How to Avoid Shin Splints
Are you a runner? Do you suffer from shin splint pain? It seems logical that the stress on the shins would increase with more challenging terrain or running on a gradient, but this might not be the case.
Research by Michael Baggaley at The University of Calgary appears to show that the stress on a runner’s shins is related more strongly to their running speed than to the force of running up or downhill.
He thinks this is because humans evolved to adapt to changing terrain rather than to increased speed.
I noticed that in reviews of this article some runners disagreed with the findings, one claiming that they can run without getting shin splints at any speed on level ground, but suffer when running on a gradient
Another reviewer felt that good nutrition was more important in avoiding shin splints; they cured theirs by improving their diet. But Baggaley insists:
“It was obvious that when volunteers ran faster, the stress on their shins increased quite a bit”