Steps To Take When You Get Shin Splints

One common injury that many people who are involved in running-type of activities suffer from is shin splints.

When you first start noticing that you’re suffering from shin splints, or suspect that might be the case, you need to take immediate action so that you can work to heal the problem. If you let the shin splints persist and just keep training on it, you may wind up injured if you’re not careful.

Here are the steps to take to treat shin splints.

Rest Immediately

The first thing you should do, even though it will likely be hard, is take time away from the activity that’s causing you pain.

This really is paramount because if you don’t do this, they likely will get worse.

That constant pounding repetition on the shin bone is going to cause further pain, making it very hard for you to continue.

If you do want, you can participate in activities that aren’t weight bearing and don’t stress the shin bone, so that’s an option for those of you who are really not keen on the idea of complete time off.

Ice

Next, you’ll want to try and ice the area as often as possible. This is important when you initially start feeling the pain to try and stop the inflammation from taking place, which further increases the pain.

Aim to ice the shin splint area for fifteen minutes, three to five times a day.

After about a week or two, if the shin splints are still persisting, then you can move to alternating heat and ice for your treatment protocol.

Strength Training Activities

After you’ve rested and iced the area, then you’ll want to perform some strength training activities to help strengthen the muscles and ligaments around the shin bone.

The exercises are going to be what’s really critical to help preventing the shin splints from occurring again in the future, since if the underlying problem (which often is a weak muscle or ligament) is not strengthened, the problem is not really solved.

Your injury may be masked or healed for now, but it will be back.

Check Running Form and Shoes

Finally, the last thing you’ll want to do is check your running form and your running shoes. Both of these can play critical roles in you experiencing shin splints if they are not proper, so it pays to spend some time looking into this.

Consult a running coach to go over how you’re running and then look into getting a professional fitting for your running shoes.

So, whether you’re just looking to prevent shin splints, or you already have them and now need to find a way to heal the pain, be sure you follow these tips.

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Shin Splint Treatment Methods

If you are currently suffering from shin splints, it’s important that you understand what the top shin splint treatment methods are so that you can put this potentially chronic injury behind you.

Shin splint treatment methods are going to vary depending on the nature of the injury and just how severe it is, but rest is always at the very top of any treatment program. In fact, by catching the shin splints early and letting yourself get the rest you need, you can really improve your chances for a quick recovery.

Here are the big treatment methods you need to know.

Shift Your Workouts Around

In some cases, when the shin splints are not all that severe, you can continue to workout, provided you change the nature of the workouts so they are less impact in nature.

For example, instead of doing your usual morning runs, you might instead move your workouts to the bike or potentially even the elliptical (this may still give some people some problems, however).

If you are involved in a running sport such as soccer, football, tennis, or others similar in nature, then it likely will be a good idea for you to just rest though as it’s going to be pretty hard to continue on.

Focus On Strength Training

Next, if you still want to maintain some form of workout, don’t overlook switching your training focus around while you have the shin splints and instead working on building up your strength. While you may not be able to run and work on your endurance, you can certainly strengthen your muscles, which will then translate to you having a better running performance overall.

You may need to avoid certain weight lifting types of exercises such as squats, deadlifts, leg extensions, and lunges, but you can definitely work the entire upper body and most exercises for the hamstrings should be alright as well.

Try out various exercises in the gym and see which ones cause you problems or not.

Use Rubber Tubing To Work The Calf and Shin Muscles

As far as exercises go that are directly focused on curing your shin splints, you should consider using a rubber tube and practicing toe flexes and extensions.

This will help to strength the small muscle in front of the tibia (shin) bone, which can play a major role in causing shin splints to occur.

If this muscle is weak, it is something that you definitely need to address ASAP.

Consider Some Anti-Inflammatory

Finally, you might want to consider taking some anti-inflammatory drugs to help reduce the inflammation and swelling around the shin, helping to also alleviate some of the pain.

Do note though that you should not be taking these in order to mask the pain so you can still run.

Rest really is going to be absolutely crucial here, so it’s something that you can’t avoid doing.

So, keep these tips in mind if you’re suffering from shin splints. The earlier you can start treating the shin splints, the faster you’ll be able to recovery from it.

Review of Shin Splints No More

I probably don't need to tell you that suffering from shin splints is a very painful process.

