♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
(Bob claps)
- Hi folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist
- Two most famous physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- How to cure shin splints in about five minutes.
Now, we're not going to exaggerate here.
It's not one time five minutes
and your shin splints are gonna be gone.
We're saying, five minutes at a time.
You're gonna have to devote to this.
So maybe twice a day or once a day, five minutes.
- Right. Precise and there's a few things in there,
but you know we're not just trying
to pull the wool over your eyes
but it doesn't take a great deal of time to work on them
and then, you know,
you do it consistently which is kind of the way life is,
you know?
- Right. And especially if you,
you know, have true shin splints
and you're not having a stress fracture.
If you have a stress fracture in the lower limb.
- Sure.
- None of this is gonna help.
(Brad laughs)
I mean, it isn't.
Only thing that's gonna help is rest, on that.
- Right. And you know, we do have a video to how to test
- Distinguish between the two.
- Right.
- Right. So by the way, if you're new to our channel
- Oh that's right, Bob.
- Please take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos, how to stay healthy, fit, pain free.
And we upload every day.
Also,
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Bob and Brad.
We have the sign made up just for that purpose.
- Yes.
- Cause we promised you that we're gonna send positive vibes
your way if you send us likes our way.
- Yeah. Kind of got lost there.
- It's reciprocating.
- Yeah. We're doing this kind of a thing.
- Yeah.
- Yeah. So shin splits Bob, there's two types.
Okay. And actually I sacrificed my leg, Bob.
- You sacrificed your body.
- I did.
We, I was gonna use Sam,
but I said, no I'm gonna just actually show,
expose myself a little bit here.
- Brad, it's a family show.
(both laughing)
- Well, this is as far as you get.
- [Bob] He's even got the words on there. Letters on there.
- Abbreviation here.
So, there's the anterior tib and the posterior tib.
And those are the muscles that can develop
the pain causing shin splints.
Now, if you look at my wonderful drawing here,
see the red lines represent the muscle belly
of the anterior tibialis
and the bone they connect to the anterior tib.
- [Bob] Right.
- [Brad] Anterior tibialis.
- [Bob] Tibia.
- [Brad] There you go. Can you, you got that Lanny?
- [Bob] Well, it's the tibia.
- [Brad] Tibia?
- [Bob] Yeah.
- [Brad] I'm sorry.
- [Bob] The muscle.
- [Brad] See, that's why I need a little help
because, you know.
- [Bob] So the tibia and you know,
it's not just the muscle,
it's the tenderness material that attaches to it.
- [Brad] Right. So there's actually micro tears
where the muscle connects to the bone
and that can cause pain.
- [Bob] Right. Big, a good deal of pain.
- [Brad] Right.
So they're typically along here,
more on the outside or the lateral side,
if you have anterior tibialis problems
if it's on the medial side, the inside here, if you look
- [Bob] Can you turn a little more Brad?
- [Brad] Oh, yeah.
- [Bob] There you go.
- [Brad] It's tough.
Tough at this age with your leg up,
here we got,
now this muscle of pulse here too is actually deep inside.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- [Brad] It's not the muscle where you,
right under your skin,
but it's deep in there
and it connects to the bone on the back side.
And that's where the micro tears occur for that.
So there's different ways to treat each one of these.
- [Bob] Each one, right.
- [Brad] So that's what we need to go over.
- [Bob] Which one do you want to go over first, Brad?
- [Brad] Well, Bob, I was thinking the anterior tib.
- [Bob] you got the power.
- Now, causes,
what can cause these?
a few things is like if you're the weekend warrior,
you don't do too much running
and then you go out and run particularly on harder surfaces,
you're more likely to develop shin splints.
- You also have to watch on the the camber of the surface,
you know?
- Sure.
- If your road is slanted one way,
and you're always running the same direction on that,
you wanna switch it up once in a while.
- Right.
- Because that puts a certain stress on your lower limb.
- Right.
- That is more likely to cause you
to get shin splints on one side.
- Yeah. But we revealing all the secrets.
- Yeah.
- You know, if you can run on the grass or you know,
trails, dirt trails that's better than running on concrete.
- Definitely. When I cross train, you know,
my son was a college runner
as your daughter's a college athlete too,
and he actually, I mean,
unfortunately and with a therapist, as a father.
Unfortunately, he developed shin splints as a senior.
