When I go in the gym and it’s leg day, my legs seem to cramp up easily. Now, it may be just because I have really weak legs but there has to be another reason why my legs cramped up. I also noticed that if I flex a muscle to hard, I’ll cramp up. All of this may be because I am not built physically but I have asked my friends and they say they encounter similar issues. I am trying to figure out in general why people cramp up.
I am aware of certain causes of cramps already. From personal experience, when I have over-exerted my muscles, they would cramp up easily. Also, if I haven’t had enough water to drink, I find myself cramping up easily. As I did more research, I found that there are many other possible causes of muscle cramps. According to WebMD, cramps can be caused by not enough blood circulating to the muscle, exercising when it is hot out, not stretching before you exercise, and many other reasons that all show a deficiency in some part of our body. According to an article I came across, blood circulation in muscles is vital because it provides the muscles with the proper oxygen and nutrients it needs to perform well. I also read that cramps caused by a high temperature ties to the amount of fluids you have in your body. If you are dehydrated, you are more likely to cramp up.
From what I know, treating cramps is not that difficult. I would get cramps in the middle of the night but rather then try to make it go away, I would just twist and turn in my bed until it went away because I was too lazy to get up. But, any practical human being would do something about their cramps. What I have learned to do is stretch and hydrate. I would get cramps in the gym so I would stretch out my hamstrings and go drink water. It seemed to help a lot, but now I’m wondering if it was the correct thing to do. According to another article I read, my methods that I was aware of already worked, but there are also other ways to treat cramps. One of the major methods that stood out to me was to get up and walk around. The article stated that if you walked around, your muscles would get a message from your brain to relax. Maybe I shouldn’t just lay in bed when I get a cramp next time. One last thing I wanted to look into was if bananas really helped when it came to muscle cramps. My football coach would give us bananas after every game to help us avoid cramps. He said the potassium helped but I never understood why. A blog I came across said that potassium helps balance out the fluids in your body and electrolytes. So if you cramp up, eating a banana might be worth a shot.
Overall, cramps are something that are easily avoidable. If you hydrate properly before any type of physical activity, you have less of a chance at getting a cramp. But if you do end up getting a cramp, don’t freak out. Stretch, hydrate, and if you want, eat a banana.
http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/muscle-spasms-cramps-charley-horse
http://ksi.uconn.edu/emergency-conditions/heat-illnesses/heat-cramps/
http://www.healthline.com/health/pain-relief/how-to-stop-leg-muscle-cramps#4
I decided to read this post because lately, I have been getting cramps in my leg and foot in the middle of the night. I thought that it was weird, because before I went to college, I would never get cramps in the middle of the night. I never knew that dehydration resulted in cramps. Perhaps because I am walking all over campus all day, my muscles are not used to all the walking, and because I’m exercising so much, I’m becoming more dehydrated than I normally would.
I found this really informative article on how to prevent the WORST kind of cramp – the charley horse ( http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-a-Charley-Horse ). It suggests massaging the area that is cramping, and states some of the same stuff you said in your blog, such as stretching, and drinking some water.
This caught my attention because I workout regularly myself. It was interesting to know the science behind the cramp, since I constantly got them in lacrosse games. I found personally, that quick stretching of the cramped muscle, southed the pain and brought it back to normal. Bananas definitely are key in avoiding cramps, since potassium and water is what fuels the muscles. Keep up the good work.