Hello and welcome to Becoming Badass, I'm your host, Carly Fox, and this is my podcast series where I talk to ADF applicants about physically preparing themselves for the military. Now traditionally, I interview ADF applicants from my gym in Brisbane called the Barracks Gym, but I've recently decided that I might add in what I'd like to call a little bit of a quick chat every now and then, where I offer up some tips and guidance about questions that I often get asked and guidance that I give to people in the gym that I think that my listeners could really benefit from. So it won't be an interview, it'll just be me talking to giving you some tips, having a little bit of a quick chat about a topic that I think is really important and I figure if someone is asking me a question, then you probably want to know the answer to that question too so why not share the love. Now in the show notes, I'm always going to put a link to a blog or a page where you can go and get some notes about what I've spoken about.
So if you're listening to this on the bus, the train, in the car, you don't need to stop and try and write things down, you can just listen, enjoy, take what you want from it, and then you'll be able to go back when you've got some time, click on the link and it'll take you to a spot where you can copy things down, copy, paste whatever you need to do. So I hope that you enjoy these additional episodes, they won't ever go for very long, five, maybe ten minutes, and it's just some quick tips, a quick chat about some topics that people are bringing up and I figure you are going to benefit from them too. So enjoy! Shinsplants, one of the most common injuries for people who are in the military and something that can end somebody's career before it's even started when it comes to military applicants training for the military.
Why is it so common? Because people just don't know how to train and people don't know how to look after their lower limbs. And I'm saying this because I was one of them. I didn't train properly prior to going into the military, I absolutely pounded the pavement every single day running and running and running on concrete and it ended up being to my detriment once I was in the military.
It took me a long time and a lot of rehab to fully recover and I still suffer from it a little bit to this day. So I'm going to talk today about shinsplants and whether you should or shouldn't be training with them. If you've been into running training for a while you probably know already that shinsplants can cause severe discomfort. The pain coming along the front edge of the shin is usually the result of intense, repetitive running training that involves hard impacts on the feet and lower legs.
Many people do try to continue training with shinsplants, but is it a wise idea? Understandably if you have serious running goals to hit you don't want to lose out on making progress and you want to keep up training. However, if you keep pushing on while nursing an injury like this you could cause even greater damage and result in a longer time out period if you don't deal with it appropriately. Today I'm going to talk to you about taking an in-depth look at the issue of shinsplants and including recovery and what to do if you think you might have them.
So what are shinsplants? Shinsplants conjures up images of splinted bones but the term itself is generally used to refer to pain in muscles at the front of the shin around the main shin bone. There are two types of shinsplants, posterior and anterior. Posterior shinsplants occur when the so-called tibialis posterior muscle in your lower leg doesn't have the endurance to continually support the medial arch of the foot as it repeatedly hits the ground.
In the course of running the foot becomes increasingly pronated which then causes stress on the shin bone. This stress is usually felt a few inches above the ankle on the inside of the leg. Anterior or front shinsplants occur higher up near the knee. These are the result of the inability of the anterior tibialis muscle to elevate the foot between strides.
The muscle becomes tired and the bone increasingly absorbs the energy. So what causes shinsplants? There are a number of causes of shinsplants of which people who do regular long distance running need to be aware. These generally fall into three categories, poor biomechanics, over training and inadequate equipment.
The issues can include tilting your feet as you run, a lack of lower body flexibility, poor abdominal strength, tight calf and hamstring muscles and ramping up training intensity too quickly before your muscles have had time to adapt. Inappropriate or worn out footwear, your equipment, can also increase the propensity for injury as well as insufficient rest between training sessions. Phases of recovery. So there are quite a few phases and if you're on the train or driving while listening to this writing them down might be a bit much so I will in the show notes link you to the Barakshjim website where you'll be able to see these written down word for word and take from them what you need.
