Hi, and welcome back to the Mohsin Salya blog.
Shin splints are some of the most common injuries for runners, and it’s very rare that a runner will go through their life without suffering this at some point. It’s not just runners that suffer – shin splints are common among dancers, gymnasts and military recruits too.
In runners however, shin splints are a more common injury for beginners and long-distance runners, but are both curable and preventable. In this blog post I’ll be explaining what shin splints are, how to treat them and how to prevent them in the future.
‘Shin splints’ is actually a term used to describe a wide range of lower-leg injuries and lower leg exercise-induced pain. However, in the running world, shin splints injury is usually the medical condition known as medial tibial stress syndrome – MTSS for short.
The main symptom of shin splints is a dull, aching pain in the front of the shins. This is usually felt in an area measuring roughly 5 inches in length on either side of the shinbone or in the muscles surrounding it.
Shin splints occur in most cases as a direct result of the repeated impact to the bone tissue, tendons and muscles surrounding the tibia. This leads to inflammation of the connective tissue that covers and joins the muscles of the lower leg to the shin bone.
Shin splints are not a serious injury, provided you treat it before it has chance to become chronic. Doing the following as soon as you start to feel any shin pain should do the trick.
If the pain persists and symptoms fail to improve, you should always seek medical advice.
It’s true that prevention is better than a cure. Here are a few measures you can take to try and prevent shin splints:
Until next time,
Mohsin Salya