any thoughts? shin splints?

yeah... there are good days and bad days so just move on. Deep down in my head I always pretend that I have two weeks to live and that I might as well push it. It always works.

you broke your leg

You are overstriding. Your are thinking about landing your foot, rather than solely focusing on lifting your feet up under your hips. Don't toe off and don't stride out. Learn to run and you won't be injured.

I think miles is referring to the Pose method, something that has been discussed quite a lot on these boards. There are a bunch of folks on either side of the debate as you can imagine.

I have had chronic shin pain similar to what you describe, for practically my entire life. It's been absolute hell trying to put a season together without stopping for a week or more at some point.

I recently took up the Pose method out of desperation. I've tried every therapy I could find, went to sports docs, did stretching and strengthening and I still end up with the shin pain. After working with the Pose method for a week and a half, I ran a few laps yesterday and had no pain at all. This is pretty cool, because I've been having pain every time I run. I'm not ready to call it a success after one day, but I'm definitely going to stick with the Pose thing for a while.

Could you explain fully this Pose method? Not sure if I would fully utilize it, but as someone who has had those consistent deep shin pains I'd be interested to hear more about it.

It's kind of hard to summarize, but basically, it's good form, with an emphasis on striking the ground with the ball of the foot, (not the heel,) and using a fairly compact and rapid stride. Instead of pushing off the ground, you think about pulling your foot straight up to your rear, and letting the other leg drop to the ground via gravity. You don't want to think about placing your foot on the ground. You want to keep both knees bent at all times. As I said, it's hard to summarize. The DVD was pretty useful in explaining the method, and the message board on their website is pretty useful too. www.posetech.com

so you dont think its a stress fracture?... im going to get it checked out eventually ill bike for a day or two and drop my mileage for the week and see if it improves

Interesting thing, I worked with a group of hs kids yesterday on form work. They were really receptive and after analyzing their form in slow motion on video, there was no arguements. What suprised me was that they all said their running felt easier and lighter after trying to run in a Pose method. It takes a lot of time. Your re-wiring your coordination, but so does building aerobic capacity. honestly, the best way to learn pose is to go to a clinic. I tried just going off of the DVD for over a year and after a recent clinic I learned that I wasn't doing everything right. I had chronic shin pain as well.

Shin splints do evolve into stress fractures if your run through them. You won't be able to walk if it's a stress fracture. I took someone's advice when I was young to suck it up and run through shin splints. At mile 12 I had to hitch hike home.

thats what i figured if i really had a stress fracture I would know going over the tender area it just feels like a bruise... danka

hey, seriously check out the pose stuff. It gets a lot of crap, but the crap is unfounded. pose is based on physics, plain and simple.

people say changing your form is bad, that you should run naturally. if this was working, why all the injury?

people also say that if you run enough miles you will develop good form. To an extent, this is true. A very good analogy is to take a stone square. roll it 2,000 miles. what will happen? the edges will round off. BUT, it will crack in half long before it becomes a perfect circle. landing out in front of yourself and pushing off represent a sqaure. lifting up under your hips, that being your only focus, will lead to a perfect circle, which assists gravity.

Jose Reyes wrote:

Has anyone experinced something like this before?

yes. your obp is terrible. you swing at the first pitch nearly every at bat, and get into an 0-2 count almost as often. relax. or youll be batting 2nd after the all star break.

but im 21 fast as lighting and if you look at my career stats there very good for being 21 and better then many stars of the future.