- Bob and Brad, the two most famous,
physical therapists on the internet.
- Hi folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, Physical Therapist.
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course.
- Today Brad, we're gonna talk
about one minute shin splint stretches that you can do
for pain relief and care.
- All right.
- But we do have to go into a little bit
of the description of what shin splints is
or are.
- 'mmhh
- Because there are certain types, where you
this is not really gonna help right away.
- Sure.
You're gonna have to have some rest period too.
- Right, yup.
Shin splints is a garbage can term.
It, it, it, which means
that it could be a lot of different things.
One of the most common things that it is
is what we call medial tibial stress syndrome.
- So always nice to put a big word on.
- That sounds a lot worse than it is Brad.
So if you look at the bone below here
this is the tibia and this is the medial side.
So this would be the, on the inside of your leg.
- Yeah. That's that bone if you bump it
against something hard, it hurts a lot.
- Yeah. There's a lot of bone, a lot of muscles
that are attached to this.
And if they're tight or if you have flat feet
or if you tend to pronate your feet in the vernacular of
of the therapist.
- Now you're talking.
- It, those muscles are gonna pull excessively on that bone.
- Right.
- Especially if you're like a runner and over time
they'll actually can weaken that bone
and you can get a stress fracture.
- Right, which is like a hairline fracture.
It's even hard to see on an x-ray.
- Right, and, and in fact
you can also irritate the outer layer of bone.
- And the big thing about 'em, they're pretty painful.
- Yeah, they are.
And I mean, it's, if you have that
and we're gonna show you a test to do
to determine whether maybe you do.
- There can be confusion between a shin split
and sometimes a hairline.
- Right, or just the, again, the irritation
of the outer bone.
- Sure
- That I asked you, inflammation.
- Yup.
- You know, you, if you do have the, again
the inflammation or the, the bone fracture,
the only way the doctor tells usually is
they do a bone scan.
- Right.
- Like I said, like I said, the
the x-rays a lot of times don't even pull, pick it
up. So, so let's talk about that first.
Brad, why don't you put your leg up on here?
- Oh, yeah
- Got things shown.
- There it is Bob
- Okay.
- So I want you, yes.
Can you get yourself in a position here?
- Yes
So there's two type of shin splints.
This is the most common by far on the inside, right here.
This is where people feel it
but some people also get it on the outside here.
And that's where we have the X.
Can you see that, Lonnie? The X.
- The anterior.
- And that's just usually an overuse of these muscles, Brad.
And they're the muscles that lift the foot
up and pull that, bring the toes up.
And this is the one I got by the way.
- Okay.
- When I, when I had shin splints, interestingly enough.
So along here, if you, if,
if it is generally just over overuse of the muscles
it's generally tender all the way along it.
- So you're, you're going right along the edge of that bone.
You can feel your tibia there.
It's just skin and bone.
There's no muscle there.
And just follow that this direction
and where it drops off into the muscle.
Right along that edge.
- Yeah. There's a couple muscles here that attach here
the soleus and the posterior tibialis and
and they're the ones that we're gonna show you
how to stretch those.
'Cause if you, if they're tight
they are gonna give you more stress along in there.
- Sure.
- But let's say you go along and
and it's not tender all the way along.
It's just tender in one spot.
- Ow
- And in fact
maybe not even along the line, but across like this.
- Yep.
- That makes me more worried
that you might have a stress fracture.
- Sure, yup.
- That's that's that's to me is one of the indicators is,
is that the other indicator is, if it's better
in the mornings because the stress fracture had
chance to rest all night long.
- Yep.
Versus if it's muscle.
Muscles tend to tighten up overnight and a lot of times
they're worse in the morning.
- When you first stand on it and it hurts more,
more chance of being a a shin splint versus
a stress fracture.
Which is gonna feel better when you get up and walk on it.
But you know, that reminds me because
we're forgetting of some
of these things here and there's a few people out there.
- Oh, that's right.
If you haven't watched our channel
before we provide videos on a stay healthy fit, pain free.
