Shin Splints

“Shin splints” is the common term health professionals and athletes use to describe general shin pain during activity. In and of itself, shin splints are not a defined medical condition but rather the feeling that results from several different lower leg conditions which cause pain through the shin.

Shin splints are most commonly incurred from too much running or walking, or improper technique doing either running or walking. Believe it or not there is a right and wrong way for your body to run and walk within the confines of physical laws and if your body operates slightly differently, you will most likely have to change something or become injured. While the physical structure of the body is designed to walk and run, I personally feel that it was not meant to do either in a straight line for an extended period of time as in a marathon or long charity walk. I’m not saying that these endeavors should not be pursued, just understand that doing these activities offer your body to an inherent likelihood for injury.

Pain in your shin often stems from a break down in the ability of the foot and lower leg to support your bodies impact with the ground during walking or running. Each time you take a step walking, your heel pounds on the ground with a force up to four times your body weight! If you are running, this impact can be increased to nearly ten times your body weight! Imagine a thousand pounds of force striking the small bones of your foot all at once. That is what walking and running do and in point of fact, that is how the body is designed to work. Because you have so many bones in your foot and ankle, your leg is able to absorb and disperse the shock of impact with the ground evenly and without damage to surrounding tissues. If you have an imbalance in these absorptive abilities, however, one of the common results is shin splints.

Shin splints feels like a bunch of small pins being stuck into your leg up and down the length of your tibia which is in fact your shin bone. Like so many other pains, this comes from a swelling of flexible structures (muscles, tendons, fascia, connective tissue) in and around the shin location. Initially, shin splints are annoying and simply cause a little pain at the beginning of running or walking. If not treated, however, they can become debilitatingly painful and even be responsible for structural damage to the bones of the shin and ankle.

The most common causes of shin splints are weaknesses in the muscles of the lower leg relative to one another. If your calf is much tighter and stronger than its contrasting muscle, the tibialis anterior, running could cause you shin splints. To find the tibialis anterior muscle, put your hand over the front of your shin with your foot flat on the ground. Now, keeping your heel on the ground, lift your toe and the ball of your foot as high as you can off the ground. That shifting muscle you feel to the right of your right shin or to the left of your left shin bone is the tibialis anterior. Weakness in this muscle will eventually force surrounding support muscles to become overworked as you run or walk in an effort to do that movement you just performed - pulling your foot upward - a necessary movement for ambulation (walking or running).

Another possible weakness could be in a similar muscle called the tibialis posterior. This muscle can’t easily be felt because it sits on the under side of your shin bone. The tibialis posterior is a very strong tendonous structure that helps lower and lift the big arch of your foot properly each time you step - again to absorb impact. If this muscle is weak or overworked because of some other weakness (like the tibialis anterior), it will become inflamed and painful. This is the most common pain someone will experience with shin splints.

Shin splints are most frequently caused by trying to do too much too quickly. If your body is not recently used to running or walking on an extended basis, it will need a proper progression of increased use in order to acclimate it to the new activity. Even if you used to be a runner, if you haven’t done it for a few months, you will need to alter your training scheme to allow for a rebuilding phase to take care of your lower leg and re-acquaint it with the rigors of consistent running.

If you already have shin splints, you need to back way off of your current training routine. Stop running or walking and take up swimming, biking, rowing or some other activity that doesn’t involved repetitive foot impact with the ground. Stay away from running or walking until at least two weeks after the pain subsides all the while taking a mild anti-inflammatory drug like ibuprophen or acetominophen. Ice your shins after every workout and continue taking the drug and applying the ice when you are finally able to return to your walking or running. You will probably experience a little shin pain when you return to your impact activity, so start out slow - only 10 to 20 minutes at the start and work up to longer times as your body allows. Remember to ice after every workout!

To help avoid shin splints in the first place and to help your body rehabilitate from existing shin splints, try the simple exercise of walking around on your heels a few times a day. Any time you are walking around - in the kitchen, at work, around the house, or even at the mall if you are so inclined, walk exclusively on your heels with your toes pulled up toward your shin as high as you can get them. Continue walking this way for 3 or more minutes. Your shins should burn pretty significantly by the end of the timed period. This burning is sort of what mild shin splints would feel like. Doing this exercise for a short period of time (like 3 minutes) forces those support muscles of the foot and lower leg to work harder than they normally would by removing some of the absorptive ability of your foot, thereby strengthening the support. Similar to a baseball player swinging a heavy bat before going to the plate, this strengthening helps your body be stronger than the future stresses you will be enacting upon it.

Shin splints are no small matter. They definitely hinder performance and can indicate irreparable damage being done to your body so don’t try to “work through the pain”. At minimum an ice treatment should be followed after every physical activity but the best way to remove them is stop the activity that is causing the pain all together and then slowly work back into that activity (running or walking) after your body has healed. If you ignore nagging injuries like shin splints they will just spell more debilitating problems down the road.