Shin splints is a painful condition that does, as it’s name suggests, effect our shins. In the early stages of shin splints you may only notice a sporadic discomfort when you walk or run but as it worsens the frequency and intensity of the pain increases until it becomes impossible to ignore. The pain is felt along the edges of your shin bone (tibia) and your fibula the smaller bone in your lower leg. Shin splints have three different causes.
* Flat feet (collapsed arches)
* Running on hard surfaces like the road (and worse still if your running shoes are worn or of poor quality)
*Tight calf muscles (which can also cause plantar fasceitis on your soles)
Shin splints are a form of cumulative muscle micro trauma that effects where the muscles attached to the fibula and tibia and the fibrous tissue joining these two bones (called your interosseus membrane), become traumatised and inflamed. Shin splints can also effect the bones themselves.
Shin splints are common in long distance runners and in other high impact exercise that works your lower legs hard, like aerobics and netball. With each stride you take when you run the muscles in your lower legs can absorb 2 to 3 times the force of your normal body weight because the muscles absorb the force of your downward momentum. This is a type of negative contraction, negative contractions can strengthen your muscles quickly but do so at a cost to your body. Running down hills and rapid changes in the distances you run and even in the surfaces you run on can also make you more susceptible to shin splints.
Shin splints are more likely to happen if you allow your leg muscles to tighten through an absence of good quality stretching and never getting soft tissue therapy such as massage.
Rest, ice packs and anti-inflammatories within the first 48 hours of injury will lessen the symptoms, after this time therapies such as ultrasound passive mobilization, stretching and manipulation will help you recover. If the cause of your shin splints is flat feet (foot pronation or collapsed arches) foot orthotics continuously worn in your shoes will help with your structural problem.
Your calf muscles (gastrocnemius, soleus, tibialis, peronius) do alot of work, whenever you walk, run, climb or dance these muscles are constantly engaged and tend to suffer from neglect. It is rare for people getting a general massage to ask to have their calves worked along with their neck and back, even though their calves do more work than most other skeletal muscle in the body. Some people dont like having their calves worked because they get too sensitive, if you are having a massage and the pressure that the masseur or masseuse is using is too hard for your calves ask them to go softer rather than completely avoid them altogether, because they are sore for a reason and need attention.
If you Self Massage it is completely up to you how much pressure you use.
When the shock absorbers on your car wear out you replace them, you cannot do this to your body’s shock absorbers.