The patient came in the clinic because of pain in both shins. He was a 3rd year University student who started running 3 weeks prior to the appointment in hope to do the Plymouth 5K. The client explained that he was really inactive before he started running and normally didn’t do any physical activity. He begin with a 3 miler around his home and then carried this on everyday for a week, when he started to experience the pain. He said that the pain came on when he started running and then eased off after the first 10 minutes. He tried to rest it and iced it daily for a few days however this did not ease the symptoms and because of the time restrictions he started running again and working through the pain.
When the client was asked to point to the site of pain, he pointed at the lower inside of his tibia and said that the pain was a few centimetres long.
Because of the subjective history it appeared that the client was experiencing Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome.
Eccentric exercises were prescribed that focused on strengthening the muscles around the ankle; tibilis ant/posterior, longus gastric.
The client was told to perform the exercises every other day and it was recommended that he discontinued the running and changed it to lower impact activities like swimming and cycling until the pain eased off.
The client has been booked for a follow up in 2 weeks’ time to check on his progress and to progress the exercises. He wants to talk about gradually building up his running and how to do this, so he will be shown a walk to run programme in the next appointment.