Shin splints and concrete floors

[RBurke]

Hi all. I have been struggling with shin splints for a while now. I will get them healed and as soon as I start back to my routine, they come back. I can't train as hard as I would like. I have to cut out some of my Cathe videos so that I can work out at the gym on the elliptical or bike for the no impact cardio. :'(
This is really irritating for me. I finally got some orthotics for my shoes and my right leg is completely better. Now my left leg still acts up. I think the floor at my condo is the culprit. We are on the bottom of a condo that is on a concrete slab. I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for me. Is there special padding I could put under the carpet where I work out? Is there anything I can do?

 

[1swimom2]

I have had trouble with shin splints ever since I had them extremely bad in high school from running indoors and cheerleading. I was told that once you got them bad, you were prone to them.

Since I work out on carpeted concrete, I am careful to not do high impact all the time and tend to do powerful low impact moves to get my heart rate up.

There are exercises that can strengthen your shins and help prevent this. If you sit with your legs straight in front of you and slowly point and hard flex your feet over and over again. This is one of the best exercises for this. Make sure your calve muscles are well stretched, as tight calves can pull on the shin muscles and make it worse. This has really helped my son during cross country season when he tends to get shin splints.

Hope this helps.

Dorothy

 

[KarenO]

Have you tried lowering the impact to keep one foot on the floor at all times? I am not sure if I have shin splints, but any hight impact/non step aerobics bothers my knees and shins. When I do MIC, sometimes I jump rope during the parts where she bounces repeatedly on one leg, other times I do other things to modify. Believe me---if you are creative enough, you will get just as good of a sweat without the pain.

Your body is trying to tell you something when it has pain. Listen to it, and find ways to work around it!