If you’ve ever felt a deep, dull ache creeping along the inside of your shin bone during a run, you’re not alone. Shin splints — known clinically as Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome (MTSS) — affect roughly 47% of of lower-leg running injuries, making them the most common lower-leg running injury.¹

I see shin splints in my practice more than almost any other running complaint, and what frustrates me is that most runners only seek help once the pain has already set in.

The good news is that most cases are entirely preventable. This guide covers exactly how to prevent shin splints by addressing the five areas that matter most: your training, your strength, your running form, your shoes, and your nutrition.

What’s Actually Happening Inside Your Shin?

Before we get into prevention, it helps to understand what’s going wrong. I always explain it to my runners this way: two things break down at the same time.

Your muscles are pulling on the bone.

The deep muscles along the inside of your shin — especially your soleus (the deep calf muscle) and tibialis posterior (the muscle that supports your arch) — work hard every time your foot hits the ground. Their job is to slow your ankle down and control how much your foot rolls inward.

When these muscles get overworked from too much running too quickly, they pull repeatedly on the thin tissue wrapping your shin bone, causing inflammation and pain.¹

Your bone can’t keep up with the damage.

Every run creates tiny microcracks in your shin bone, which your body normally repairs and rebuilds stronger. But when you increase training faster than your body can repair, the damage stacks up.

Researchers have actually measured a temporary drop in bone density at the exact spot where shin splints hurt — confirming this is a real bone overload issue, not just muscle soreness.^1,2

This is why learning how to prevent shin splints means addressing both sides: building muscles strong enough to absorb the impact, and giving your bones enough time to adapt.

Manage Your Training Load

The number one cause of shin splints is doing too much, too soon. It’s an overuse injury at its core. The first piece of advice I give my runners who want to prevent shin splints is to control how quickly you ramp up.

Follow the 10% Rule

Don’t increase your weekly running distance by more than 10% from one week to the next.³ This gives your shin bone and surrounding muscles the time they need to remodel and grow stronger.

But distance is only half the story. Hard sessions — speed work, hill repeats, tempo runs — place a much higher force through your legs per step than easy running. To prevent shin splints from intensity-related overload:

Alternate hard and easy days rather than stacking demanding sessions back to back
Include one to two days of low-impact cross-training like cycling, swimming, or pool running each week
Take these cross-training days seriously — they keep your fitness up while giving your shins a complete break from impact³

When the 10% Rule Isn’t Enough

Here’s something most running advice leaves out. I regularly see runners in my practice who follow every rule perfectly and still get shin splints at the same weekly distance every time.

This happens because gradual progression only works if your tissues have the raw capacity to handle the load you’re building toward. Remember the bone overload mechanism — when your muscles are too weak to absorb running forces, your shin bone takes the hit directly.²

If your soleus and tibialis posterior simply aren’t strong enough to handle the volume, no amount of careful build-up will change that. You’ll keep hitting the same ceiling.

The solution isn’t more slow progression. It’s targeted strength training to physically increase your tissues’ capacity. That’s why I tell my runners: if the 10% rule alone isn’t enough to prevent shin splints, your training plan has a strength problem, not a mileage problem.

Build Stronger Legs to Prevent Shin Splints

If you take one thing from this article, let it be this: strong muscles protect your shin bone. When your muscles can absorb the forces of running, your bone doesn’t have to. This is the advice I give every runner I treat for shin splints — and it’s the strategy that keeps them from coming back.²

Lower Leg Exercises (The Non-Negotiables)

Do these two to three times per week, ideally straight after a run so your rest days remain true rest days:⁷

Bent-knee calf raises — stand on the edge of a step with your knees bent, lower your heels below the edge, and push up. Bending the knee isolates the soleus, which handles more load during running than any other single muscle.
Straight-knee calf raises — same movement with straight legs. This targets the gastrocnemius (the outer calf muscle). Stronger calves don’t just absorb shock — they actually stimulate the bone underneath to become denser.
Banded ankle inversions — loop a resistance band around your forefoot and pull your foot inward against the tension. This strengthens the tibialis posterior, the exact muscle whose overload drives shin splint pain.
Towel scrunches — scrunch a towel toward you with your toes. This builds the small muscles in your foot arch. A stronger arch resists overpronation (excessive inward foot rolling), which protects your shin from twisting forces.⁷

Don’t Forget Your Hips

This one surprises most runners I work with, but weakness at the hip creates a chain reaction that ends at your shin, leading to shin splints. When your glute medius (the muscle on the side of your hip) is weak, your pelvis drops on the opposite side during each stride. This causes your knee to collapse inward and forces your shin bone into excessive rotation.¹

I commonly prescribe these to prevent shin splints from this top-down chain reaction:

Single-leg step-ups
Single-leg Romanian deadlifts
Side planks
Dead bugs for core stability

Improve Your Ankle

If your calves are tight, your ankle can’t bend upward properly when you run. Your foot compensates by rolling inward too early, and your shin pays the price.¹ Training your calves through full range of motion is the best way to improve your ankle mobility.

Fix Your Running Form

There’s no single “perfect” running form to prevent shin splints. Your body shape, strength, and mobility all play a role. But in my experience, correcting two common form errors can go a long way toward helping you prevent shin splints.³

Stop Overstriding

Overstriding means your foot lands too far in front of your body. When this happens, your leg acts like a rigid brake against the ground. Your knee is almost straight at impact, which means your muscles can’t absorb the shock — so your shin bone takes the full hit.