Phase 1. Reduce pain and inflammation. Shinsplants are essentially a form of soft tissue injury. As a result, current advice is to take anti-inflammatory painkillers, rest the affected muscle and use ice to control inflammation just as you would for any other muscle injury.
Phase 2. Work towards full motion. Initially it will be challenging to keep the heel on the ground and lift your toes without pain. But over time, those who are injured must try to restore full motion.
Include injury rehab techniques such as muscle stretches, massage and special exercises under the guidance of a physiotherapist. Phase 3. Correct faulty foot biomechanics. As discussed, poor foot biomechanics are a common cause of shinslents.
Therefore, you may need to have a professional look at your feet and your gait. Some runners require special shoes to correct foot position and movement pattern. Phase 4. Regain loss muscle strength.
Muscles lose their strength during the recovery phase so runners may need to do resistance training to restore strength to the glutes, quads and hamstrings. Failing to restore strength to these muscles may result in further injury, especially if you decide to immediately jump back into your old program after a long break. Phase 5. Adjust your training program.
Shinslents are often a warning sign that there's something wrong with your training program. Work with professionals, the barks gym, a running coach or a personal trainer to a special situation, reduce the intensity of your regime to a level your body can handle and design a program that progressively increases the intensity to avoid injury in the future. This could include extending the recovery time between training sessions and reducing the total weekly mileage until you have fully recovered. To wrap up, continuing to run while you have shinslents is not a good idea and I know this from personal experience.
Although you may worry that your running performance will diminish if you don't keep up your training, you'll suffer even more in the long term if you ignore the problem. Shinslents cause scarring and repeated scarring can result in weakened, repaired tissue. The greater the scarring, the easier it is to injure yourself again in the future. It's also possible for the TBRless muscle compartment to become severely damaged, requiring surgery to correct and many weeks away from training.
Current advice for people training hard for running events? Stop the moment you experience shinslents and talk to your coach about a recovery strategy. If you're dealing with it right now and you're not sure what you should do, feel free to get in touch with us here at the Barks Gym for advice. I have personally experienced shinslents once I got into the military.
The training that I was doing prior to was aggravating the injury and then once I went to Kapuka and then got to IITs, it got to a point where I almost couldn't even walk and I definitely couldn't run and it was devastating. I don't want this to be you guys. So please, the moment you are experiencing what feels like shinslents, stop. There is no point running and running and running and running to the point where you can't even walk anymore because then once you get to Kapuka or your respective training establishment, you're going to be useless and you're going to be even more devastated.
Trust me, I was there. Whilst I understand that not everybody has the budget to accommodate shoes, it is super imperative to make sure that you have a quality pair of shoes that suit your foot. So getting something that looks pretty and getting something because it's a particular brand doesn't mean that it's going to be good for running. Getting something from Kmart because it's cheap is probably not going to be supportive enough for running.
Think of shoes like your car. You get your car serviced. You get new tires. You give it a good wash.
That's your vehicle to get around. Your shoes are your vehicle for you to get around whilst you are on your feet. So if you treat your car like that, then maybe you should treat your shoes like that. Try if you can to spend a little bit of money getting some good quality shoes and make sure that you replace them once they start to wear and tear as you would get your car serviced once it starts to experience wear and tear.
Alright guys, I hope that's been helpful and as I said, I'll give you appropriate links in the show notes. Thank you. Well, thank you for listening to today's installment of Quick Chat and I hope that you've taken something from that topic that you can apply to your training, your upcoming PFA, basic training if it's coming up for you and that it's going to make life a little bit easier. Not all of this stuff is going to apply to everybody and that's okay.
Just take what you need, use it, apply it, enjoy. I hope that you've found this useful and if you have, I'd love if you could flip me a review on iTunes. I want you to remember that it all comes down to one simple thing. How bad do you want it?
I know you guys want it bad. So let's make it happen. Thanks for listening to another episode of Becoming Bad Us and I'll speak to you guys next time.