How to speed lower leg healing?

sorry if the thread title makes no sense but I'm trying to get advice on making my legs feel better faster.

I have sore lower legs frequently due to activity/exercise. From the back of my heel about half way up to the knee area is usually the sorest spot, especially on my right leg for some reason. And they're really stiff when I wake up, it takes awhile for them to loosen up a bit.

Is there anything I can do to make my legs heal faster and hurt less?

Excuse me, Bachelor, is it something related to blood circulation? What did the doctor say? Do you have any cramps?
I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, a cramp in its way. I immediately stand up, go to the kitchen and drink a full glass of water. It has to do, I know, with dehydration. It only happens when I didn't drink enough water during the day.
As I walk back to bed, everything is OK.

I haven't seen a doctor about it, I'm sure it's just normal exercise related discomfort. There aren't any cramps, just soreness and stiffness.

Just my 2 cents worth..
How long have you been exercising?And what type of exercise are you doing?
If this continues..I would recommend seeing a doctor, as it may very well be a circulation problem.

It isn't a circulation problem, it's *normal* soreness resulting from physical activity/exercise. No circulation problems, no blood clots, no medical conditions... just soreness. And my question is, is there a way to make the soreness go away faster??

Excuse me again, Bachelor, but if you didn't see a doctor, how do you know it's just a "normal" soreness due to exercise?. I could recommend you some massage always in upwards sense, the direction the blood circulates towards your heart. Try it for several days, also try to alternate cold and hot water at the shower. If it doesn't work, let us know. In the meantime, I'll try to get some more information and will come back with the solution, if any.
Have a good day and don't get too worried, worries amplify one's ailments.

For the past 6+ months I've stepped up my cardio training alot and there's a lot of jumping around involved. Jump rope type movements, jumping jacks, skating movements, shadow boxing, lots of movement where I'm springing around on my feet and stressing those tendons/areas around my heel in the lower rear parts of my legs.

Have you ever hiked up a steep trail and felt sore/stiff afterwards in the rear lower portion of your legs? It isn't the kind of soreness that comes from normal work or walking around all day, it's exercise related from when you're reallllly placing a high demand on your legs and stressing all those muscles and tendons in your legs. It's usually accompanied by some soreness around your knees along with some general muscle soreness.

I usually work out about two hours every day, I think I've taken one day off from exercising in the past 4 or 5 months. And 95+ percent of all I do is stand-up floorwork so my lower legs are constantly under stress.

And that's why I'm reasonably convinced that it's normal soreness. I don't feel a need to see a doctor and get a professional opinion about it when it's pretty plainly obvious that I'm simply over working my body a bit too much and have normal associated soreness as a result.

I was hoping to maybe hear from some athletes out there who might be familiar with the kind of soreness I'm talking about, and be able to offer some tips on how to avoid it or prevent it, or treat it.

I'll give two answers.

1. the newest methods for reducing next day muscular soreness is dunking in a tank of ~50 deg F cold water for about 5-10 minutes. In the case of an isolated body part, I'm not sure, especially if the entire body is not also being worked to the point of mild soreness.

2. if one isolated body part is sore, specifically and even more so if it's one foot and not the other, then the answer could be you have a pronated or supinated gait.

It's not easy to diagnose - it could be the other foot that's got a misalignment and the affected foot tries to compensate, causing it to be sore.

So suggest you start with an orthotics work up. They're usually free, though the orthotics can cost about $300 (that's cheap if they work)

Again, it's not easy to diagnose sports or overuse injuries, getting at the root cause. Often you end up treating the symptom and applying a 'bandaid'.

But that's not all bad. That's why I suggest looking into orthotics. Obviously for any activitiy where you're doing a lot of reps you want to assure that your foot strike is as nearly perfect and unconstrained as possible. Even if that isn't a problem, any endurance athlete can benefit from such an analysis.

If price is no obstacle, then get a full body motion sensor workup (like shot putters and golfers get). That's got a greater chance of spotting your precise root cause if there's an imbalance, and the fact it's one foot over the other leads me to this.

Is the foot in question your dominant side, the push-off side?

Good luck!

[edit on 18-3-2008 by Badge01]

Just to clarify - if you stepped up your workout and now something specific is sore, that is, by definition, an over-use injury.

Sure you can do therapy and take supplements to reduce it, but it won't correct it.

Depending on the severity, if you are unwilling to rest the the body part, then there's a variety of things, including cortisone injections, anti-oxidant supplements and dietary alterations.

Thing is, the definition of a successful 'treatment' is that it works.

So what I'd want to see is your diet, your rest periods, your specific workout, how quickly you ramped it up, and then I'd want some motion capture of your activity to see if there was a specific problem.

It could be an equipment problem and not a 'body' misalignment. If you're cycling and you have one foot misaligned a little and the pedal is not adjusted, since you are doing thousands and hundreds of thousands of repetitions, then a small thing can become major. Likewise a small adjustment (shims under your cycling shoe) can fix it.

Also, a misaligned gait is not always attributable to a foot problem. Could be a hip or a knee problem, leading to a malformed foostrike and then this could cause additional problems in a foot or another joint due to compensation.

Hope this makes sense.

That would make sense if I were a jogger... but doesn't apply so much to exercise involving constant irregular/erratic motion & movement.

Thank you for the well thought out effort in responding. The cold water seems to be the best thing I've been offered to look into so I may try applying cold wet cloths and see if that makes a difference.

This is just a molehill and I don't want to make a mountain out of it so let's not over analyze it lol... Again, it's just normal soreness and there isn't anything there to warrant dishing out money to any doctors.

Thanks for the responses everyone, Stevie loves you. =)

Good luck and best health, Stevie.

Please research acupuncture and/or try acupuncture to help yourself. I believe it might be helpful for you.

Sources of information about acupuncture:

@ Source 1
@ Source 2

[edit on 22-3-2008 by Chad Andrew]