Ditching the road work

[AHussain123]

Hello
I am new to this forum, The question I have is this, should I ditch the road work? The reason being I am getting really bad shin splints. I was thinking of doing my cardio on the machines. I was thinking of doing some cross trainer, bike,step master and rowing.
I have been slowly increasing my mileage and distance so I am unsure why I am getting shin splints, I even wear the correct footwear. Who else suffers with this? and what did you do to fix it.
I have been icing and resting and doing some stretching to strengthen the posterior calves

[Syf]

Definitely. You can permanently injure yourself if you continue working out the same way with an injury. Cycling or swimming can be an acceptable stand in for roadwork, if need be.

[Ray Corso]

What surfaces are you road working on?

[Abra]

I have the exact problem on and off and its the most annoying thing

,,, you can change to treadmill running or change the surface

a proper running track for example or on grass ,, if you live near a beach try to run

barefooted on the beach ,, and for sure cycling is amazing alternative with stressing your

shins

[BennyST]

I used to get absolutely brutal medial shin splints. Stopped me training for quite a long time and was very hard to get rid of. Tried lots of different things.

The one thing that worked, and amazingly it got rid of them nearly for good, was acupuncture. I had to strip back my running, skipping, and any serious footwork training for some time though and really work it back super slow. I seem to remember they came back one time after about 6 months from memory when I started get back to into my skipping routine with leg weights again, but I went back and got more acupuncture before it got bad and again it fixed it. Never had it since and that was after living with it, trying lots of different things and trying to train through it for years. Really awful when it gets bad.

Definitely stop all your road work completely, and stop it all immediately would be my suggestion from experience. Really let your legs heal and rest up completely without any training for a while on them, and get treatment at the same time. Once you feel they're really good to go, then work them up super slow and get regular treatment for a little while after as a maintenance kind of thing. I got acu every two weeks, or something like that from memory, for a couple of months while I worked it back up to help prevent it. Been many a year since I've had it!

[BennyST]

Small note though: I was lucky enough to find an acupuncture dude that was very knowledgable in massage and sports injuries etc. So if you do go that route make sure you shop around first and find the best you can. It was definitely worth it for me in the end though. Definitely.

[BG_Knocc_Out]

Aside from what has already been said, correct running form is vital. Ultimately shin splints are caused by impact. I see too many idiots airborne shuffling and not opening their stride up.

[AHussain123]

Syf what about the cross trainer and step master, The cross trainer has the similar movement pattern when striding forward plus you can increase the resistance.

[AHussain123]

ray
I run on concrete the reason being where I live it runs alot so the grass is soggy and running on it will not be ideal.

[AHussain123]

Abra,
I wish I could run on the beach barefeet, I have heard barefeet running is the best because you run best when barefeet because its natural and you will use the ball of your foot rather than the heel which puts stress on the knees and shins.