What are Shin Splints?

With the nice weather coming out way, more of us are getting out an running. Running for fun or preparing for a race. When starting running you may experience pain in the front of your shins. These are called Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome (Shin Splints). What happens when we get shin splints the muscle around the tibia gets overused and results in micro-stress fractures. Tibialis Anterior is the muscle that most often gets overused causing shin splints. This muscle is responsible for dorsiflexing and inverting the foot.

Most often you will experience pain after the exercise, however you might also notice an increase in discomfort during the run due to fatigue. The pain can be either on the inside of the shin or on the outside (depending on which muscle is affected the most).

Shin splints are common, roughtly 5% of all athletic injuries to the lower extremity.

It should resolve on its own however there are a number of things that can be done to resolve this discomfort quickly. Mean recovery time is about a week. To prevent it from happening in the future, strengthening specific muscles will be key! Next blog, we will take about self mobilization and treatment options to help!