![]() Having suffered 10 tibial stress fractures, five on each side, he has learned many lessons. Jason Lehmkuhle, who has a 2:12:54 marathon PR, knows all too well the importance of keeping the lower legs healthy. Bill Welle, of Velocity Sports Performance in the Minneapolis area, says, "Wherever the weakest link is, that's where you're going to feel it." So if your calves are sore after running or strength work, you may want to spend some time focusing on making them stronger. ![]() While stress fractures may indicate a need to strengthen your calf muscles, it's ideal to recognize the issue before it lands you in a walking boot. I think a lot of those exercises are really preventative. She says of calf strengthening, "It's part of our general strength routine here. Popp is also the women's assistant track and cross country coach at Iowa State. So it makes sense that, as lead researcher Kristin Popp, Ph.D., puts it, "People who had stronger calves had stronger bones than people who had smaller calves." The thinking goes, "If the strength of the muscle is relative to the size of the muscle, and you increase your muscle strength, you would also increase your bone strength," explains Popp. Why might that be? Bones tend to respond to strengthening muscles by becoming stronger themselves. ![]() When researchers at the University of Minnesota studied 39 competitive distance runners to see if they could identify predetermining factors for tibial stress fractures, they found that the runners with bigger calf muscles had fewer stress fractures than those with smaller calf muscles. It turns out that you might as well take a kick to the shins if you're failing to do a series of simple calf strengthening exercises integral to healthy running.Ībout half of stress fractures in runners occur in the tibia, the larger and stronger of the two bones between the knee and ankle. New research, however, suggests that our avoidance of such bone breaking, 17th-century shin kicking rituals is somewhat duplicitous. Among the regular installments of the Cotswold Olimpick Games are tug of war, a 5-mile cross country race, a falconry exhibition, the consumption of hearty amounts of spirited beverages, and most importantly, the British Shin Kicking Championship.ĭespite the fact that competitors are allowed to pad the inside of their pants with straw, most runners would cringe at the thought of jumping into that ring. For nearly 400 years a curious sporting celebration has taken place each summer in western England at the foot of the Welsh Mountains.
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