Exercise to relieve the symptoms of shin splints

You may have read in my last few posts that I’ve started to get pain in my shins which could be shin splints. Now this may be down to a few things…

• I’ve only just started running again after my stress fracture.
• My custom made running orthotics are still quite new.
• My running orthotics aren’t fitted as well as I thought – and therefore I’m still overpronating. This may have resolved earlier today when I visited my podiatrist to tweak the orthotics.
• My lower legs just aren’t strong enough!

Now, this last point is the interesting one. After much searching on the Internet most of reasons I read about shin splints were around overpronation. I then found a discussion around the fact that for every body movement there are two muscles involved – on doing the pushing and one doing the pulling if you like. Now, when the foot lands in running there is an obvious downward movement of the foot from the ankle. The opposite movement to this is the foot being pulled upwards towards the shin. Now, if the muscles aren’t strong enough at the front of the shin there is an imbalance… leading to injury of these front muscles – and an increased chance of shin splints.

So, exercises to strengthen these front muscles are a good idea. I discussed this with my podiatrist as it was a concept she had talked to me in the past about – that is, two muscles working together in every action.

Here’s the exercise…

• Stand with your feet about one foot length from a wall with your back to the wall.
• Lean back so that your shoulders and bottom are resting against the wall.
• Pull your feet up towards your shins as far as you can.
• Slowly lower your feet until your toes are about an inch off of the floor.
• Repeat this 15 times.
• Raise the feet again towards the shins but this time when you get to the top lower them down only a couple of inches and then raise them and lower them very quickly in short sharp pulsing movements. Do 15 of these ‘pulses’.

Now this sounds really easy – and the first part actually is. But I swear if you’re like me once you do the pulses your shins will be screaming! You should keep this to one set until you can handle them easily – then move on to doing a second and third set.