Balancing Your Shins
It’s Spring time now, getting warm and more and more of my weekend warriors are going out to look good for the warmer months. Running is the most popular method of losing weight and burning up that excess fat. All I ask you to do is stretch everything out before and after. I ask you to not push any pain past it’s threshold and always ice if you’ve managed to hurt yourself and see a physical therapist about it. As to the most common running injuries some athletes will chronically get are shin splints or anterior/posterior tibialis tendonitis.
Shin Splints and some foot pains such as neuromas are likely caused by hip misalignment and hip tightness as well as weakness at the foot, ankle, knee, and hip.
Everything is assessed in gait and walking and posture. Due to certain predispositions of tightness people are unable to get proper hip extension or limb lengthening with pushing off. When this happens the foot has to compensate and push off more or work harder and therefore an increase in foot and ankle rotations. The muscle called the post tibialis (link) controls pronation of the foot otherwise known as the downward rotation of the big toe. In other words the rotational force of the anterior and posterior tibialis is working hard to control all this ultimately fails. Also be careful of the size of the shoe box biomechanically the toes need to splay out when the foot hits the ground to absorb and broaden the impact with a small toe box limits this splaying of the foot and decreases the ability for the foot intrinsic muscles to absorb the shock! What happens next… you guessed it…forces then go to the bones and then pain! So beware.
Really it’s all about timing and if you are misaligned at the hips or weak at the hips, knees, ankle or foot then your gait pattern is not timed to absorb the shocks at the precise moment.
Be well and have a healthy day,