Shin splints are one of the more serious injuries that can affect anyone who is performing an activity that involves a lot of running or weight bearing activities, and one that unfortunately, can take years to get over - if you do, in fact, ever get over it at all.

I was there. After two years of having this nagging pain in my lower leg, I finally went to the doctor and was diagnosed with having shin splints.

Immediately I figured I could just use self-treatment - after all, that's what I had been doing for so long already and while it wasn't really getting better, it was manageable.

So, I continued on with my self-treatment for another long two years, at which point it did get worse.

The pain from my shin splints became so bad that I could no longer run - which was devastating as you can probably imagine.

It was then that I figured it was time to seek proper treatment.

I first went to see a physiotherapist about the problem and they started using electrical stimulation to help reduce the inflammation, as well as providing ultrasound treatments to help ease the pain.

It did help, but after a few weeks off, I went out for my morning run and ten minutes into it, the pain was there again.

Disappointed, I decided to seek out more knowledge about the condition, hoping through my reading I would find a solution.

I checkout out a number of running books from the library and they did address the issue of shin splints, but didn't really provide me with thorough descriptions of what i could do to help solve the problem.

Then one day I came across the Shin Splints No More program. At first I was really reluctant to even consider it - after all, you always see those advertisy type of websites online.

But as the pain persisted and wasn't getting any better, I figured at less than $60, I really didn't have much to lose. I was paying my personal trainer more than that by the hour, and they sure weren't helping me out to fix the problem.

First off, one thing I should mention with the program is that it does go into great detail about the causes behind shin splints. So, there is a lot of background information available on that.

If you're just looking for a solution, you could probably skip ahead a bit until it gets into treatments (which I'll talk about in a second).

For those of you who are reading this though and are in the very initial stages of developing shin splints and the pain has just started, you will benefit greatly from reading this thoroughly.

It opened my mind about what was actually the root cause of my pain - and trust me, it was factors I hadn't even considered. It was really hard to believe that little things I was doing in my every day life was causing me so much pain while I ran.

Thankfully, once I was aware of these issues and took a second to correct them (and it literally was that easy - just a simple adjustment), pain started to subside.

So, first off, keep that in mind. While you can treat the condition, if you don't fix the issues, those shin splints will be back.

Moving on then, we come to the treatment session, where the author talks about what you should be doing to treat your shin splints.

There were certainly treatments mentioned that I could have found online for free - I had come across them earlier when I was doing my massive info search initially.

But, there were some things in the book mentioned that I hadn't seen before, and I do really feel made a big difference.

So, I guess it depends upon the severity of your shin splints. If they are just minor, you might be able to get away with the standard treatment methods such as RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation).

But, if you've been in pain for a while now, you'll need to kick this up a level - at least I needed to do so. I just wish I would have known this the two years prior to reading the book. It would have saved a lot of pain and frustration.

The third major component of the Shin Spints No More book discusses a large variety of exercises you can do to help overcome your shin splints.

This was actually the part I liked best and what I feel made it worth my money. There was a whole library of different exercises included, some of which I hadn't even imaged doing before.

It did take time putting these exercises in place, but please try your best to do them. For me, honestly, it probably made the difference between recovering and staying in pain.

I was suffering from a number of weak points around my knee cap, which was the leading cause behind my shin splints, not to mention that my ankle tendons were a lot weaker than I thought, which was also a contributing factor.

After starting up these shin splint exercises, it took about two weeks for me to notice a really solid improvement, and about four weeks later, I completed my first run - pain-free at that.

It had been about three years since I felt no pain whatsoever when I ran, so you can only image how good that day felt.

So, to summarize, I do feel that if you're currently deep into shin splints, or if you just think you might be on the verge of getting this injury, you give the Shin Splints No More program a try.

You can certainly find a lot of information online for free first - and I recommend you do; the more information you have going into treatment the better, but do keep in mind that the book really is all-inclusive in nature, so it does save a fair bit of time just getting that information consolidated all at once, not to mention obviously that there was a good amount of information I found in it that I didn't find elsewhere.

If you are nervous about downloading something online, try not to be too concerned. It's actually easier to follow this way and you get instant, access, which was nice.

I was able to save it right to my laptop which made it convenient to read through during slow times at work.

Oh, and one other nice thing is the free video bonus. I personally like reading and understanding that way, so I had no trouble just following the book itself, but for those who are more visual leaners, the video addition makes a really good touch and can speed up the learning curve and get you seeing results sooner.



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