Shin splints

What it is

Irritation of the bone surface and the soft tissue attaching to it along the inner border of the tibia. It sits on a spectrum: at the mild end the tissue is simply overloaded and recovers quickly, and at the far end the bone itself is stressed and heading toward a stress fracture. The difference matters because the treatment is the same at first and the timeline is not.

How volleyball causes it

Volleyball is jumping and landing, hundreds of times a session, and the shin takes the shock every time. It shows up when the load changes faster than the bone can adapt: preseason after a quiet summer, a move from one session a week to four, a switch from a sprung indoor floor to a hard gym or a beach court, or new shoes with less under the heel. Sand cuts both ways here, softening the landing while making every push-off longer and harder.

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What it feels like

• A diffuse ache along the inner edge of the shin, over a stretch of several centimetres rather than one point.
• Sore at the start of a session, easing as you warm up, then worse afterwards and the next morning.
• Tender to press along that inner border, over a broad area.
• Both legs often, though usually one is worse.
• Settles within a day or two of resting, and returns at the same point in the next hard session.

Stop and get it seen if

• Pain that narrows to one small point you can cover with a fingertip, especially if pressing it is sharp.
• Pain that continues at rest or wakes you at night.
• Pain that no longer warms up but gets worse through a session.
• Swelling over the bone, or pain on hopping on that leg alone.
• Any of the above in a player with low energy availability, missed periods, or a previous stress fracture.

What recovery usually looks like

Stages, not a schedule. Everyone moves through these at their own pace, and the ranges are wide because real recoveries are.

1. 1. Settle the load

   1 to 3 weeks

   Get the shin out of the range that is aggravating it without stopping everything.

   • Jumping volume cut, not necessarily to zero: skills, ball control and upper body work continue.
   • Walking and daily life are pain free.
   • Morning soreness is gone or nearly gone.
   • Footwear and surface have been looked at rather than assumed.

2. 2. Build the tissue

   3 to 6 weeks

   Make the calf, foot and shin tolerate load again, and address why the load spiked.

   • Calf raise strength and endurance is building, both straight and bent knee.
   • Hopping on that leg is comfortable.
   • Jump volume is climbing gradually rather than returning to where it was.
   • No return of morning soreness as volume rises.

3. 3. Back to full jumping

   2 to 4 weeks

Ready to play again when

• No pain during or after a full session, and none the following morning.
• Able to hop 20 times on the affected leg without pain.
• Calf raise strength and endurance comparable side to side.
• Full jump volume reached by progression rather than by jumping straight back in.
• No tenderness to press along the shin.

Keeping it from coming back

This is ordinary training, so unlike the rest of this page it does tell you what to do.

• Build calf raises to real capacity: straight-knee for the gastrocnemius and bent-knee for the soleus, working toward sets in the twenties on one leg. The soleus takes several times body weight on landing, and a weak one hands that load to the shin.
• Add a foot intrinsic routine, arch doming and toe spreading, especially if you play barefoot on sand. The foot is the first shock absorber and beach players train everything above it and nothing in it.
• Progress jump volume by roughly ten percent a week rather than by however many sessions the schedule happens to hold, and treat a tournament week as the spike it is.
• Land quietly and through the whole foot rather than slapping flat. Noise on landing is load that went somewhere, and it is a cue a partner can give you from the sideline.
• Replace shoes before the midsole is dead, and be honest about the change when you move between a sprung floor, a hard gym floor, grass and sand in the same month.
• Eat enough for the training you are actually doing. Bone adapts to load only when there is energy to build with, and shin pain in an underfuelled player is a different and more serious conversation.