shin splints!

To strengthen the shin muscles you can do sets where you walk on your heals only for 30 seconds to a minute. After a while your shins will get stronger and be balanced with your calves and you should no longer get shin splints.

I use to get bad chin splints when I played volleyball in high school. I was told then to ice and heat my chins and that would help. High school was so long ago for me that I'm not sure which one you should do after the workout and which one to do before the work out...sorry.

I just had this same problem!

I normally run on the treadmill and went to run outside on Jan 25 and got a shin splint in my left leg too. Mine was caused by a certain amount of things.
1.) I was running with my car key in my shoe. So hitting my key was causing the splint.
2.) I was running wrong, you have to run heel-toe-heel-toe.
3.) my shoes were old. ( but you said you have new shoes)

This is what worked for me, I had to wrap it in a ace bandage every day for one whole week. Ice it everyday for one week, use "icy-hott" and DO NOT EXERCISE FOR ONE WEEK! It will get worse if you do. Some stretches that work are holding your feet in the air and making your feet go in circles, (just your feet) so it looks like you are working out your ankles or something. Do this exercise throughout the week you are resting, then before and after each workout.

Also, to strengthen your shins, when you can run again if you happen to run across a hill, run up the hill backwards. This is what I did and my shin is all gone. I had to rest a WHOLE week though. When I did return to running I had to run through the end of the shin splint. It's been 1 week and 3 days since my last splint and it still bothers me when I run, but I run through it and stretch it after a run.

Good Luck!

i recently changed my running shoes back to nikes and poof, gone. you may have to try a few different pairs and then do the other stuff suggested by posters: strengthening, stretching, ice, slow down, etc.

I don't have pain per say, but my shins burn like fire when I try to do the treadmill. It's really a bummer because I love the calorie torch, but I've gotten into the habit of avoiding it and I do the rower, bike, or elliptical instead. I'll have to try the walking on your heels exercise to see if it helps to strengthen them a bit more. If i could get them under control, I might start doing some outdoor running this summer.

Shannon

The trick I learned to deal with shin splits is to stretch out AFTER you have warmed up a little. My neighbor (who's a physical therapist) explained it to me really well. When you try to stretch or exercise without warming up your muscles, they will not expand to their full potential and it causes them to remain tight during exercise. But if you do a warm up to get the blood flowing then your muscles will really loosen up and stay loose during exercise. So now I do like 3 sets of 30 jumping jacks before I get on the treadmill and then I stretch my legs. I've actually noticed that I'm quite a bit more flexible too from doing this. It all made so much sense to me when I started thinking about the routine I had when I used to play football. We would jog a warm-up lap (maybe 1/4 mile), then do jumping jacks, THEN STRETCH, then practice plays, then do a cardio workout.