Holistic Corrective Exercise For Fitness Professionals

I’m going to share 5 tips that will help you prevent shin splints from running. It’s critical that you have a basic understanding of the true cause. Once you know the cause it will help you understand the prevention strategies better.

It Isn’t Really Shin Splints After All

True shin splints are tiny fractures located in the main weight bearing bone in the lower leg known in clinical terms as the tibia.

Just because you feel pain in your shins doesn’t automatically mean it’s from shin splints. This is especially true if the pain goes away in a couple of days after you rest.

What’s Really Happening

When you feel pain in your shins during or after running, it might not actually be from shin splints after all.

The tibialis anterior is a muscle located along the shin that helps prepare your foot for landing after each stride. It functions by pulling your foot upward (dorsiflexion) so you land with proper heel strike.

In many cases, the tibialis anterior is repetitively stressed resulting in fatigue (burning sensation) and overuse injuries.

The Causes Of Shin Splint Type Pain

When the tibialis anterior is overused, painful symptoms are often mistaken for shin splints.  However, these painful symptoms are often due to weakness of the hip extensors. The hip extensors are meant to help extend the leg behind you as push off the ground with each stride.

When the hip extensors are weak, the push off the ground is limited and other muscles end up compensating.

Compensatory strategies involve overuse of  the hamstrings, quadriceps, calves, plantar muscles underneath the foot, and/or the tibialis anterior. When repeatedly overused injuries such as hamstring strains and tears, knee pain, plantar fasciitis and “shin splints” often result.

5 Shin Splint Prevention Tips

Now that you have an understanding of shin pain and its causes we can focus on how to prevent shin splint pain.

1. Strengthen the hip extensors- Some excellent hip extension exercises for preventing shin splints are basic squats, deadlifts and lunges.

2. Minimize single-joint lower body exercises- Single-joint exercises are some of the least effective for treating shin splints. The reason is because most are performed seated, lying or standing in an apparatus that provides all of the stability for you and do not effectively mimic running mechanics.

When you run you’re on your feet not supported by a machine. So, your own body has to stabilize itself as you are on one leg the majority of the time. If you aren’t training the actual movements and positions similar to running then you are making yourself prone to injuries to your shins, ankles, knees, hips and lower back.

3. Minimize running on the treadmill- Treadmills are a great piece of equipment to run indoors or while you watch TV at the gym. But, if you are trying to avoid shin splints then you’ll want to avoid the treadmill as much as you can and run on a solid surface instead.

Treadmills operate with a belt so it’s harder to get a solid push off because the belt is moving underneath you which can result in overuse of the tibialis anterior.

4. If using a treadmill use incline rather than speed- If your only option is using a treadmill then keep the speed down a bit from your normal pace and substitue by increasing the incline only slightly.

Running on an incline can help reduce shin splint pain because you naturally have to push off the ground harder using your hips to move uphill.

5. Use effective training combos- There are a number of exercises and sequences that can help you prevent shin splint pain if you know how to do them.

An effective training combo can be performing 1 set of squats for 10 repetitions per set @ 60-80% of your 10 rep-max, then follow that up with a 3-to-5-minute run. Repeat this circuit 3-5 times.

The reason this is so effective is because performing a set of squats will activate the hip extensors in a way that programs them to work during the run. Think of it as turning on “switches” that tell your body what muscles to use.

There are many different ways you can do this and these 5 tips can effectively help prevent shin splints and other painful conditions. It’s just a matter of conditioning the right muscles to do the work.

Share on Facebook