Every Monday starts roughly the same for me. I wake up, shower, have breakfast, check emails, and head off to work for what will likely be a 10-12 hour day. I do this again on Tuesday and Wednesday, then take Thursdays “off” which means I try to not schedule clients that day, and then hit up a relaxing 8 hour day on Friday. By Wednesday night, I’m looking forward to Thursday morning for more than a chance to sleep in.

By that time, my feet and shins are really sore. I’ve probably been on them on hard concrete floors for 36 of the past 72 hours, and this cumulative wear over time tends to take its toll.

Many new trainers tend to develop shin and foot soreness within the first 6 months of working in a gym or studio due to the cumulative time standing on hard surfaces. While standing posture may vary from time to time, the feet and shins are always under pressure. The funny thing is if I walk around a city or run errands, I have no pain or problems, but it only comes after standing for about 4 or 5 hours straight for a couple of days in a row.

I wore a pedometer and heart rate monitor one day a couple of years ago to see what I would get up to in a given day. That day, I wound up burning close to 3800 calories, and walked the equivalent of 8 miles throughout the day. I’m not sure how accurate those measurements are, but they seem about accurate. So compound that by every work day of the year and you have the accumulative stress on the legs during training.

Trainers tend to have a bit of a different need than many of our clients. Most of our clients tend to be heavily flexion biased, whereas trainers seem to be more extension biased, possibly due to the lack of sitting time comparatively and the need to continue to emphasize posterior chain work, plus standing all day does tend to shift people into more extension anyway. We tend to develop much less neck and upper shoulder pain and stiffness, yet have much more tenderness through the adductors and tibialis posterior group.

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Because of the differences in occupations compared to many of our clients, we may need to take care of our legs in a bit of a different manner, so today’s post is going to discuss these aspects and hopefully help make your tooties stay happy and not wind up barking at you at the end of the day.

#1: Don’t Wear Minimalist Shoes When Training/Coaching

I love minimalist shoes when appropriate. Walking on trails, doing heavy deadlifts, or engaging in some parkour or rock climbing, minimalist shoes are the bomb. However, in terms of standing and walking/moving on hard surfaces for an extended period of time, they’re not going to be your best friend.

The floor gives amazing biofeedback to the foot for sensory input, but if you’re not used to the total volume of standing and walking around, it can quickly fatigue the muscles and connective tissue of the foot and shin and wind up leading to soreness, which leads to an altered posture to try to avoid this soreness and make you able to continue to work.

On top of this, not everyone is ready to go in minimalist shoes without some soreness or stiffness, even if they only wear them for a couple hours a day. If your foot strike isn’t completely neutral, you could wind up developing some pronation or supination issues related to this when you strap on some thin soles. One easy way to tell this is to pick a pair of old shoes that you’ve worn a lot and check out the soles to see what portions are worn down the most.

If you wear the heck out of the inside of the tread, you pronate like no one’s business. If you wear out the outside edges, you’re walking on the baby toe the entire time. If the heel is really worn down, you probably have a hard heel strike, which could be problematic when you’re walking around without padding, whereas is you wear out the ball of the foot and have no wear through the heel, you’re likely a forefoot striker which means you may have an increased risk of achilles tendonitis or irritation. Essentially, when you wear minimalist shoes as your daily grinders, your room for error in terms of foot strike is incredibly small and could result in some significant soreness and stiffness at the end of the day.

I have a relatively neutral foot strike, so I’m lucky in that I guess, but I do tend to develop pronation as the day goes on and the muscles of my feet and shins fatigue. As a result, I tend to do well in shoes with some cushioning and mild arch support. I’m not talking about slapping a pair of Shape Ups on and thinking you’re somehow “toning” while just looking like a punk walking on pillows, but some cushioning that would give the average 8mm heel to toe declination. Most olympic lifting shoes would tend to give between 12 and 24 mm, and conventional runners would give about 12mm, whereas minimalists give a zero drop.

My wife has a pair of Newton runners, which she loves, and they give only a 3mm heel mid foot drop, but they have a cambered sole in the middle to produce more of a midfoot strike, which means the drop is a little different here due to the shape of the shoe.