When this happens, your leg acts like a rigid brake against the ground. Your knee is almost straight at impact, which means your muscles can’t absorb the shock — so your shin bone takes the full hit.³ Over thousands of steps, that braking force adds up to a huge amount of extra stress on your shins.

Increase Your Step Rate

Your cadence (steps per minute) is the simplest fix I recommend. A faster turnover naturally shortens your stride and places your foot closer to your body at landing. Studies show increasing cadence by just 5–10% significantly reduces the forces travelling through your shin.³

If you’re at 160 steps per minute, aim for 168–176. A metronome app or beat-matched playlist makes this easy to practise. I’ve seen this single change prevent shin splints in runners who had been struggling for months.

Choose the Right Shoes — and Rotate Them

Your shoes control how much impact reaches your shin on every step. Getting this right is one of the simplest ways to prevent shin splints.

Match your shoe to your foot type. Runners who overpronate would benefit from a stability shoe with a firmer medial post to resist that inward collapse. Neutral runners benefit most from well-cushioned models that soften each landing.⁴
Rotate between two to four pairs. A 22-week study of 264 runners found that those who rotated shoes had a 39% lower injury risk compared to single-shoe runners.⁵ Rotating between shoes with different heel heights and foam densities spreads the load across different muscles and tendons, preventing the repetitive overload that triggers shin splints. It also gives each shoe’s foam 24–48 hours to decompress between runs.
Replace worn-out shoes. After roughly 500 km, the foam in your shoes degrades so much that the pressure reaching your foot effectively doubles.⁵ Replace your shoes every 500–800 km, and stop wearing them as everyday shoes — those casual steps count toward foam breakdown too.

I always tell my runners: the best shoe for preventing shin splints isn’t the most expensive one — it’s the one that feels naturally comfortable on your foot and matches your biomechanics.

Mix Your Running Surfaces to Prevent Shin Splints

Where you run directly affects how much force your shin absorbs. I see this overlooked constantly.

Concrete is the worst surface for shins. It absorbs almost no impact, and studies show peak forces on concrete are 3.6–5.6% higher than on tracks or grass.⁶
Asphalt (road surface) is softer and more predictable — the better option for urban running.
Grass is ideal for shin protection. The soft ground absorbs impact forces instead of sending them back up your leg.

To prevent shin splints over the long term, deliberately alternate surfaces. I advise my runners to do hard sessions on asphalt and recovery runs on grass or dirt trails.⁶ This prevents your shins from taking the exact same forces on every single run.

Fuel Your Bones

Shin splints sit on the stress fracture spectrum, so bone health is a genuine tool to help prevent shin splints. Your bone’s ability to repair itself after every run depends heavily on what you eat.⁸ If you’re not eating enough total calories, your muscles fatigue faster during runs. Fatigued muscles stop absorbing force, and your bones take the full impact.⁷

The key nutrients to help prevent shin splints at the bone level:

Calcium — the building block of bone. Found in dairy, spinach, kale, and soybeans.
Vitamin D — essential for absorbing calcium. Found in fatty fish, eggs, and sunlight.
Protein — repairs fascia, tendons, and the structural framework of bone. Found in meat, fish, and legumes.
Omega-3 fatty acids — reduce the inflammation that drives shin splint pain. Found in fatty fish, flaxseeds, and walnuts.⁸

I always tell my runners: you can have the best training plan and the strongest legs, but if your body doesn’t have the raw materials to repair bone and manage inflammation, your shins will eventually let you know and you still struggle to prevent shin splints.

The Bottom Line

Knowing how to prevent shin splints comes down to five things: control your training load, build stronger legs, clean up your running form, rotate the right shoes, and eat to support your bones. In my experience, most shin splints are entirely avoidable when you address the root causes rather than just chasing the pain.

If your shin splints keep returning despite doing everything right, it’s time to see a physiotherapist for a biomechanical assessment. Sometimes the missing piece is a specific weakness or movement pattern that only a hands-on evaluation can uncover.

About The Author

Daniel da Cruz is a physiotherapist in Sandton who regularly treats running-related injuries in clinical practice. He commonly works with runners dealing with issues such as ITB syndrome, knee pain, hip pain, and shin splints, using evidence-based rehabilitation, progressive strength training, and movement retraining to help them return to running safely and confidently.

References

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Larson, A., McClure, C. J., May, T., & Oh, R. (2025). Medial tibial stress syndrome. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538479/
Figueiredo, I., Reis E Silva, M., & Sousa, J. (2025). The influence of running cadence on biomechanics and injury prevention: A systematic review. Cureus, 17(8), e90322. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12440572/
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Malisoux, L., Ramesh, J., Mann, R., Seil, R., Urhausen, A., & Theisen, D. (2015). Can parallel use of different running shoes decrease running-related injury risk? Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 25(1), 110–115. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24286345/
Ferro-Sánchez, A., Martín-Castellanos, A., de la Rubia, A., García-Aliaga, A., Hontoria-Galán, M., & Marquina, M. (2023). An analysis of running impact on different surfaces for injury prevention. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(14), 6405. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10378879/
Galbraith, R. M., & Lavallee, M. E. (2009). Medial tibial stress syndrome: Conservative treatment options. Current Reviews in Musculoskeletal Medicine, 2(3), 127–133. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2848339/
Sale, C., & Elliott-Sale, K. J. (2019). Nutrition and athlete bone health. Sports Medicine, 49(Suppl 2), 139–151. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6901417/

How To Prevent Shin Splints: 5 Expert Tips for Runners

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