7 Tips to Beat Shin Splints

1. Run on soft impact surfaces such as trails or tracks.

2. Get a foot evaluation to make sure you are not overloading your foot’s medial side. You may need an orthotic to correct your mechanics.

3. Strengthen your lower leg in 4 directions using bands: dorisiflexion, plantarflexion, eversion and inversion. Do two sets of 10 in each direction with both feet daily during initial recovery period and then several times a week as maintenance.

4. ICE massage: Freeze Dixie cups of ice, peel back the paper and massage the front of the legs with the ice for 20 minutes several times a day. This decreases inflammation and stimulates blood flow to repair the injury.

5. NSAIDS: Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories are not for pain but actually act to decrease the explosion of inflammatory factories at your injury site…as a consequence, the pain decreases. It is not a pain masker… it is actually treating the problem.

6. Go to a sports doctor: If your pain is not responding to these steps in two weeks, your point tenderness increases, if you have osteopenia, or if you just need to know you are not hurting yourself.

7. Return to sport: When your pain is gone with rest, there is no pain with pressing on the front of your leg and does it not return with light activity, begin walk/running again on soft surfaces. Gradually increase your activity.