I am constantly training and a couple of months ago, I overdid it sparring my trainer and received tiny stress fractures up both my tibia's from checking his kicks. They gradually got worse and are now shin splints, I was told to let them heal - but i tried that for a couple of days and i cant. I ran for an hour on saturday , then again on sunday, and now they are really bad. Ive been icing them and rubbing them as my trainer showed me. Is there anything else I can be doing to aid the healing process? I am trying my best to not run on them. Thanks
Shin splints are impact injuries. You have to reduce the impact. No running. No bouncing when you spar and obviously cut out the leg checks for a while. There are plenty of things you could be doing that will not affect your legs. Work you hands for a while. Experiment with different styles of sparring eg closer in. And if you want to get treatment go to a sports medicine centre. They understand that you may not want to cut down your training. Most regular doctors physio's etc will just tell you to rest it for a while.
considering they are an impact injury, if you want to continue running, why not use an eliptical X trainer, still get the running minus the impact.
Rest well, shin splints can go on for years. If you must continue running, get new/better trainers, try to stay on grass & off concrete, anything to cushion impact. Better though, do some other type of leg exercise ... afaik (not f at all) other types of inpact don't trouble them (didn't in all the many years I had them - all through my twenties & most of my thirties if I remember right). If you're a little on the heavy side, apologies, try to lose some. (Getting older, oddly enough, cured mine. Losing a stone or two helped too). Don't let it become chronic. Iam.
The treatment for shin splints is basically the same as the treatment for stress fractures. That's rest. And it's not just resting for a couple of days either. It's resting for around 6 weeks of only low impact activity. And even this won't heal them sometimes. As Iam has said shin splints can stick around for years. If you are serious about getting this healed you will actually follow what you were told. Hopefully it was a doctor who told you this. BTW, how do you know you had stress fractures do begin with?
Two words - rest lots. I developed shin splints about a year ago, and thought I could train through them. I was wrong. They got worse. It ended up where I took 6 months off everything just to get them back to normal - and that's with physio. All I did was work hands, and do forms real, real slow - even that was pushing it sometimes. If they get bad, even walking can aggravate them. Seriously. REST.
