I think I'm developing them in my left leg chiefly, but both. Will I need surgery? Can I play through this pain? What should I do?
Shin Splints cheifly come after increasing your mileage or changing the surface you run on ie. a rubber track to cement. To relieve some of the pain try this: Change your shoes...New Balance is great for running. Take two advil with every meal. Ice them for 20 minutes 3 times a day. Have someone stretch out your shins with you. have someone hold you foot up while you push down and vice versa for 10 seconds a piece. This is what I have. Take care of it now! Don't run to the point that it hurts cuz you'll end up doing more damage and possibly ending up on crutches like me! Take care! Bethany!
Ok, I've dealt with shin splints many times. Here are some great things to do in order to heal your shin splints and to prevent them from happening again. 1. don't run on pavement, cement, or roads at all. do all your running on grass and on the soccer pitch. i had to start doing this myself because road running is bad for the joints and the knees and shins as well. stick to the grass and the pitch and your shin will stay healthy. 2. before training, heat the shin with a heating pad. this will loosen those muscles in the shin which cause those microtears that lead to shin splints. after heating the shins for a good 15-20 minutes with a pretty hot pad. stretch your shins by rotating your foot around and holding it in place at various angles for about 20 seconds in each position. this will stretch the muscle out more. 3. once out on the pitch, get a good 10 minute light jog around the pitch working up a good sweat. then stretch some more. 4. after training, ice your shins with an ice cup. this is simply taking a paper cup, filling it with water and freezing it(so you'll have to do this like the night before so you'll have the ice cup the day you train). then peel the cup so the ice is out some and rub the ice on the shin. the purpose of an ice cup is centralizing the iceing...this gets more of the cold directly onto the little tears. 5. take advil about 2 hours before training and at night with dinner. Take care...and remember train on grass. the pitch is your friend. stay away from roads! good luck. blake
gerr18, what about that gravel stuff if you have that around the field. Is that ok to run on? And I agree about running on concrete, it's much more painful.
gravel?!?! I've never seen that around a pitch before...so I wouldn't know much about running on that. Personally, I stick to grass and trail running. Trail running is something I do for a little change up every once in a while from the normal on field training...plus...it's kind of fun.
a couple of my friends get shin splints alot and they just ice their shins whenever they hurt and during games they wrap them.... I was told you're supposed to wrap them from the bottom up too. So maybe you could try that.