How to prevent muscle cramps?
Question:
Answers:
drink plenty of water and cut out your sugar
eat foods high in potassium like bananas
Try to do stretching a bit longer before starting, specially the one which cramp. And drink a lot of water.
Start slowly to your body need to recover.
keep stretching but drink a lot of fluids throughout the day like water and gatorade
My martial arts teacher told me that you only get muscule cramps when you are not in shape. I was suprised because I was working out at the time so I was pretty sure that I was in shape. My advice is to work through it until its unbearable and then ice it then put heat on it. Also stretching helps A LOT! If you stretch, and excercise enough eventually the cramps will go away and then you can stop iceing and heating the cramped muscles. But since you mentioned that you still stretch before biking...the main thing for you to do would be to ice it right after biking and then put heat on it 20 minutes after you put ice on it. GOOD LUCK!
Warm up first as well as stretch so the muscle is more loose. The cramp is the build up of lactic acid crystals.
Cramps can occur when you are resting, sleeping, or participating in sports or other daily activities. Anyone can develop a muscle cramp but infants, the elderly, the overweight, and athletes are at greatest risk for muscle cramps. Athletes most often develop muscle cramps at the beginning of a season when their body is not yet fully conditioned. Cramps in athletes can occur during or after periods of physical exertion.
If you get a muscle cramp while exercising, one strategy is to stop your activity and hold the cramped muscle in a gently stretched position until the cramp resolves. If a cramp occurs when you are lying down, you may want to do just the opposite -- put weight and walk on the cramping leg. Light massage may (or may not) help alleviate the pain.
In athletics, you can also help prevent future muscle cramps by always warming up and stretching well (especially the muscle groups prone to cramping) before workouts and maintaining adequate hydration when exercising. Sports beverages rather than water may help prevent electrolyte imbalances such as low sodium levels (hyponatremia).
Check with your doctor if you have frequent or unusually severe muscle cramps that do not appear to be associated with exercise or do not improve with stretching and massage. Muscle cramps in the legs that come on with exercise can be a sign of a more serious condition called intermittent claudication due to poor circulation of blood to the legs.
More Questions & Answers...