Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 123, October 2019 | Page 62

COACHING
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By the Coach Parry Team
4 SIMPLE STEPS TO
STAMP OUT SHIN SPLINTS
If you’ve got shin splints, you’ll know how painful the injury is, and how much it can affect your running – or even stop
you from running – but these four simple steps will get you back to pain-free running.
hours to two weeks, depending on how far you pushed yourself into the pain. The
first thing you need to do is rest. Yes, that’s the last thing a runner wants to hear...
but continuing to run is just going to make the shin splints worse. You can also
take an anti-inflammatory, if needed, to help speed up recovery, but this is not a
long-term solution.
The second thing you need to do is apply an ice pack to the affected shins three
times a day for 20 minutes. Doing this will also help settle the inflammation. Thirdly,
a very simple strength training programme will help strengthen your lower and
upper legs, as well as your glutes and core. Exercises like toe-raises, and forward
and lateral band walks, for example, are perfect. And then lastly, grab a foam roller
and foam roll your legs.
Prevention Better than Cure
What happens is the connective tissue between the muscle and the shin becomes
inflamed and it actually starts to pull away from the shin, causing shin pain. This
inflammation and pulling away starts putting pressure on the tibia, and if you don’t
treat it, and keep running through it, shin splints will ultimately turn into a pre-stress
fracture (which is a little bit of bony oedema and bleeding on the actual bone).
Finally, if you still continue running, it could turn into a stress fracture of the tibia.
More often than not, shin splints occur as we build up too quickly and don’t allow
our bodies to adapt to the increased training load. This happens all too often when
people start running in order to improve their quality of life, or because they want
to run a marathon (or if you’re a South African, to run the Comrades Marathon).
Whatever the reason for starting, these people pull out whatever shoes they’ve got
in their closet, so they very seldom start off in the right pair of running shoes. Their
excitement and exuberance to get started, plus very often incorrect footwear, is a
lethal combination when it comes to shin splints.
The other major issue with shin splints is that people often try to ignore the pain.
Remember, pain is a signal from your body telling you something isn’t right, but
many runners think it will get better as they get a little bit fitter. That, unfortunately,
is generally not the case, and this is why runners often end up with quite a serious
case of shin splints. The good news is that even if it is serious, it shouldn’t take
more than a week or two to deal with the actual pain.
4 Simple Healing Steps
To heal shin splints from the acute phase can take anywhere in the region of 48
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ISSUE 124 OCTOBER 2019 / www.modernathlete.co.za
If the pain comes in spite of building up slowly, I would suggest that you go see
a physiotherapist. Couple that with seeing a biokineticist, because there is a
good chance that you have an imbalance between your anterior and posterior
compartments, as we call it. What this effectively means is the muscles on the front
of your leg are stronger or weaker than the muscles on the back of your leg. Due
to this imbalance, there is strain being placed on those anterior muscles, causing
them to become inflamed.
Thirdly, make sure you are in the correct footwear. Ask your bio or physio to assess
your running gait and suggest what the appropriate style of running shoe would
be for your running style. If you have flat feet and need arch support, for example,
then get into a pair of running shoes that offer the necessary support.
S
hin splints is one of the most common running injuries, especially amongst
novice runners, and is also one of the most misunderstood. Before we get
into how to treat shin splints, let’s talk about what they are. A common
misconception is that shin splints is an actual condition of the shin bone, or tibia.
It’s actually normally one of the muscles that run down the tibia causing the pain in
your shin. Typically, it is the medial (inner) side of the shin that hurts, but you can
also have posterior shin splints, which causes the outside of the shin to hurt.
Ideally, avoiding shin splints altogether would be the best case scenario, but how
do you ensure that you do not get shin splints? Firstly, I would encourage you to
build up your training load and mileage really slowly. Follow a structured running
training plan that will give your body time to adapt to the increased training.