Welcome to the Get Fit Guys' quick and dirty tips to get moving and shape up.

My name is Brock Armstrong and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

Just about everybody who has been in the military, run for fitness or for competition,

or danced for fun, or as a profession,

has probably experienced the bane of foot

strikers everywhere shin splints. From mild discomfort on the front of the leg to severe pain with

each step, every variety of shin splints is annoying, inconvenient, and in some cases even debilitating.

Now, shin splints is a catch-all term to refer to pain on the front of the lower leg.

The fancy medical term for the most common cause of shin splints is medial tibial stress syndrome,

which simply means there is inflammation or sometimes

separation of the muscles, tendons, and bone tissue around your tibia or your shin bone. Pain

typically occurs along the inner border of the tibia where the muscles attach to the bone.

This syndrome can occur when the leg is repeatedly exposed to impact-based stress, which can fatigue the muscles on the back of the leg

and create excessive bending in the tibia bone of the lower leg. When the tibia bends and moves,

the tendons and soft tissue around the front of the leg that connects to the tibia bends and moves, the tendons and soft tissue around the front of the leg

that connects to the tibia can become overused and inflamed, resulting in you grimacing with each step.

This syndrome can also occur when your calf muscle is so tight that you must exert extra force to flex your foot as you walk or run.

You can think of it like your foot's natural and relaxed position has actually become slightly

pointed all the time due to the tightness in your calf. So in order to not trip every time you

take a step, you have to engage your shin muscles to flex your foot.

Now this poops out those muscles and this constant tension in the muscles causes it to pull away from the bone.

Eugh. A couple of other less common conditions that can cause shin splints are stress fractures,

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