How do you avoid getting shin splints when starting to run more often?

Question

Drew Wartenburg · Answer

How do you avoid getting shin splints when starting to run more often? Shin splints is the common name for any sort of affliction that's going to affect the bones of the shin, either the the fibula or the tibia, and shin splints are an overuse injury which is going to occur typically when the amount of load, the amount of run stress that we're accumulating is beyond what the muscles can absorb and then they start to transfer too much of that force over to the bone. There are two things that you can do to help avoid shin splints as you come back into running, maybe begin to run or begin to ramp mileage as part of a running program. One is to keep your shins mobile and working smoothly and the way that you could do that is through some stretching, maybe some foam rolling, massage, or what people would call calf smashing to work out tightness in those in the shins. You know whether it's high or reaching way down even into the Achilles, you really want to keep that tissue mobile and working well. The other thing you can do in in concert with that is to strengthen the muscles of the calf. There are a couple different muscle groups, the soleus and the gastroc, and the soleus is often one that in distance runners is going to provide more problems. So there are two types of exercises, bent leg and straight leg, so you're going to want to look some of those up and integrate those into your routine.

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"How do you avoid getting shin splints when starting to run more often?"