What are shin splints?
Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome (MTSS), more commonly referred to as shin splints, is a common overuse injury that affects the tibia (shin bone). It is characterised by pain along the inner edge of the tibia, spanning an area of 5cm or more. It often occurs in people or athletes involved in running, jumping, or other high-impact activities. It is typically caused by repetitive stress and strain on the muscles, tendons and bone in the area.
One of the primary reasons that MTSS occurs is due to load increases or training errors which exceed the tissues current capacity to manage. In other words, doing too much too soon. This can be a tricky part of any training program, as the body needs to be challenged and pushed for gains in performance to be ascertained. Issues arise when the load increases at such a rate that the body has no time to adapt. This can lead to tissue overload, and in the case of MTSS, this overload occurs at the shin. As a general rule, training load week to week shouldn’t be increased by a more than 10% of the week before. This allows for the body to be challenged enough for adaptation, whilst ensuring your risk of tissue overload stays low. However, the 10% rule should be taken with a grain of salt as it doesn’t account for other factors which can impact on tissue loading. For example, in runners this may include terrain, hills/slopes, intensity and frequency. Other factors which may interact with these training errors are biomechanics, footwear, weight, and muscle imbalance/weakness/endurance.
Doing something about shin splints when it first arises is really important. As physios, there’s a whole range of things we can do to help guide you through the injury, and back to activity. This may include some manual therapy to start off with to get your pain under control, followed by exercises to help restore your load capacity and keep you moving. Finally, we’ll arm you with the tools to self-manage the condition and your training loads to reduce your risk of re-injury. Managing shin splints doesn’t have to mean an extended period away from your favourite activity, particularly if you identify it early. If you’re someone impacted by shin splints or any other issues which you think may be related to your training loads, then give us a call so we can help keep you moving.