Rehab shin pain

Shin pain can be classified in three ways: medial tibial stress syndrome (MTSS), Tibial stress reaction, or Tibial stress fracture. For simplicities sake, we’ll deal with the lesser MTSS. Everyone with shin pain starts with MTSS and progresses from there, so it’s a good place to start.

Why do we get MTSS? For some reason, the force of your foot landing on the ground with each step is being directed directly to the tissues or tendons beside the tibia, causing a form of tendonitis. This could be due to weakness of the tendons, decreased mobility of the foot/ankle joints, or overuse of the tendons. With each footfall while running, the foot bones, tendons and ligaments (which hold up your arches) tries to disperse the force of landing. So how do we try to prevent this from happening?

The best form of prevention is to try not to overtrain in the first place. Try to adhere to the rule of 10%. That is do not increase your running distance by more than 10% per week. By increasing your distance too quickly, you’ll obviously increase your foot contacts quickly and open your self up to increased stress to the lower legs.

You can also train the lower legs eccentrically by stepping off of a six inch box and practice landing. Decelerating, or slowing down, is a very important skill to improve agility and train the muscles of the lower leg. Try stepping off of the box and landing on the pads of your feet as quietly as possible. Three sets of 5-8 reps should suffice. To increase the intensity, try two footed hops over small hurdles. Again, focus on landing as quietly as possible and this time spend less than a second on the ground before your rebound to your next hop. Try 3-4 sets of six hops.

Give it a shot and let us know how it goes. Log on to www.lacrossestrengthforums.com to discuss these exercises and others.