What Can I Do About Shin Splints?
How to get rid of shin splints at home
Shin splints are a type of problem that if you have it you would do anything to get rid of it. Shin splints are really pesky and seemingly come out of nowhere.
Shin splints are an overuse injury of the muscles in the front of the shin.
The pain can be relatively widespread from the front of the shin, into the foot and wrapping around the lower leg.
Shin splints happen when the muscle on the front of the shin, the Tibialis Anterior muscle, works too hard, too hard and starts having some microtearing where it attaches to the shin bone. This muscle typically does the action of pulling your toes up toward your nose or up and inward. This muscle is crucial to helping you not trip over your feet when you walk.
This muscle can get overtired when you walk too much, too far or ramp up a program too quickly.
What’s an example of using this muscle too much and causing shin splints?
An example would be someone who normally walks throughout the day for their normal tasks in the home and at home, maybe they walk 5000 steps per day. Then they go on a vacation to Disney World and they end up walking 8,000 steps per day, every day for a week. The first few days the shins probably feel OK but by the end of the trip they are hurting.
What can I do about shin splints?
Just like with any new injury you want to rest the injured area for the first week or so (up to 14 days). And by rest I mean active rest.
What is active rest for shin splints?
Active rest means as best as you can avoiding the painful motions or activities, those activities that flare up the shin splint pain more than a 5/10 on the 1-10 pain scale.
What can I do for shin splints?
While you’re in active rest you should continue the exercises and activities that don’t bother the shins. Use ice on your shins daily for 7 days, 30 minutes at a time as often as you can throughout the day. Icing helps calm down inflammation.
What exercises can I do for shin splints?
After the 7 days of rest it’s best to start incorporating strengthening exercises to strengthen the tibialis anterior. Even though you likely aren’t going to go right back to a Disney vacation and walking so many steps every day in a row you will go back to your normal activity, but after 7-14 days of rest those muscles will get weaker. So if you jump right back into your normal routine of walking 5,000 steps per day those 5,000 steps may be too much. So you’ll be right back in the cycle of flaring up those shins. And it’ll feel like they’ll never heal.
So you’ll want to do some ankle exercises to strengthen that muscle to heal and prevent shin splints from coming back.
Why ankle exercises for shin splints? The muscles that are in our shins and calf muscles cross at the ankle and attach at the foot. In order to strengthen them we need to move our ankles.
What exercises can help shin splints?
And to strengthen the muscles in the ankle that support the lower leg you’ll also want to do:
Please remember this blog is meant for general information. This is not designed for specific medical advice. If you believe you have shin splints go to your local physical therapist for an evaluation and have a program designed to suit your specific needs.
To recap: Shin splints can be pesky and painful and they can come back over and over again, or never go away completely in the first place. Shin splints are an overuse of the muscles in front of the shins that lift our toes off the ground. We mainly use them when we walk so we don’t trip over our shoes. In general they tend to get overworked when we add a lot more walking or activity compared to our normal routine. To recover, do active rest for 7-14 days, then work on a strength routine of the muscles of the ankle to strengthen and support the leg for when you get back to your normal routine.
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