By Sandra Hume
If you were asked to make a list of the muscles that were most important to take care of, your shins might not even make the top five, especially if they’ve never given you trouble. 
But anyone who’s experienced shin pain knows all too well the importance of the bones between the knee and the ankle — the fibula and tibia — and specifically the muscles that attach to them.
In everyday life, shins play a pretty crucial role, says Robert Steigerwald, M.A., exercise physiologist and personal trainer in Huntington, NY. (Find him on Twitter as @metabolicbob.) The muscles surrounded by the tibia and fibula bones of the shin help with basic balance and make walking over anything uneven possible. Thank your shins when you can navigate up the stairs, down a hill and onto a sidewalk.
Once we incorporate exercise into life — even something as simple as walking — we ask more of these muscles. Shins can easily be overexerted and result in shin pain, which is commonly known as “shin splints.” (more…)