And he had to give up his season
because I think his was to the point
where he was getting some little micro fractures.
- Sure. It was,
- Yeah. It just wasn't going away.
- Well, you know, at that college level, those,
they push pretty hard
- And they do.
And that's the thing,
my son's kind of a big guy for a runner.
- Yeah.
- And he's pounding on the surface
and they try to increase his miles
but they did a lot of cross training.
- Sure.
- I mean, they always had one day a week
where they did not do any running.
- So bicycling and running, get that involved.
- And swimming
- Yep. You bet. Non-weight and whatnot.
So they wanna know,
the people here really wanna know what these,
- Five minute treatments are.
- Yeah. We're babbling away here.
So for the anterior tib,
we're gonna start out with the foam roller.
This is one nice little thing that you can do is,
now this is a six inch foam roller.
This is a lower density one. So it's not really hard.
And that's what you're going to want to use.
Now, this is the new one that we've just got.
- Yeah. This is from OPTP also.
And it's kind of a smaller one
and I thought it's kind of neat
because it's also kind of a softer one.
- Right.
- So,
- And look at the color, it's beautiful.
- Ah, beautiful.
- So you're gonna get on,
on your foam roller and the reason a soft one works better
cause you're going over that tibia.
And that gets really painful
if you were to use the black roller or the hard one.
So I'm gonna work this,
and you can just work it back and forth, and back and forth.
I'm adjusting my weight by my hands here.
If I want to put a lot of weight on it, you know, you could
but you're probably gonna start out more gentle with it.
And you're gonna roll on here for, you know,
at least a minute or so working that anterior tube muscle.
And what should happen is, it may be painful at first,
and after about 20 seconds of doing it,
it should start to feel better.
And you know, you're doing the right thing.
Then if it just irritates it and gets worse and worse,
it's too flared up.
Yeah, you're gonna need a cold pack on it.
- [Bob] You need to ice it up.
- And give it some time off.
- [Bob] This is a good thing to do before running even,
or before the event.
- Sure.
- [Bob] You know, whether it's basketball or whatever it is.
And Brad are you gonna mention stretching that much?
- Oh yeah. You better believe it.
That's the second one.
Now you could stretch before you do this or after.
And the nice thing about this one is, it's easy to stretch.
You could just go like this and sit on it and you know,
gently sit and you're getting a nice stretch
because we're plantar flexing that muscle,
the ankle which pulls and stretches.
- [Bob] Wasn't it sit on it, Potsie, from Happy Days?
- Oh yeah. That's right.
- [Bob] Yeah. Sit on it.
- Yeah. Been on long time ago.
- [Bob] Yeah. Somebody will remember that.
- You can just planter flex like this
and this motion will stretch that muscle as well.
You can do some massage with your hands,
your thumbs on there.
- [Bob] Oh yeah. Self massage is really a good one to do,
especially if you're,
you know sitting in the office or sitting in a classroom.
You can,
- Oh, look at that. I'm getting rid of red lines already.
- [Bob] Yeah. You're rubbing it away.
- I should have used a Sharpie instead of water based ones.
Bob, can you hand me that?
- [Bob] Sure. Purewave?
- Yeah. Give me the Purewave.
Now, if you, the nice thing about doing a massage is
you to get a little more specific to that spot
but your fingers get sore after about a minute and tired.
So if you use, if you wanna get out the massager
that's gonna help that out.
The Purewave is probably what we like for sure, the best.
It percuss and it gets quite aggressive.
- [Bob] Yeah. It's kind of like a jackhammer, almost.
- Right. Yeah, except for,
they got this nice squishy air foam head.
- [Bob] Air filled head, yeah.
- And that works nice cause when you get close to that bone,
it's not gonna hurt.
You're gonna respond, have a good response.
- [Bob] Yeah. They have different heads you can put on.
You might want to go with a pointer head eventually
if you wanna really dig into the muscle.
- Yeah. Once you find that soft spot.
Oh yeah.
- [Bob] So again, I, you know,
my son was doing all these things
and again I don't mean to be a pessimist here,
but you know, if it's, if there's actually a fracture,
none of this is gonna help.
- [Brad] Yeah.
If the tibia has got a hairline fracture in it.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- [Brad] And you know,
you're only gonna find that with x-rays
and then you gotta have a radiologist look at it
and that type of thing.
- [Bob] I think they often even do it
with a bone scan sometimes too.
