Shin Splints Stretches And Exercises - Feel Better FAST!

what's up guys jared beckstrand here doctor of physical therapy toning titan and these are six of the best exercises that you can do at home to eliminate your shin splint pain coming at you right now so what does shin splint anyway and why do you get pain down the front of your leg well you've got a muscle that runs down the front of your shin it's called your tibialis anterior and it looks just like this actually that's a horrible picture it looks just like this okay that one's a little bit better but basically here's your shin bone right here that muscle comes right down the front and it attaches right into the top of your ankle when it activates it pulls your foot up in this direction right here so why do you get shin splints why do you get pain in that area well it's an overuse injury to that muscle so anything that you're doing that causes it to be excessively active is going to result in some pain and some inflammation in this area so what are some of those activities i most often see shin splints in runners and especially runners who have recently increased the amount of work that they're doing the amount of running that they're doing but it's also common in other places soccer football track aerobics if you go to aerobic classes often weight lifting all are reasons that are going to cause that muscle to be overworked and overused and result in these shin splint type problems now luckily there's a lot of really great exercises that are going to help you out of some of this pain that you're experiencing however before i jump into those we need to make one very important distinction if you've had this pain for less than two weeks you're dealing with acute inflammation if that's the case it's going to respond better to things like rest ice anti-inflammatory medications and some of the gentle stretches that i'm about to show you if you've had it for more than two weeks you need to be a little more aggressive and include some massage in addition to those stretches and then supplement that with some strengthening exercises that's exactly what i'm going to show you in this video let's get into those right now the first thing we want to do is start with some massage to that tibialis anterior muscle this is a great way to loosen the muscle up warm it up prior to some of the other activity that we're doing and then also get some good blood flow going in there to help to promote healing two ways that i like to massage you can use your hands you can use your fingers what you're going to do is just find the inside part of your shin and come up and down that area push in there just as much as your pain will allow that's a good way that we can just work it over with some massage i personally prefer the foam roller i feel like that's a little bit more effective and maybe a little easier to get in there a little deeper what you're going to do is get down in a kneeling position with just that bad shin up on top of the foam roller and then we can use that to roll in and out just like this it's actually going to be a little more effective if you point your toes inward what that does is rolls your tibia to the outside so that we can get right on that muscle a little bit more effectively and again you want to go all the way up and down the length of that muscle you're going to spend about a minute doing that now for this i prefer a medium density foam roller not one of those really hard rigid high density foam rollers this is actually the one that i have at my house this is the one that i have in my clinic if you're interested in a good medium density foam roller check the description down below and that's where you can find the link to this one but again we're going to spend about a minute doing that doing that massage just trying to loosen that area up get some good blood flow into that spot next we want to follow that up with some stretching the simplest way to stretch is seated with your legs out in front of you and then i'm just going to pull my legs down in this direction you should feel a good stretch along the top part of your shin if you're very acutely inflamed meaning there's a lot of pain in that area this may be enough for you this is a very simple stretch you would hold that for about 20 seconds and then you would repeat that three times now if this is too simple you don't feel a very good stretch with this the next more aggressive stretch that i like would be an upward facing dog and so you're going to lay down on your stomach make sure that your toes are pointed so the tops of your feet are down on the floor and then what we're going to do is press up into this position with your hands now obviously there's a little more upper body and core strength require required with this one but it's a great way that you can put a little more stress on that anterior tibialis stretch it out a little more effectively again 20 seconds three times is what we would shoot for with that now if you're looking for the next level something even a little bit more aggressive my personal favorite stretch would be kneeling just like this on the on your heels again the tops of my feet are down flat so pulling my ankle into what would be a plantar flexion motion in order to stretch that top side of my shin right there you're going to hold that for 20 seconds you're going to repeat it three times now you can see that this is a little bit more aggressive i can put a little more weight on my heels but it does also require a greater degree of range of motion in my knees a lot of times if people do have knee pain as well as that shin splint pain they're not going to tolerate this very well and so a good substitute here would be to do this actually standing up you can kind of drag one toe back behind you and then as you push your hip and push your thigh forward you're going to introduce a stretch into that tibialis anterior muscle now again it's not quite as aggressive as this one but if you do have some knee pain going on or any other issues that one is typically a little bit better tolerated so those are the stretches that i like let's show you some ways that you can strengthen that muscle now i mentioned in the introduction to this video that anterior tibialis is responsible for pulling your foot up in this direction that's the motion that we want to make strong in order to treat and eventually eliminate this pain the simplest way to start is just with some toe taps i like to do these seated all you're going to do is lift your toe up and down just trying to get some active range of motion just some activity into that muscle get it used to firing and hopefully work it out of some pain i would start with about three sets of 10 to 15 and you can work up to about three sets of 30. by the time you're doing about 90 of these it's time to add some resistance to that motion the simplest way to do that is with some bands so you'll see that i've got all kinds of bands here i've got tubing i've got these bigger ones i've got these smaller loops these smaller loops are my favorite but let me show you how to do this with some of these more common things that you might have available a lot of people have this tubing what you're going to do is just hold both the ends in one hand you're going to loop that around your foot so right now if i was treating my right side i've got that looped around around my right foot in my left hand i'm going to pull those tails out to the side now with my left foot what i can do is just step on the top of that band and that's going to be my anchor point now what i want to do is pull up with my toes use that anterior tibialis muscle right there to pull my toes up towards me all of a sudden now i have a little bit of resistance pushing me down to demonstrate that with the smaller loop again that's going to fit a little more comfortably around your foot pull it out to the side step on it with your other foot and now you can use that to pull up in this direction about 10 to 15 repetitions as a number as a good number to shoot for and you're going to repeat that three times if you're interested in some of these loops this is a great addition to a home gym they're inexpensive they take up no room and there's a lot that you can do with them once again i'll link to these in the description down below this last exercise is my personal favorite it's a little more functional it's a little more aggressive that's also the one that you're going to get the most awkward looks the more that you do it especially if you do it in public we're going to walk around on our heels basically what i want to do is pull my toes up off of the floor and then as i walk around do not let your toes hit the floor take you know 10 15 20 feet whatever you have available and then we're just going to keep those toes up off of the floor the goal is to do this for time meaning i would set a 30 second timer initially and try to go for the 30 seconds when that becomes easy go for 60 seconds 90 seconds up to about two minutes worth now please keep in mind that this is a little more aggressive it looks simple kind of looks a little silly but it's a little bit more aggressive you're definitely going to feel those this in those anterior tibialis muscles if it does start to hurt if it does start to cause pain that's your indication that you need to be done with this exercise for that time so i hope you guys found these helpful hope you found them useful of course if you did hit the thumbs up button down below to like the video if you haven't subscribed to tone and titan yet i'd love to see you back here for more you can hit the circle button to do that up here this is one more video that you might find useful that you might enjoy and until next time we'll see you again right here on tone and titan

Channel: Tone and Tighten

Views: 353,703

Keywords: shin splints, shin splints treatment, shin splint stretches, shin splints explained, shin splints exercises, shin splints massage, shin splints running, shin splint recovery, exercises for shin splints, exercises for shin splints pain, exercises for shins, exercises for shin splints treatment, exercises for shin muscles, home exercises for shin splints, home exercises for shin pain, shin splint home exercises, jared beckstrand, tone and tighten, shin pain

Id: olpUrL-w2qg

Length: 9min 24sec (564 seconds)

Published: Thu May 20 2021