DW man, you’re not bugging me. It’s always good to ask lots of questions. Plus it helps get my miserable post count up
I would give hills a try. Start off with something LV like 2-3x5x20m and if it causes pain then don’t continue with it (make sure there’s no pain in your shins before you do your session, so you can judge effectively).
For me hills caused me no pain in the shins so volume and intensity were never a problem with them. I’m not sure about %max. I went at close to max effort - 95 to 100%… I’m not sure it’s possible to go much slower (while sprinting) and be able to get up the hill!
The hills I used were fairly steep as well about a 20 degree gradient (Charlie loosely reccommends 10-15 degree gradient - from memory), so I’m not sure if that made a difference to the impact on the shins.
Yeh, I sprint up grass hills (never tried hilled roads, but wouldn’t reccommend it). Luckily I have some very decent ones at the soccer field nearby so there aren’t many uneven spots…never slipped up while sprinting up them.
ATM my shins feel pretty good. I don’t feel any pain while standing, running, sprinting etc. only if I press hard on them while resting I feel a little bit of pain, but that’s absolutely nothing compared to what it was before.
Yeah the worst for me is stomping. (yeah i know thats just retarded though lol)
Did you do any specific rehab exercises for the shins, like doing lateral motion and dorsiflexion exercises, or just pretty much did everything you told me?
Leg Press Machine Calf Raises/Reverse Calf Raise (SUPERSET)
Bucket raises (with weight inside the bucket)
Rocking Calf Raises (weight on back)
Jump rope (double leg skips to start then introduced single leg skips).
Tip toe walks for distance
Heel walks for distance
Single leg calf raises
I normally picked 3 exercises per session (2-3 sets per exercise with 15+ reps) and rotated them frequently. I either did them at the end of a weights workout or after a low intensity workout.
Okay, and I just noticed you didn’t include any running or such in your warmup. Would you do something like maybe bike for a few minutes?
Oh yeh, did you lift like right after a hill session( which I suppose means you don’t need to do warmup again)?
Did you do the glute/ab activation exercises as a separate workout, or did you do them sometime in the lifting routine you showed me before?
Did you stretch and roll 3x a week, or was the 3x a week just for the rolling? did you stretch everything out, or just really focused on quads/hf,calves,low back?
lol im full of questions tonight. im lookin up how to do all the warmup exercises so im ready to go monday.
I did High Knees, Butt Kicks, Running As and Bs, which are all running drills. At that time I couldn’t really do much longer distance running because of the fear of inflicting more pain on my shins. I didn’t do any bike in my warm-up because it got my HF a fair bit tighter, which is the opposite of what I was trying to achieve.
Sometimes I lifted after hills sometimes I didn’t, depends on how my day panned out. It would probably be better to do them at separate times as then you get to do 2 warm-ups per day, but that’s only if it fits in your schedule.
Glute activation was done during the warm-up and also while doing static stretching (i.e. b/w static stretches of the HF, quads). Ab activation was done after/during the warm-up and randomly during the day.
I stretched and rolled 3x/week, normally on the same day, rolling then stretching (you could do it more, but I just did that because of time). Most the time I only stretched the muscle groups you mentioned, but occassionally I worked on overall flexibility (like once every fortnight, didn’t do any glute stretching, because they were already too flexible).
I would also reccommend reading lots of Mike Robertson and Eric Cressey articles at t-nation (these guys right a lot of excellent stuff about correcting posture), particularly “Hips Don’t Lie” (talks about pelvic tilt and corrective exercising for it), “Get Your Butt Into Gear” series (glute activation and strengthening work), “High Performance Core Training” (good list of exercise selection for building core strength), “Core Training For Smart Folks” (Ab activation - think I already gave you the link) and the “Neanderthal No More” series (covers a lot of postural defects and corrections). There’s some more but these are what I can remember of the top of my head.
edit: just a bit confused with the A and B drills though. I dunno if you’re supposed to emphasize the motion one leg at a time? (like ex: 20m right leg, 20m left leg, etc)
And if I got this right, the A drill is where the drive knee comes up and the foot dorsiflexes and it ends up recovering slightly behind the center of mass and bent, but the difference with the B drill is the leg recovers extended in front of the bodys center of mass?? Wouldnt that basically make the A drill the same thing as high knees?
I started off doing them one leg at a time, when I was learning them, but eventually I progressed to doing them with alternating legs.
Yeah, that’s how I do them.
If you haven’t done them before, start on the marching and skipping and then progress to the the running drills, once you’ve got the hang of it. You’ll probably get the A drill pretty quickly, but the B drill took me a bit longer to get used to.
I decided to forego working out, because I think I could possibly be on the verge of recovery if I take careful caution
I can’t explain it. Almost out of nowhere, my shins just felt amazing. By far the best they’ve felt in a year.
All I did the past few days for them was rest, stretch out my quads/hip flexors/ low back/ calves, and foamroll my lower body. Also did some ab and glute activation stuff, and this effective shin muscle exercise. It has varied somewhat, but still at the worst hasnt felt really bad at all in 2 days.
Maybe it was tight hips, because I def loosened them up too. Maybe my shins just randomly decided to start feeling better
Yeah such bullshit. I had to run in gym yesterday, and my shins were feeling pretty good, but I could tell they weren’t ready. I re-aggravated them a bit, but they’re still better than they were a week ago.
lol I guess I’ll just track my progression (or lack of) in this thread.
The shins for some weird reason got worse again. They were feeling incredible then something went wrong. I don’t know what it was though! I set a 15lb bench PR though, and sprinted like 30m yesterday and felt pretty damn fast, so I’m not doing too bad despite my situation. Shins didn’t really hurt during the sprint, but they just suck again!
I wish I knew what went wrong. Something obviously went wrong, because I developed a new, but minor pain in my very upper shin like right at the knee. I gotta be realllll careful.
So now my goal: Get back to where I was less than a week ago…almost pain free =)
yea man my only advice would be to keep doing what you did to make them feel good in the first place. Have you ever thought about it being your landing that might be making your shins hurt?