We have a subscription button over here.
Please take a second to do so, hit the subscription button.
And we upload every day.
- You bet.
- Going back to this, Brad, if it, again
if it's muscle too, what tends to be is
that the muscle's gonna hurt when you do this
like pull the foot up and if I pull on it.
- Yup.
- So hold it once.
- Yup.
- Or if I turn you turn your foot this way,
turn it towards you.
- So we're just doing some kind isometrics
- Or if push down, you know?
- Yep.
That, that fires those muscles up.
Then there's a chance that, that it might be more muscle
than.
- Sure.
- Than just the bone fracture.
So if, if, if you find out that you do have
a stress fracture, these stretches are gonna be good
for the long run but they're not gonna give you relief.
You, you gotta stop running or at least reduce your running.
- Right, right.
- You know, maybe you're gonna do working out in a pool.
- Right.
You're gonna do biking.
You're gonna do, you know, cross more cross training.
You gotta do something to calm things down.
- Right. Cause that's, that's the source of the
injury we need to minimize or get rid of the source to.
Yeah. It's heal time.
- It's just not gonna get any better, Brad.
So, ice is always good for these things.
- Sure.
- And the most common cause I think, is alluded to
is that people who are a little bit flat footed
or if they tend to
their arch tends to break down while they're running.
- So, so their, their foot ends
up going out this way,with the weight bearing.
- Yeah and that puts stress on certain the muscles.
- Yep.
- So you you may want to get an arch support
or something like that.
- Sure.
- That's a whole different animal, isn't it?
- Yeah. We're gonna make a video on that pretty soon
as well as, the footwear for this.
- All right, let's get to the stretches.
Brad, that's already five minutes of the video.
We haven't just talked about stretches.
- Oh, let's get going.
- You wanna do the shoe, the first one
just sitting down and pulling the calf towards you.
You can do this with a belt.
He's using the stretch out strap from OPTP.
That's really a cool strap.
- Which is really nice, 'cause you can wrap it
around your foot like this and we're gonna pull here
- And again we're stretching the muscles that are
attached to that bone and, and therefore,
yeah, it gives you really a lot of leverage there.
Doesn't it?
- Oh yeah.
- All right, the key, the other key stretch
and I think I will do this against the wall.
Lonnie maybe, huh?
Or I can do it, you know what?
I'm gonna take a walker.
Pretend this is the wall.
- You just need something to lean against.
- Yeah, you're gonna lean against
so you're gonna do the stretch with the leg straight.
- I'll point it out, Bob.
- Okay. So I got the leg stretch, straight.
- There goes down, doesn't it?
Yeah. That wasn't very pretty leg anyways.
- But, but the key thing that you wanna do this,
this is the one where you're gonna get the
posterior tibialis and the soleus is
you're gonna do the stretch, with the leg bent,
the knee bent.
- Flex the knee.
But notice I'm keeping the heel
down heel is down here, but a knee bent.
That's gonna stretch the muscle down in here.
Otherwise we get the gas track up behind the knee.
Yeah. And you'll feel it.
- If there was one stretch, you wanna make sure you're doing
this is it.
- Sure
- This is, this is actually very critical
that you do this one.
That's the one that's gonna actually stretch it out.
Now let's say you are getting some shin splints
on the front.
Like I was getting Brad.
So then in those cases you're gonna want to
you're gonna actually have to stretch the front part
of the leg, which what you wanna do is you put your feet
down like this and I'm
I'm leaning onto my foot and I'm stretching the
the toes and the foot at the same time here.
- See, so his toes are here and there's a gap here.
You wanna push down on that, to straighten the foot
out as I just like to stick and you'll feel
that stretch on the front.
- All the way along here.
There's a way to do it standing too.
And I couldn't do it.
- Yeah. This, this one depends
on your flexibility and your body type.
But I'm gonna put the, go like this
- But he's grabbing the toes too
- Way on the toes like this and oh,
there it goes.
