My runner has had problems with this for a long time. This is her senior year and I don’t want her to lose out again. I am suggesting bike, pool and grass for the remainder of the year. I just don’t want her to taper to soon and maintain cardio strength for the 400 as well. Any thoughts?
What is wierd is that the shins don’t hurt while she is running and barely while standing but throb with sharp pains when lying down even on the next day. She is religous with ice baths and just icing. So what gives?
See if you can do therapy on them yourself daily (see Jane Project or 10 day taper or…). You don’t need to go real hard on them, just use light/medium pressure but do it every day if possible. You can potentially help a lot that way.
If that makes it better for a day or so but they come back, then you have to look at your shoes they run in AND the shoes they wear during their personal time.
We had a girl this year with a history of bad shin issues. I did therapy on them during indoor which kept her going but the pain would return about 2 days after treatment. During outdoor this season, she had minimal problems. I asked her what the fix was and she replied “oh, i stopped wearing heels to work then my shins stopped hurting”.
I don’t know if it makes a difference but when she went to Dr a while back they said its not shin splints but rather actual stress fractures.
What would be the therapy. To be honest I have some of CF downloads but cash is a bit tight right now.
I was basically talking calf massages. If they are already stress fractures, it will still help, you will just have a lower ceiling for improvement. Other than that I would just go with pool/bike/grass and meets for her training like you mentioned.
Try to ensure the pool & bike workouts are challenging and meaningful. Find a way to quantify them in order to force them to be challenging. Many people get hurt and end up training on the bike for example but just end up going through the motions. You need to count floating/running strides in the pool over a given time and time the intervals and plan the resistance/effort levels on the bike. The bike and pool should pretty much be equal to or greater difficulty than the running work it is intended to replace.
any ideas on specific pool workouts? I will search some threads also.
can do stuff with a 3/1 work rest ratio. like 1min aqua jogging in deep end w/ 20sec rest or something similar. if it’s too hard, add an aqua jogger belt. if it’s too easy either take away the belt or try to get as many leg cycles in as you can each run.
you can also do plyos/squat jumps in the pool or just a lot of Mach drills, etc. be creative
Might she also need to do a little dorsi-flexion work?
For example, with the exercise bike, tell her to pull up against the strap on the recovery stroke, not just push down on the power stroke. This is how pro cyclists pedal, they generate a lot of power on the upstroke, not just pushing down only, on front pedal, but simultainiously lifting back pedal. This way, the dorsi-flexors and hamstrings and hip flexors are working a lot, not just the quads and glutes during the cycling.
How do you know this about pro cyclists? And how does this “up phase” contribute to hamstrings’ extra work?
Thanks. This gives me a lot of ideas. SHould I expect some some early tapering issues?
Depends on what gets done. There is some Dan Pfaff audio where he explains how he had Oba train on a bike due to foot? issues for weeks then he came out and ran a PB in the 200. It’s tough for me to say because the 400 isn’t my primary area of focus.
Anyone else?