One of the questions I get asked the most is about shin pain. Shin splints or tibialis tendonitis come in 2 locations. The very front part of your shin is muscle, the anterior tibialis. Moving inward, there is your shin bone, the tibia, then your posterior tibialis along the medial side of your tibia. The location of shin pain is important. Medial or post. tib. tendonitis is more common, usually cause by a falling arch or pronating foot during mid stance. While ice and proper footwear / arch support are recommended, people are usually missing this:
Its a calf stretch with a bent knee, like you're pressing your knee cap toward the wall. You see, you have 2 calf muscles, the gastrocnemius and the soleus, and the soleus only crosses the ankle joint. To stretch it, you need to bend your knee while dorsiflexing the ankle (up). A straigh leg stretch, here:
better stretches the gastoc which crosses the ankle and the knee joints.
Since your soleus also attaches to the posterior medial aspect of the tibia, right where your post tib attatches, a tight soleus may contribute to medial shin pain. The post tib also follows roughly the same path down the back of the leg, across the ankle, and to the bottom of the foot, so a soleus stretch will also stretch the post tib. Ahh, relief.
If you have shin pain, its easily remedied in its early stages. Don't just run through it, take care of it now so it doesn't nag you later.
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