Quote:
Originally Posted by Bearcat
Also walking a couple miles every couple days, with two monster hills nearby. Dealing with calf tightness and shin splints, depending on the day... getting old sucks.
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Shin splints are the ****ing devil. I ran track in high school and knew what shin splints were. And I'm genuinely not a dumbass. But in college I pulled my hamstring pretty seriously and was out of virtually anything for awhile and put on some weight. So when I got it back together enough to run some distance I over did it. A lot. I got shin splints so bad I could barely walk. I'm not a dumbass. But obviously I'm a dumbass.
So on the shin splint thing, I've tried a bunch of different things. Here are are the things that moved the needle for me.
I overpronate really bad when I run, so I always wanted minimalist shoes so it would let my foot do it's thing. I think that's wrong. They improved when I bought stability type shoes that prevent the pronation.
www.roadrunnersports.com has the best descriptions of how shit works and where different shoes fit into their matrix. Stability might not be where you need to be, but that site is where I started to learn about the different types of shoes. And their customer service is really good. You're not getting anything cheap, but I throw them some business, because they've done me some good.
The second aspect is compression. And always outside in. Dad said when dinosaurs roamed the earth he had to shave his legs so they could tape his shins, when I was a kid they had prewrap. I'm not sure what the answer is now, probably kinetic tape, but
THIS is what I use. It used to be cheaper, but it has a pad you put on your shinbone and wrap your lower leg with the neoprene wrap. It really helps.
I don't know if it helped or not, but when they're hurting ice helped. Just putting an icepack on them doesn't do much good. So when Buehler445 does something, he ****ing does it, so I bought some ace bandages and put an ace bandage on my shin (go outside in), then put the ice pack on and hold it there with a wider ace bandage. Then my stupid ass went to bed. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to do that, and early on I would wake up in the middle of the night from pain from too much compression too long, but it worked. I'm sure I looked like a flaming moron, but I didn't care. I was a hurting unit.
Third is calf stretches. I don't know what my major malfunction was with tight calves but when the shin splints were the worst I was stretching my calves every half hour. And I'm not smart enough know why but different stretches stretch different parts of the calf (or different muscles - I don't know. I'm a moron). So I got the best results from doing the flat foot push against the wall stretch, then balls of the foot on a step kind of thing, and a different stretch from getting a belt around the balls of my feet and pulling from a seated position. Now I didn't know it was a thing, but I had to do PT and they had me stretch my achilles which is the same thing with the belt in a chair, except bend your knee. I didn't know that was a good thing, but it really helped.
Big thing is don't be like Buehler445 and let it get out of control. God I'm a ****ing idiot. It was 3 years before I could run or play basketball without a bunch of pain. And I think I did that icing thing every day for like a year. Don't be like me.