The foam in shoes can also wear down over time. Whereas most people can get about 6-12 months out of a pair of regular use runners, I tend to only get about 6-10 weeks out of mine after spending 40 plus hours a week and having my 240 pound frame crush down into them. I can always tell when it’s time to change the shoes when my shins start to get sore again. It’s an investment, but one I’m happy to make if it keeps me able to work.

#2: Change Positions a Lot

I tend to try to vary my posture a lot through the day. I’ll lean on equipment, sit on surfaces, hang out in a deep squat, whatever it takes to still be able to coach my clients, observe what they’re doing, and give my feet a break where possible so they aren’t even more sore at the end of the day. Plus, changing levels so I’m not standing tall over my client on the floor makes them less uncomfortable too.

A deep squat helps to maintain the ability to dorsiflex your ankle while stretching out all of the posterior tissues, whereas sitting on your ankles helps to stretch out the anterior compartment. I’ll use both of these throughout the day, even if the positions are only really held for a couple of minutes at a time.

Additionally, demonstrating the exercises and helping the clients move through the exercises themselves helps to keep your postures altered and reduce the stress on any one point.

One way to change positions is to simply take a break. I know, it’s a novel concept to many, but while on a break, don’t just sit idly by while allowing your legs to become somewhat more stiff. Spend some time walking around outside, run a few errands, or simply hit up the foam roller for some mild self-myofascial release work.

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Foam rolling in this instance isn’t designed to “stretch” muscles or tissue, but simply to alter the tone of the tissues that have been turned up to 11 for the entire day. The rolling gives the neuroreceptors a light reboot, sort of like turning your phone off and on again to reset some of the features. It’s not meant to replace actual rest, but can help to reduce the highly active and cranked up tonic and phasic muscles of the legs during or after a long day. Don’t press into tight spots so hard you can’t breathe or begin to start smelling colours, but just work to the edge of uncomfortableness.

#3: Stay Hydrated

Often I’ll catch myself having gone through 4 or 5 clients and I haven’t had a drop of water. Persistent loss of hydration can have a very large effect on connective tissues, specifically on fascia, which can become stiff and less motile in conditions of dehydration. This can stiffen the fascia, which while under constant tension from standing all day can produce some soreness and stiff feeling through the areas being brutalized. People who have chronic low back pain can see a reduction in symptoms from increasing their water intake over time. It won’t fix poor movement habits or structural dysfunctions, but can play a massive impact on disc health and connective tissue elasticity.

One way I’ve used in the past to determine hydration needs with exercise is a simple sweat test, and it can be applied to non-exercise conditions too. Simply weigh yourself before a short workout, don’t drink anything during the workout, and then weigh yourself right after. For every 2 pounds of weight loss, you’ve burned through about 1 litre of water (technically it’s every 2.2 pounds for those who want to get anal retentive about it), which is the amount you would need to replace to stay hydrated.

You could do the same thing during your work day. Weigh in before you start, don’t drink anything for maybe the morning or just the afternoon and then weigh yourself after. Try to avoid going so long you would have to pee as this would affect the water weight, but if you have to pee, go just before you weigh in to make sure you include an empty bladder into your considerations.

I tested this out on myself a few years ago, and weighed in at just before 6am, then again at 10 am. My weight went down 2.6 pounds during this time, and after hitting the head it went down to 2.9 pounds. To replace this amount of water I would have to consume roughly 1.25 litres, give or take, to be as hydrated at 10 am as I was at 6am.

#4: Understand Compression

Admittedly I haven’t ventured into this category for recovery much as of yet, but a lot of research has shown big benefits to using compression garments for helping improve venous return, repeated effort power maintenance, and overall recovery. My wife uses compression tights and notices a big difference in how her legs feel the day after a couple of hard training sessions.

Compression won’t help to automatically help you increase power, run duration, or lift more weight, unless you’re using something like a triple ply squat or deadlift suit, in which case you’re probably not going to be walking around in that much during the day, and the odds of your legs feeling better are probably minimal. Compression will help you to not feel like a completely epic attaché of fail after a long day of standing, and for those of you inclined to run as far as you could very realistically drive if you had sense about you.

Keeping your legs heathy and functioning for extended days on hard surfaces can make a big difference in how long you can last in the field, and also make the days much easier to tolerate. Keeping yourself healthy is as much an appearance thing as it is about how you move and recover, so spending some time preventing or recovering from achy feet and shins can be massively impactful, even if not directly viewable to others.