Running

Well, they are some of reebok's new technology...here:

I think a good stretch out before I run next time is called for, plus maybe a gentle twice a week run should be ok to start with.

Fuck me, I hate shoe companies, they're a right bunch of cunts. =(

I'm really sorry but have to agree with DFP, please take those back if you can, say you can't run in them or something they will only impede your running.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtES84n0aNk

The sad truth is the more technical the shoe the more likely you are to become injured. The constant push for profit causes running shoe manufacturers to produce gimmick after gimmick year on year. I hate the cunts, they honestly are not interested in reducing injury, only in making profit by misleading customers onto believing they need new feature X because it will somehow improve their running.

A quick 101, the absolute ideal for running is the human foot... and that's it. Nature really has produced for you a perfectly designed, custom fitted piece of running equipment and handed it to you for nowt right there on the end of your leg! It's been designed to work perfectly in concert with your ankle, knee, leg, back and so on. Take a look at it, a quarter of the bones in your body are in there, It's taken literally millions of years to perfect that. Leonardo de Vinci called it a masterpiece of engineering!

Now, I'm not saying you should go out and run barefoot (which wouldn't necessarily be such a bad thing) but that the more you add to the foot, the more you change how the foot works, the more likely you are to cause injury.

Here's what's happening with your shin pain : Because you're wearing a shoe with an artificially built up and cushioned heel you're now landing on your heel. If you imagine your leg out-stretched forward in the heel-strike position the impact forces coming through the heel will be causing a rotational force around the ankle as the full weight of your body comes down. The only muscle capable of opposing this rotational force is the anterior tibialis (shin muscle) so essentially, due to an artificially built up heel you're now putting all your weight through your shin, hence shin pain.

The irony being that if you tried running barefoot you wouldn't be able to run like that, landing on the heel is landing directly on solid bone. Try this, go into the kitchen (or somewhere with a hard floor) take your shoes off, tense your shins so that you lift your foot up and are standing on your heels only, now try walking around. Just feel the huge impact going through your heel, ankle and knee. Now imagine running like that, now imagine running like that with a gel pad - it's not gonna resolve the problem. Now try walking properly, feel how much softer it is.

Anyway as far as your shin splints are concerned as I mentioned a solution might be to shorten your stride a bit which would lessen the forces going through your shin. Personally I think the real solution is dump the overly technical trainers and go for something minimal.

Regarding stretching. Forcibly stretching a muscle to its limit isn't a good thing (how could it be?), it's certainly not a good way to warm up. I dunno, again it seems to be one of those things that everyone seems to do (see women in youtube video above) but if you stop and think about it, it makes no sense. For any warm up you want to warm up the muscles you're going to be using, so actually you might as well just run but starting off gently. A nice light short paced jog and then build up the speed from there. Saying that even a slow run does produce decent impact forces through the foot so I start off with a few foot exercises, nothing forcible like grabbing your foot and forcing it to move to extremes, just things like ankle rotations, clenching your toes, moving things around just to get everything working.