Can Massage Help Shin Splints? Cambridge, MA

Can Massage Help Shin Splints?

Shin Splints are a common injury for runners, dancers, and athletes in general. They cause lower leg pain that is hard to overcome because we use those muscles to walk around. The lower leg muscles give up when we ask them to do more than they can manage.

 

What Gets Strained

 

When we get shin splints, one of two muscles in the lower leg is stressed and can become injured. One is right next to the shin bone, and the other muscle is behind it. The muscle in front, next to the shin bone, flexes the foot. That means, it pulls your toes toward your knee and controls the rolling through your foot as you walk or run. It is the most essential walking and running muscle. The muscle that is behind the shin bone helps you navigate uneven ground, helping you keep your balance. When strained, these muscles develop small tears called micro tears, which can be very painful.

 

I remember a woman who used to run with her husband. When she complained of lower leg pain, he told her not to baby herself and that she should run through the pain. When the pain became unbearable to walk, she came to see me. I assessed her pain, and she had shin splints. Her shin muscles were so severely injured that it hurt when I barely touched her muscles. Not only did she have shin splints, but she also had pain in the bone itself. I immediately sent her to her doctor to get an X-ray. It turned out she had multiple small fractures in the bone, known as stress fractures.

The Cause of Shin Splints

Repeated high-impact exercises like running, dancing, and jumping beyond your capacity can injure these muscles. When something hurts, it is your body sending a message to stop. If we do not listen when the body sends us a message, we pay the price.

 

Assessing the Problem

Massage therapists will use various tests to assess what is injured. The easiest test for pain at the front of the shin is walking on your heels. If that causes pain, you have shin splints. When assessing shin pain, I will perform two tests to figure it out. The first one is for pain at the front of the shin, and the second one is for a deeper pain experienced on the inner side of the lower leg.

In the first test, the person holds their foot in place, and I try to pull the foot down with a good amount of force. That muscle is normally very strong. If there are shin splints at the front of the lower leg, it will hurt and be very weak.

In the second test, the person pushes their foot inward, toward my hand. If that movement hurts at the inner side of the calf, the person has shin splints of the muscle under the shin bone.

Specialized Massage Treatment

Poorly formed scar tissue develops when a muscle is injured. A special form of massage, called friction massage, helps to break up that scar tissue and allow normal healing to take place. When performing this technique, you move across the muscle at a 90-degree angle to break up the scar tissue.

 

 

If you have shin pain, always see a physician or a therapist trained in how to assess and treat pain and injury issues. If you let it go for a long time, the muscles can weaken, and you may end up getting extremely painful stress fractures.

 

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Watch this blog for more patient safety recommendations, and if you’re in need of a professional massage therapist who focuses on chronic pain relief and rehabilitation, you can book an appointment with Dr. Benjamin here. 

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Ben E. Benjamin holds a Ph.D. in Sports Medicine and was the founder and President of the Muscular Therapy Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He is the author of dozens of articles on working with injuries and chronic pain as well as the widely used books in the field, Are You Tense?, Exercise Without Injury and Listen To Your Pain: The Active Person’s Guide to Understanding, Identifying and Treating Pain and Injury. Dr. Benjamin has been in private practice for over 50 years and teaches therapists throughout the country.