Alright mate I am suffering from the same thing, (i think)

I was in the royal marines and left aprox 4 years ago now. I first went to docs in the corp about this problem and its taken best part of 4-5 years to get somewhere. It got to one stage that when I was running yellow bruises would appear along my shins and the pain was horrific.

I am also a kickboxer and I too do not suffer from the pain during kickboxing.

The nhs is pants and have been passing the book for years with my problem,

Its was only when I moved house and went to a new doctors and got refered to a physio who is massively dedicated and actually cares about her job that I am starting to get somewhere.

Basically the short and small of my injuries that were causing my shin splints were as follows:

Insoles: I have a very high arch which collapses when I run therefore I have insoles to prevent this from happening.

Neurogical: spinal nerve problems caused by compression from carrying weight (an intensive course of pushing very hard on my spine until it cracked lots sorted that) This subsequently gave me a lot more flexibility in my back.

running: I run on my toes with my feet pointing outwards. This is because I have very weak gluts, and the muscle on the inside of my calf is also terribly weak (dont know what its called).

Calf muscles: I have no muscles on my calfs I basically used the anterior compartment muscles to run as a result of the weak inside calf and gluts. Hence this caused the problem.

I have been going through physio for approximatly 5 months now and although physio has eleviated the problem and I do not get the pain I also dont run anymore.

I have to build up my gluts, calf and the muscle on the inside of my calf as well as retrain the way I walk and run.

It is taking an age to solve this problem and although I am making head way I may have to go for an operation. Something my physio is against because results vary massively (it can make the problem worse).

Its just a case of building up these muscles from scratch so I become less dependant upon the anteria compartment.