Fix Your Shin Splints

Shin splints can be the bane of exercising, often times putting us out of commission for a while. However, once you know a bit more about them and how to remedy them, you can add some exercise in your fitness plan to keep running, hitting the gym, whatever sort of training you prefer.

Anatomy

Let’s look at the anatomy of this easily fixed issue. The main muscle involved is the Tibialis Anterior. The muscle starts at the outer top part of you shin, runs down and across your shin and finishes on the inner part of your foot, at the base of your big toe.

The beautiful muscle is mainly responsible for our ankle dorsiflexion or in non geeky terms point you foot up. When you run, you push off the ground with your foot and the foot is pointing down and away form your leg. As you bring your leg back forward, your foot bends back up towards you leg, that’s the anterior tibialis working for you.

Our body doesn't have a lot of muscles that assist the anterior tib since is rather small action. However, even a small action, repeated frequently on an untrained muscle can strain it. In this particular case, it causes shin splints.