Not all shin pain is shin splints! Shin splints refers to pain along the inner aspect of the shin. Medically it’s called medial tibial stress syndrome. It will often hurt to run initially but then as the run goes on, it warms up and settles. And it will be tender but not in a localized way. If there’s local tenderness that’s less than 5 cm in length and it hurts in this area to hop then that’s likely a medial tibial stress fracture. But then you can also have anterior shin pain. There’s the tibi