Been running regulary for 5.5 months now, still shin splints for days afterwards. Will this ever stop?

my experience with shin splints is that the pain would go away after 5 or 10 minutes of running so different from you. You might need a few weeks of complete rest and then a very gradual return to running. But as my username says...

Stop running until the pain stops. Resume running with an HR of ~140bpm instead of 190. Work from there.

Your HR is way too high; suggesting you’re probably cooking it. Slow the pace and you’ll probably stop over striding. GLWS

Look up podcast "Sports Performance Training" they have a good chat and prescribe some good exercises to help with this stuff

Obviously the episode is called Shin Splints

The calf stretch shown below, with your hand against a wall, cured shin splints for me years ago :

https://darebee.com/running/stretching-for-runners.html

It's easy to end up with crazy tight muscles when you're starting out running.

Went through that in early days. Ice packs helped. But mainly an exercise involving laying out a damp towel on the bathroom floor and "scooching" it under my feet using my toes. Just a minute of this 2x daily, and it cleared up. ( Mighta cleared up anyway, through conditioning to longer runs.)

Pain is the shins can be cause by different things, certainly too much volume, the shoes. If the bone is stressed beyond a certain point you'll have to rest for a while. In the meantime look into trying different shoes once the pain is gone. In my experience, having too much cushion (like the ultraboost) tends to make this condition worse, a more firm midsole and light stability shoes may help.

In the meantime, icing, advil will help

jamese1045 wrote:

Went through that in early days. Ice packs helped. But mainly an exercise involving laying out a damp towel on the bathroom floor and "scooching" it under my feet using my toes. Just a minute of this 2x daily, and it cleared up. ( Mighta cleared up anyway, through conditioning to longer runs.)

I would guess this helps if the pain was from tired muscles around the shin. If it's from stressed bone it won't do much, but I can't hurt to try :)

Get out of your high drop shoes, slow down dramatically, and it will go away.

Never had a shin splint after switching to zero drops - altra escalantes... had to be careful switching over, def had some calf soreness for a couple weeks. Totally stopped overstriding and the stress of heelstriking on the body. I think my whole lower leg became significantly stronger.

I could be wrong but your shins splits are probably due to hip weakness or disuse of the hips when running this puts more pressure on the knee and ankle. Try to find some hip Exercises that strengthen the glute med and minimus and other small muscles of the hip, and you should replace squats with another more knee friendly exercise.( if your knee is still bothering you)

Also check your form make sure your not over striding, that can put more pressure on the shins.

low drop for shins wrote:

Get out of your high drop shoes, slow down dramatically, and it will go away.

An example of (slightly) lower drop shoe that is more firm with very light stability is the Asics DS Trainer. Give it a try or something similar once feeling better.

When I had an issue like this I started with a VERY slow increase of miles once I could jog without pain for a few minutes:

1min jog, 3 min walk (with one day of break) for:

20mins

30 mins

40mins.

A little discomfort is ok, but no sharp pain, if it starts to hurt stop, the first few minutes will feel weird. If doing well then increase the jog duration (always one day of break) to:

2min jog / 3min walk for:

40mins

50mins

Then 3min jog/3min walk (with one day of break) for

40mins

50mins

Then continuous jog (with one or two days of break) :

20mins

25mins

30mins

...

Again, a little discomfort is ok, but no sharp pain. at no point you should feel worse than the previous run, if so stop the progression and reassess (one more day of rest, less jog, or stop altogether)