- You and I both know exactly
how frustrating shin splints can be.
And, in this video,
I've got three exercises you can use
to deal with the underlying causes of the injury
and get back to running pain-free.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so the first of our exercises is calf raises.
The reason why we're doing calf raises;
quite often weak calves become tight calves
and tight calves are a well-known cause
for shin splints in us runners.
So, you're going to need a step for this.
It could be the bottom step of a flight of stairs
and a wall close by so you've got something
to lean on or, at least balance with, with your hands.
Okay, what I want to do is start out with your feet
on the step so your heels
are well and truly hanging off,
balls of your feet are on the step and your toes,
only those.
Feet are nice and parallel, both feet facing forwards,
and you're gonna push right up onto your toes.
You're going to get onto tip toes
as high as you possibly can,
and you're gonna feel the work in your calves
as you do that.
From that top position, you're going to lower,
four, three, two, one.
Down, as low as you can get into that heel drop position,
and from there, you're going to push down with the toes.
You're going to use those calves to lift yourself
all the way back up to the top of the movement.
You're gonna come down again, four, three, two, one,
and you're gonna do this twenty times over.
Okay, you can do this with the feet straight,
you can do this with the feet turned in,
and with the feet turned out,
so we hit all of the different areas
of that lower leg region.
(upbeat music)
Okay, our next exercise is a single leg deadlift.
Although we just worked the calves
really hard in that first exercise,
and that's obviously a spot closer to the lower leg
and shin region where your pain is,
the actual problem, a lot of the time,
can be contributed to bi-weak glutes and poor hip stability.
So we need to work on strengthening your glutes
and improving single leg stability, hip stability,
and this single leg deadlift exercise is perfect for that.
So we're going to start off with you balancing on one foot,
just keeping a slight, soft bend in the knee.
We're not gonna turn this into a single leg squat
where you're flexing the knee
as you drop down into the movement.
The knee stays pretty much rigid
in that slightly flexed position.
From there, keeping your back straight
and your chest nice and tall,
I want you to reach opposite hand down
towards opposite big toe.
Okay you're going to hinge at the hip as you do this.
Focus on pushing your butt back, keeping your back straight,
and reaching down, keeping balance, stability, and control
as you do so.
You go down slowly, then come back,
all the way up to that standing position,
pushing the hips through at the top, clenching your butt.
You're gonna feel,
as you work through three sets of 15 on each side,
that you're definitely working hard for those glutes.
As you come down into the movement,
you're going to feel those hamstrings working,
and over time, there will be a general fatigue
around, particularly,
kind of that hip region and your thigh.
Okay, strengthening this region will help prevent you
from overworking the lower legs in the future as you run.
(upbeat music)
Okay, for our third exercise,
we're going back down into our lower leg
and focusing on the soleus muscle,
a deeper, lower muscle of the calf region,
which didn't get the same workout
as gastro in our heel raises,
because we're working with a straight knee.
Soleus really requires us to be working with bent knees
and focusing on plantar flexing the ankles,
so pointing the toes, lifting the heels up,
to really get a good workout
through the soleus muscle itself.
So a great exercise for this is our wall squats variation
where we're doing soleus wall squats.
So we'd set up how we would do normal wall squats,
back to the wall, hips at 90 degrees, knees at 90 degrees.
From there, again,
we're focusing on keeping the thighs parallel,
the legs parallel underneath us
at about between hip and shoulder width apart.
Once we're in this position,
we're going to work through
20 slow and controlled heel raises,
where we're lifting the heels up off the ground
and slowly, slowly, slowly lowering them back down,
lowering back down on the count of four, three, two, one.
Working through, again, 20 reps of this,
slow and controlled.
By the time we get to that 20th rep,
you're going to be feeling that in those soleus muscles.
(mumbles) for this shin splints rehab routine.
Do let me know down in the comments
if you've got any specific questions.
Of course I'll be there to help you out.
If you found this video helpful, hit the like button,
and if you want to see a video
which discusses the underlying causes
of shin splints in runners,
head over to the video I published a little while back
and it'll help you understand the injury better
and make sure it does not come back.
Okay, good luck.