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After kicking (usually football, but sometimes i get this from soccer too) I get a pretty dull pain in shin that lasts a few days. It only hurts if I raise the ball of my foot off the ground, as in contracting the shin muscles.
Sounds like shin splints. I am sure that our resident injury expert will have much more to add to this but I will tell you what I know. They are a bitch, aren't they? From what I remember, it occurs because heavy, constant impact can cause the membrane that surrounds the Tibia basically gets inflamed, forcing the muscle (tibialis anterior?) to seperate from the bone, which is painful.
The way that I have gotten rid of them in the past is a combination of things. I have an ART practitioner (ART = Active Release Therapy) work me over, and I also have an exercise I do on a prone leg curl machine. Instead of getting in the prone postition I sit facing out, toes pointed under the pad of the leg curl machine, then I lift a very light amount of weight by raising my toes toward my knees, then I lower them slowly. I am not sure if this is a real therapuetic move, but it seems to help me. I just kinda came up with it on my own. (Help me out here Bill). Also, after activity I would recommend icing the shins down, and take an anti-inflammatory like Alleve (naproxyn sodium) or ibuprofin.
Can we just make one thing clear? The tibialis anterior is not connected to the tibia other than at the insertion and origin points. It's not like the muscle is glued longitudinally to the tibia. Despite what people _say_ (and I have no idea why they would), the startling number of cadavers in anatomy labs say otherwise. =)
It's 9:30am and I was supposed to be in the gym an hour ago. More on shin splints later.
My first thought is that you're simply not effectively prepared to do any kicking. If your pain is anterior shin pain, you may just be overloading your anterior compartment (tib anterior and long toe extensors)and getting delayed-onset muscle soreness depending on the type of kicking you're doing.
If you plan on kicking a football or soccer ball on a regular basis, first let yourself recover and then return to kicking progressively rather than going all out the first day.
Dorsiflexion exerises as JP mentioned may provide some general physical prep (also consider some decline running), but you have to look at the activity itself for specific demands. There's a sharp, quick eccentric load at impact as the ball gets in the way of your leg motion. If you're not good at absorbing that force, you'll probably get some repetitive strain. It would be like sitting on you butt for a season and then going out to do a full sprinting workout.
Trying doing some preparative kicking. If you're punting or kicking soccer style, start with 10-20 yard kicks for reps with attention on technique and limit your longer kicks. Over a couple of weeks, progressively increase your kicking volume and distance.
If bryanc can get home from the gym any time soon, I also look forward to any additional info on shin splints if that's truely what we're dealing with here.
Steve, is the pain on the interior, exterior or directly on the front of the shin? Depending on where it is, it may help these guys get a better handle on the problem, since where the pain is is often an indication of the cause.
Kaiser, former soccer player and runner who has suffered from chronic shin splints throughout his life.
Ok, back from the gym. I need to shower, but I figure I should post since Bill is so eager =P. (By the way, I'm not at home, I'm in my office, which is about 30 steps away from the gym).
Anyways, the term "shin splints" is quickly falling out of common usage in the sport medicine arena because it's too damn non-specific. The term has been used to cover almost everything from idiopathic anterior leg pain to stress fractures to compartment syndromes to inflammatory things (and use the word 'things' in as scientifically and medically as I can).
I think it's pretty much agreed upon that a patient presenting with even transient, but chronic "shin pain" is almost always sent for a bone scan to rule out a stress fracture (barring a really really obvious clinical diagnosis that would rule it out).
Anterior and/or lateral compartment syndrome is also associated with shin pain, where the fluid pressure in the lateral and/or anterior compartment in the closed fascial compartment can encroach on the blood vessels and nerves. Sometimes the encroachment isn't sufficient to generate numbness, but can generate fatigue and a weakness in dorsiflexion (raising the ball of the foot off the ground). This syndrome persists despite preparatory training and adaptation (in fact, can prevent further training and adaptation due to the pronounced weakness and eventual failure to elicit quick dorsiflexion).
There have also been postulations that tibialis posterior (a deep muscle that has a "ridged" origin as opposed to a "point" origin along the posterior ridge of the tibia) may become irritated or inflamed, and that sometimes the tib. posterior attachment to the tibia may tear (I guess this is where the "tearing of muscle from bone" comes from). There are also theories about soleus and its involvement with the fascia of tib. anterior. These postulations, however, are the least supported as being a major part of the cause of shin pain.
For the rest, it may be the case, as Bill already mentioned, that the individual is just really sore. Tibialis anterior is one of those muscles that people don't usually think about (i.e. "I'm feeling muscles I didn't even know I had"). And because we walk as our primary mode of locomotion, even minor leg/thigh/hip pain becomes more noticeable because it's unavoidable, despite taking time off sport/work.
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