- [Brad] Sure.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- [Brad] Now there's one thing
that's gonna be really interesting,
if you do have anterior tibialis shin splints
and you're a runner,
and you're a heel strike runner, you come down on your heel.
Which probably the majority of people are. Every time,
- [Bob] Yeah. So they hit their,
- Yeah. Every time you hit there,
that anterior tib muscles really working hard,
you call it eccentrically, so that you don't get foot slap.
You don't have to think about this.
Your body automatically does it.
So when you heel strike, the muscles working really hard,
pulling on that injured area.
As you come through, I'm going in slow motion here,
when you run and then you push off.
So that heel strike, is really the point
where you get the stress on the muscle and the bone.
So if you change your running style, and you become a,
- [Bob] Which you did right Brad?
- [Brad] Yep. Which I did.
And become a forefoot runner,
where your heel never touches the ground.
It's not easy to do,
it took me about three seasons to get good at it.
- [Bob] And I changed too and I, you know,
it just, you're gonna be less injury prone, I think.
- Right.
- Just by becoming a forefoot runner.
- Yeah.
- There's a whole, videos on this.
- Yeah. There's videos. There's books on it.
We both read a couple books on it.
- Yeah.
- But it really has been a difference in my running.
Makes you faster too, by the way, typically.
Now, my wife is a natural forefoot runner.
- [Bob] Sure.
- She didn't even have to try to work at it.
And she had shin splints just in the last few weeks.
That's what brought me onto this video,
is she says, boy my shins hurt when I walk
but when I run, zero pain.
And I thought, I had to think about a while,
then I remembered she's a forefoot runner.
So when you land on your forefoot,
the anterior tib doesn't have that,
- [Bob] It doesn't have to fire like it.
- Right.
It doesn't have that aggressive eccentric contraction
that you have with a heel strike runner.
So you may wanna change that,
but that definitely is not a five minute fix.
That takes a little while to convert for most people.
- Right.
- Now, posterior tib.
Now, that is a muscle in the back.
It's deep in there.
Some of the treatment is similar
and which is take your foam roller,
but we're gonna get in it from this side.
And we're gonna get deep into that soleus muscle
which is really in there.
You gotta, you know, it's in there, Bob,
you know what I'm trying to say?
- [Bob] And the posterior tibialis, I mean it's,
- And I'm gonna go like this, to really,
when I put all my weight through there it gets deep
and I'm gonna roll
and I'm gonna actually turn this direction
so my toe goes this way to get to the medial
or the inside part of that calf.
Whoa. And you can feel it.
And you're gonna roll on that for a minute or two.
- [Bob] Well, with this one,
it's gonna be more important to do this other stretch.
- Right.
- [Bob] The stretch where you actually do
the heel cord stretch but you're gonna want to,
you wanna do it with that board, right?
- [Brad] Yeah. Well, why don't you do it on the floor
and then we'll show them the best.
- [Bob] Okay.
- [Brad] So, you're doing the back leg?
- [Bob] Sure. I'm keeping the heel down.
- [Brad] Yep.
- [Bob] And you're gonna wanna do it with the knee straight.
- [Brad] Yep.
- [Bob] But you're definitely gonna wanna
do it with the knee bent.
- [Brad] Cause that gets into that soleus muscle,
that's giving the problem.
- [Bob] And the posterior tibialis.
- [Brad] Posterior tib, right.
- [Bob] Yeah. It really focuses right on that muscle.
- [Brad] Yep.
- [Bob] So you can do it also with a slant board.
- [Brad] And I'm telling you if you,
a slant board is is the best way in my opinion,
to stretch the again, straight.
- [Bob] And also, and this is where it really pays off
because you can really get into that,
- [Brad] You can see it right back in that area.
And you're gonna hold these stretches up to 30 seconds
if you can do that.
- [Bob] Yeah. Especially if you're having problems with it,
it's something.
And you'll find out quite often that,
that muscle really is tight on you
if you're having a posterior tibialis.
- And be, you know,
between rolling it and the stretching it like that,
you're gonna get that muscle pliable,
get the circulation in there, which it needs to heal.
Now, if it's still really tender
and you get a cold pack that wraps around your leg
not just a little one, but you, you make a nice big one.
We've got some nice videos on how to really,
- Yeah, you really wanna freeze it up.
So, alright.
We wanna appreciate everybody for watching.
Thanks.