Shin splints...

[zerohour]

I've been getting pain in my shin (inside left leg) for a couple of months now, and have been to my specialist about it, who says it is definitely a form of shin splints, where small parts of the muscle membrane is becoming detached from the bone. Looks like it came about from jogging - on bad surfaces, bad positioning of my foot when running, possibly badly fitting shoes, etc.

 

I was wondering if anybody else has had this problem, and how long did it take to fully heal to the point where you could be as active as you were before the injury? What methods did you use to heal it? At the moment I have to rest it, ice it or put heat on it, take anti-inflammatory pills, and my specialist has suggested physiotherapy. If nothing else works, it may require surgery, but I think that's a last resort.

 

It looks like this injury is going to cost me a career in the Navy (which I was so close to being accepted into ) and it's obviously affecting my Martial arts training. I really don't want to be inactive for too long because of this, so if anybody's had a similar experience i'd really like to hear any suggestions, etc...

[battousai16]

um... i've had shin splints a few times. if the pain got really bad i'd ice 'em, but that was about once a week or so. generally i could keep going, it would just hurt a lot of anything touched 'em. they go back to normal in a few weeks, but it is possible to injure them further if you're to hard on them while they're trying to heal, so... i dunno, i've never had a real problem with 'em, i think you're almost over killing it. i've never heard of surgery for shin splints...

 

oh, and i think your navy dreams are still in reach, don't sweat it.

[Jinxx0r]

I used to get this all the time. Basically the muscle in the front, tibialis anterior, is underdeveloped. It's basically the muscle that pulls your foot upward. A couple of things you can do to help recovery and development.

 

1) RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation).

 

2) sports massage of the underdeveloped muscle. This site explains it pretty well: http://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/cybertherapist/front/lowerleg/shinsplints.htm

 

3) Toe tapping excercise. Sit in a chair, barefoot, and tap the ground gently with your big toe. Figure out your fatigue point and repeat on both sides. This will help build this muscle.

 

4) Sit in a chair and draw each letter of the alphabet with your big toe (as if it were a crayon ). Do the whole alphabet, with each foot, each day. Sounds funny, but works.

 

I did all of this over a couple of weeks to rehab my tibialis anterior muscle to allow me to run without pain. This is one of the most annoying "injuries" to have.

[AngelaG]

Odd. I was led to believe that shin splints were minute little stress fractures in the shin bone.

[Jinxx0r]

This is a better explanation of the area that is probably causing you the problem (as this is the most common area of the injury)

 

http://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/cybertherapist/front/lowerleg/inflamtibtensheath.htm

 

it's on that same page, but there are a bunch of links that you may miss this one.

[battousai16]

my guess would be that shin splints is a catch-all term that just describes anything wrong with your shins? you have 'em when you have 'em, they're shins that really hurt.

[zerohour]

Thanks for those links Jinxx.

 

And Battousai, you're right - i've been told by my specialist that shin splints is just a broad term to describe any shin pain. That's why I had to have x-rays and some other scan, I think it was called an MRI, to determine exactly what had happened.