, toe walks, a lot of skipping, a lot of squats and a lot of lunges to keep that bone density high and strong and dense.

Do a lot of these bare-foots or working on the muscles all the way through the ankle, down through the foot and up through the shin and lower leg.

Just a reminder, this process can take several weeks to several months for the tibia to heal and for that pain to completely go away.

One of the signs that I would look for in your training, when you’re out there on the roads by yourself and a coach can’t necessarily see you is,are you compensating for that pain?

If you’re compensating, that’s the sign that says, “Okay, I need to back my mileage off. I need to reduce my intensity and my duration of my runs.”

That’s one of the signs that I would look for first while you’re out there.

Another thing to help in the treatment of shin splints would be to consider taking a calcium or Vitamin Dsupplement that’s upwards of 200% of your RDV or recommended daily value of both of those.

If these things do not work, it might be time to go see a physical therapist or a doctor just to rule out a stress fracture. You’d rather be safe than sorry.

I hope that clears up some of the causes of shin splints, what is going on in your leg and how to prevent it or how to recover from it, if you already have it.

That’s a great question by Claire. For those of you listening that want to have your question answered by one of the RunnersConnect coaches, head over to runnersconnect.net/daily and click the record button to send your question over. We’d be happy to answer it.

Hope you enjoyed today’s podcast.

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