hey guys i'm dr aaron horchick in this video i'm going to show you how to fix shin splints hey guys thanks so much for stopping by the youtube channel first off let's talk about where exactly shin splint pain is usually felt the first issue is going to be in the muscle and tissues that run in this lateral side of the shin this is your tibialis anterior muscle the other side is going to be on the medial side this is your tibialis posterior muscle so people can often have pain on either or i would say most the common complaints of shin splints that i get is usually more on this lateral side that's your tibialis anterior now let's talk about first why do we have shin splints and two simple ways or methods that you can go about fixing this problem first the why the why behind most shin splints is a training error basically every single tissue within your body has a certain set biological tipping point of capacity that is as it has developed over time based on the training loads you've placed on it and if you have exceeded that very high amount let's say you're usually running 20 miles a week and you jumped up to 30 quickly or usually you walk maybe two miles a day and you went on a trip and you walked 10 to 15 miles a day if you exceeded to a high degree your current level of capacity sometimes that pushes your tissues past their biological set tipping point and that's how injury and or shin splints particularly can occur because of the loads that are placed on the lower body during movements like walking and running so now that you've understood why shin splints occur the first step has to be taking back your training and or the amount of walking or running that you're doing so that you're not continuing to push against your current capacity level so taking down your training or the amount of walking is step one that way you're not continuing to injure your body and allowing your body to heal step the second step is going to be looking at things that we can do to improve the issue so for those that have pain on this outside part what we're going to do is work on some soft tissue work to these especially the tibialis anterior muscle now what you're going to do to start is to do a soft tissue stretch to the front side you're basically going to do a great toe or toe extensor stretch in this position you're going to take your fingers and you're going to pull down on your toes this should bring out a really good stretch on that front side all the way down remember that muscle right here runs all the way down the front side and onto the tops of the toes so by taking those toes and pulling down you're going to feel a really good stretch something like this you're going to hold for about 10 to 15 seconds and then back up okay so this is the toe extensor stretch step two is going to be a little bit of soft tissue work we're going to take a foam roller you can use this also with a lacrosse ball or tennis ball but again we're gonna go up and down that outside part of the shin and see if we can find some stiff spots you're gonna get in a kneeling position like this and slowly roll up and down now if you find a spot that's nice and tender you're gonna sit on it for a second and then pump your foot up and down something like this you want to be a mean massage therapist yourself for about one to two minutes you don't need to do a ton of work like this but a little soft tissue work can be very helpful at calming down some of those stiff tissues improve your flexibility be very helpful at decreasing symptoms especially in the short term now once you're done with that you can also do a good stretch for those muscles as well called the hero pose so you're gonna kneel toes touching and you're just going to sit back on your heels like this should feel again in this position a really good stretch to the front side of the shins and all the way down into the top of your foot now if you have a very weak foot or you've been in shoes all day long that have a lot of heel to them or maybe even a little toe spring your feet may cramp a little bit with this so hold it to your tolerance come back up out of it every once in a while if you need to but eventually you want to be able to sit down here for a good 30 seconds to a minute to be able to again improve a little bit of elasticity and flexibility within those tissues that can get nice and stiff when irritated and come back out of this again when you're doing these you should feel better afterwards it should not increase any pain so now that we've talked about the step to perform again with some of those tissues that are stiff and tight on the outside part of the shin let's turn our attention to the inside part of the shin the tibialis posterior muscle now research shows that a lot of people who develop shin splints on that inside part do so because they have a problem in pronation control so if that foot collapses over excessively again pronation is a very normal motion at the ankle foot complex but if it's excessive it can lead to a lot of stress and strain on that muscle that runs on this inside part that helps control for that motion now one of the things that's very important to understand is that the position of your big toe directly impacts how much pronation can occur at your foot if your foot is within a very narrow toe box shoe watch how much motion can easily occur at the foot so a narrow toe box shoe allows for excessive motion at that foot ankle complex in the motion of pronation but if i take my toe and i allow it to spread out all of a sudden i can't pronate excessively i only get a little bit of pronation so this is something that can be very very helpful is to understand the impact of footwear on shin splints a shoe that is widest at the toes allows your toes to spread out optimally within the foot or within the shoe and then therefore control the amount of pronation that your body's capable of whenever you're walking and running so a helpful step for a lot of people especially if you've dealt with recurrent shin splints which problem has been going on for a while is thinking about changing your shoes this is a vivo barefoot just an example of a shoe that has a very wide toe box another step that you can take is using an orthotic device called correct toes basically what this does is it would go over the tops of my foot i'll show you how this works just sort of pull my toes through here this pushes my toes into a better position you can see they're now aligned more anatomically with what a natural foot should look like the idea behind correct hose is they're basically like braces for your teeth to move your foot into the more anatomically aligned position that we want again this is something that you can wear within a wide toe box shoe but doing so is going to put my foot into a better position to again control for pronation which is one of the issues for people that develop those shin splints especially on the inside part of the knee or the inside part of the shin so let's talk now about how can you work to improve pronation once you've looked at first the type of shoes you wear and then two how you're positioning your foot throughout the day trying to really get your toes to spread out we want to work then on controlling that foot get a lot of people that will say well i've got really bad flat feet i just drop into pronation a lot a lot of times you just need a plan to work on enhancing your ability to control that problem first thing you're going to do is just work on spreading that toe out and then creating a stable foot so we're going to call this a short foot with toe spread so jam your toe in the ground spread your toes out again you can see my foot is now aligned my big toe is directly in line with the metatarsal bone down here and then from there i'm going to perform this gripping action so you're not going to see a lot of movement in the foot but i'm going to grab into the ground and this is going to light up a lot of small muscles of the foot and i'm just going to hold this position for a couple seconds 10 20 seconds and then relax big toe into the ground spread the toes out stand grip the ground so i'm going to try to create this is again called the short foot exercise so i'm working on controlling that foot so if we look from the side i don't want that foot to collapse over so i'm the grip and i'm just going to hold this 10 to 20 seconds now eventually i can start adding in a little bit of progressive overload with some movement a little bit more functional so i'm just going to perform maybe some small single leg squats and then eventually you could even work this up to becoming even more dynamic to where you could perform like a single leg drop landing so you'd be here drop control see if you're able to stick the landing and maintain that foot into an arch or see maybe you have a problem where as soon as you land here the foot collapses over and the knee collapses in okay so can you enhance your ability to control that foot dynamically with some drop landing something like this easily practice two to three sets of 10 to 15 reps to enhance your ability to stick the landing to have that foot into an arch and control for that pronation so again guys here's the thing to understand the why behind shin splints can often be traced back to a training error too much load too quickly and you overloaded your current capacity to tolerate load through those tissues of the lower body particularly the anterior tibialis and the posterior tibialis depending on where you're feeling the shin splints once we understand the training area we can take a step back not continue pushing more and more load onto our body so allow those tissues to calm down and then from there we can then do some stretching and then some strengthening exercises based on what your body needs to allow us to address some of the problems decrease pain and then get back to improving capacity long term so i hope you guys enjoyed today's video if you want to learn more about this i would highly recommend checking out dr ray mcclanahan he's the inventor of the correct house he has a lot of really good information on youtube this is where i learned a lot of stuff about the foot ankle complex and shin splints so again thank you guys so much for checking out today's video if you have any questions let me know in the comment section below and until next time guys happy squatting they say that energy flows where attention goes so i pay no mind why waste my time with all these negative cats scratching so caught up in their egos these people have