Medical help: Shin Splints!!

[eomeo]

Having played soccer for many years, I have had shin splints regularly. During the preseason we would train very hard, 5 days a week after school, and many people would get shin splints. All of us would simply train through it, and over a couple weeks it would go away. Now that I'm older I don't know if that is a good strategy or not.

One good way to exercise your shins is to set your heel on the ground, and tap your toe as fast as you can for 30 seconds or so. You'll feel the front of your leg start to tighten up. Repeat for awahile. I always found it to make my legs feel a bit better afterward.

 

[Echo4v]

I'd love to switch to swimming, but joining a gym in Japan costs over $100 a month and they are really the only places with pools. I liked the convenience of running because I could do it in 30 minutes near my home any time with little gear and cost.

Granted, when I lived there, I spent most of my time on Okinawa but even on mainland Japan you're pretty close to the ocean. I used to swim in the ocean twice a day when I was there.

Are you way up north on mainland where the ocean is too cold or something? Japan was the only place I've been where I actually liked the ocean. The Atlantic is too muddy and the Pacific ( in California) is too crowded. Everywhere I went in Japan was nice beaches and beautiful water.

 

[klammer]

The first is a good point. However, the second is entirely unrelated. Everyone knows how to run, not everyone knows how to swim.

My wife likes to watch the "Amazing Race" on TV. They had a swimming challenge which was to swim 4 lengths of a 50 meter pool. The 4 remaining teams are all fit to very fit. To watch them swim the pool you would think that they were swimming the english channel- at least the ones that COULD swim.

One member from each team successfully ran something like 1.5 miles in 30F weather in their underwear with respectable times.

That is why I put "if able" after it

 

[Squeezymo]

I ran cross country and used to get shin splints all the time. Some good exercises are

1) Walk on your heels for about 20-30 feet, turn around and walk back.
2) Stand on a ledge with the balls of your feet, and elevate your body about 15 times to stretch.
3) Face a wall and push against it stretching one leg back, so your foot and leg form about a 45 degree angle to stretch your calve muscle.
4) Sit in a chair, extend your leg and write the ABC's with your foot. Do with each leg.
5) If you must sit during the day, tap your feet, keeping the ball of your heel touching the ground.
6) Ice frequently. A technique recommended to me was to fill a cone shaped paper cup with water, and freeze it. Then rub it on your shin once frozen and you can peel the cup away as you go.

These exercises will help, but the only way to make shin splints go away is to stay off them. If I remember correctly, they are caused by your calve muscles being stiff from a workout, and that pulls on the muscle or tissue from the front of your calve, which causes the pain, so stretching your calves is key. It usually happens when you start exercising more vigorously or frequently than when you're used to. The rest of the members already provided some good tips, i.e., getting new shoes, insoles, etc.

They do suck though. Hard. But they aren't that big a deal as long as you take care of it and don't try to "suck it up" for too long.

Edit: Lastly, running on asphalt is preffered to running on the sidewalk. The sidewalk is one of the hardest impact surfaces you can run on, and asphalt has a little more 'give' to it.

 

[demon tessu]

with your bare feet grab a towel with your big toe and the adjacanet toe and lift the clutched towl like your pressing down on a gass pedal. do this exercise for 20 extencions at a time. another thing is take a bottle"or bottle like solid cylinder thing" and roll the bottle from heal to toe 20. repeat these exercises and it should give you some sence of relife "but then again i used to use this for therapy after a nasty anklelock.

 

[Chinpo]

Edit: Lastly, running on asphalt is preffered to running on the sidewalk. The sidewalk is one of the hardest impact surfaces you can run on, and asphalt has a little more 'give' to it.

This might explain why I was fine for 3 months before I started getting the pain. I'd been jogging on the asphalt around my house. A few weeks before the pain, I changed my route and I was running on the concrete sidewalk.
I'll try all the remedies I've seen here (If I decide to run again) and try the asphalt route once more.

Thanks for all the help guys. I really appreciate it.