That feels good actually, Bob.
Oh yeah.
- Okay. Very good.
- Now I'm gonna keep stretching Bob.
It's good.
- Now let's say you're, you're a foam roller guy
Where the foam roller go?.
- We'll just use this one, Bob.
Yep. So again, if you're, if you're more on the front part
that's where you're having trouble.
You can go ahead and kneel on this.
I like this foam roller 'cause it's a little softer.
- Yup, yeah. If you get the, the low intensity
the low density one, that's the word.
So see, I can work the way along the, the muscle.
- Right here
- This really does stretch it out nice Brad.
- If you notice Bob has his bottom
or buttock tilted this way.
So he is getting more on the muscle.
You don't wanna foam roll over the bone.
You want to get that roller over that
that meaty part, that anterior tib.
Oh, or where that X is right over here.
- Yeah. So I was, I was, yeah, not on this.
I was leaning this way a little bit.
- All right, so the femurs angled.
It may be hard to see on the, on the video.
- You really want to, you go another foot on top of it.
Oh boy.
- That gets in there, doesn't it Bob.
- But the more common one that you're gonna want do
the more would be doing it this way, Brad.
- Oh.
- Now you're gonna get the soleus and posterior tips.
So you're gonna be like this.
Again, you can start off doing, working on both.
- Here, maybe we should let's so you can see that.
Ignore the leg, but just see the anatomy there.
- Yep, so now here I'm rolling on again,
the soleus and the posterior tip here.
- And if you, like I said, you could cross over, but.
- Yup.
- That's pretty aggressive.
- It just actually isn't too bad Brad.
- Boy, you are tough Bob.
When I do that it just,
- Does it really?
- It puts me through the roof.
- You always were kind of little soft.
Weren't you Brad?
- Yeah, Ill give you soft.
- Hahaha
- Yeah, anyway back to the stretching.
- So, this is a great way to, to stretch that.
- Yeah, it is.
- To get it ready for a run and to get to,
so the other thing you can do is
a couple strengthening exercises.
I mean, you can do the alphabet with your foot.
- Yup.
- Draw using, as you said, like
if you taped a piece of chalk to the toe.
Yup, right.
- And you were drawing the letters with the toe.
- Imaginary chalkboard there, yup.
- Toe raises is a good one to do.
Toe raises and heel raises Brad.
- Right, so you're working both sides
of the anterior and the posterior tib.
- Believe it or not that well, they found actually
with a lot of people who have shin splints
work your core and strengthen your hips.
It just , it gives you a lot better control
when you're running.
- Right.
- And such, so that you don't,
the legs don't get angulated as much.
- It, it starts at the core.
- Yup.
- It always they say. It doesn't make a lot
of sense a lot of times
but it does.
some general piece of advice for shin splints.
10% rule.
If you're going back into running, don't want to
increase your distance by more than 10% every week.
Right. You know what I mean?
Don't, don't go from five or two miles up to five miles.
I mean that big jump, right.
You're always gonna worry about the camber of the road.
Is it the camber?
Is that what it's called?
- I think that were the, the slant of the road, right?
- Yeah. I mean, if you're always running
down the same side of the road,
you're putting the same stresses on the legs.
So you want to run down one side and
then come back the same side.
- We're talking about being, they make the roads like this.
So the water runs off.
You don't really see it in us sometimes, but it's there.
- So if you're running on a track
you want to run one direction
on the track and then also reverse it on the track.
- Right.
You know you always had to tell the track.
- Some fitness places, they alternate days.
One day it's clockwise, the next day it's counterclockwise
- Avoid hills and wanna make sure you cross train.
- Yeah. Cross training is, I think biking is a great way
you're work the legs.
- Yeah.
- You don't have the impact it's
and you're gonna get aerobic, you know?
- Yep. Very good.
- Yes. All right.
Remember Brad?
We can fix just about anything.
- Yeah. We're working on everything
except for that, that broken heart.
- There it is.
We're gonna fix it someday.
Thanks.