Shin Rolling

The latest in a series of neurotic blogging projects is this one: shin rolling. 

Between 2000 and 2007 I trained at Knuckles Muay Thai, a gym in Oldham teaching the Thai martial art. The sport has its roots in Buddhism and can be traced back to 650BC. 

A lot of the fighters at the gym would roll down their shin bones with a kitchen rolling pin to round of the edge of said bone. This in turn would kill off the nerves and prevent pain when blocking kicks (done with the shin). It’s something I tried to get into a routine of doing, but I was too busy at college when I first started training. 

Some people roll, some people scrape wood down their shins (bad for the skin I expect) and some people tap their shins with a thin stick, all to condition the bone from a sharp tender edge to a round, dull edge. 

22 years later, I occasionally throw a few kicks on the bag in my local gym, although I think the staff aren’t too keen about it. Apparently, it breaks the concrete in the middle of the bag, and it forces all the stuffing out eventually. I’ve not seen anyone else throwing kicks, so… can I take credit? 

Anyway, I’ve always found pain to be a big problem in training. Shin rolling would have been a great benefit to me at that time, but with age comes wisdom and all that. It’s been my intention for years to get back into shin rolling. January is the perfect month as no-one is doing anything. 

If you’re a regular reader you’ll know I like to dual things – reading and planking, reading and cycling, chin-ups and a Netflix series, etc. I decided on a season of Viking show The Last Kingdom. I watched Season 2 in a day and rolled down my shin bone the whole time. 

All of this was hard. Not just the pain, but the angle. The sitting on the floor, leaning forward, over a slight gut that wasn’t there when I was training in Muay Thai, whilst looking up at the screen, trying to follow a plot. Not great for posture. I tried the couch, but that wasn’t much better. Too soft, too much movement. I found it’s important to keep your foot flat on the floor when doing this. The temptation is to lift your foot, but this activates the tibialis anterior, the strip of muscle that helps control your foot, and when tensed covers and protects the shin bone. A flat foot allows the rolling pin to flatten the bone.

As for Last Kingdom, I love the Viking era but, goddamn, it’s complicated. It’s not spoon-fed condensed history, like History Channel’s Vikings show. Thank God (Odin?) for Wikipedia synopses. Season 2 sees protagonist Utrecht – born Anglo Saxon but sold into Viking culture as a child – wrestling with his loyalties while living in 878AD England, all the while trying to reclaim his ancestral homelands. If I’ve got that right.

You’ve really got to concentrate, which is difficult when you’re trying to flatten both shin bones with a piece of wood. I don’t know if this has had a positive effect, and I won’t until I can get on the bag at the gym. Really, a little bit of this every day will eventually deaden the bone and turn it into a fighting tool. Really, a solid binge that took 8 episodes of an hour each, punctuated with regular breaks due to pain, isn’t going to immediately condition shins. Perhaps a short episode per day might be more appropriate. 

Duh.