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How To Stop Cramping Now!

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Cramping Myths and Hydration Truths

Cramping and fatigue in general are still relatively poorly understood physiological phenomena, but every cyclist has experienced Exercise Induced Cramping, and knows exactly how uncomfortable they can be! There are plenty of myths, anecdotes, and magic cures peddled by companies and fellow riders alike, but what can the Science tell us about cramping?

Stop Cramping Now Cramping Myths and Hydration Truths

What Causes Cramping?

Cramping is not necessarily a sign of poor hydration or electrolyte imbalance. Cramping is not necessarily a sign of poor nutrition, poor warm-up, or poor preparation for race day. Cramping is not necessarily even a sign of poor fitness… but all of those factors may contribute to fatigue and cramping.

Exercise Induced Cramping occurs when you push yourself harder and for longer than your body is used to: ie. a combination of greater volume/duration and greater intensity than your body has adapted for.

The current best theory for Exercise Induced Cramping is related to neuromotor fatigue. Basically, the nerves that carry signals to and from your muscles and your brain get tired just the same as your working muscles. Those nerve signals begin to misfire This neuromotor fatigue can send overlapping, uncontrolled signals to your muscles. This can result in twitching, cramping, complete locking up of your working muscles or the feeling of ‘dead-legs’ and an inability to produce power.

 

Hydration and Electrolytes

When you sweat you lose both fluid and ‘electrolytes’, which refer to a variety of minerals dissolved in the body’s fluids and tissues, and are essential to overall function. Sodium is the most abundant electrolyte lost in sweat, and so ‘salts’ are occasionally used synonymously when talking about replenishing electrolyte balance.

Sweat is hypotonic, that is: the electrolyte concentration of sweat is lower than the electrolyte concentration of your blood. This means that when you sweat you lose more fluid than you lose electrolytes, and therefore fluid loss will be the limiting factor to performance and is more important to replenish during exertion. During activities longer than 90min, and especially endurance events longer than 4 hrs you will lose both fluids and electrolytes to sweat, and both will need to be replenished.

Studies have shown that performance is negatively affected when total body weight loss approaches -2% via fluid loss (although even this finding has conflicting evidence). You should aim to replenish fluids during activity to avoid this extent of fluid loss. A general guideline is to drink at least one bottle – 500-750 ml – of fluid per hour.

 

Can you Drink Too Much?

You may have heard horror stories about athletes over-hydrating during endurance events and suffering from hyponatremia, or severely low electrolyte imbalance. These instances are an extremely low percentage occurrence and most often only seen in extreme ultra-endurance events. Studies found only 0.1-4% of an ultra-endurance population exhibited signs of hyponatremia, compared with 80% occurrence of basic dehydration.

Under-hydration can affect your performance during even short-duration activities and should be a far more significant consideration than over-hydrating. You have to try really hard to give yourself hyponatremia, but dehydration takes effort to avoid.

 

Fluid and Nutrition

Drinking an electrolyte-fluid mix can be effective to maintain performance and avoid cramping and fatigue, but the fluid is certainly more important than the electrolytes in that bottle of mix. Mix offers a more obvious advantage to performance, of course: as a nutritional source of carbohydrates (sugar/glucose). Some electrolyte supplements can be low or zero calorie, but more common is for drink mix to contain both carbohydrates and electrolytes.

Briefly: nutrition is a completely different topic which I won’t tackle here, but suffice it to say that calories from carbohydrates, protein & fats are significantly more important to performance over a multi-hour endurance event than electrolytes. You don’t have to choose one or the other!: carbohydrate + electrolyte mixtures can be a great way to replenish both on the bike! For optimal performance, you probably need to be eating more than you think!

I would suggest that if you find that drinking a carbohydrate/electrolyte mix helps you avoid cramping and boosts your performance, this is more than good enough reason to continue what works! This may be in order of importance; 1) the fluid; 2) the nutritional calories, and finally; 3) the electrolytes.

 

So What Should You Do?

The first thing that needs to be said is don’t worry about changing anything if you know what works best your you! Your body is very good at regulating itself: It will take in whatever you give it with very little fuss. The science indicates it should be unnecessary to supplement salts or electrolytes as long as you eat properly leading into your cycling event. You should get all the salts, minerals and electrolytes you need from a nutritious diet, not to mentioned ensuring optimal performance on the bike. Longer events will require fluid, electrolyte, and calorie replacement and you can get that from any combination of solid foods, gels, or drink mixes.

 

How to Prevent Cramping?

  • Nothing magical, just expose your body to greater duration and intensity of training stimuli. ie. go harder for longer, and next time you won’t cramp as early into your event! Training in the heat will assist acclimatization to the heat, and training in the cold, to the cold. You can experience cramping in any conditions to which your body is poorly acclimatized to.
  • Take care of the low-hanging fruit as part of your pre-event preparation: Ensure you are fresh, well-rested, with sufficient nutrition and hydration in the days leading up to a particularly hard event. Come prepared with sufficient nutrition and hydration for the length & intensity of the event and for the expected conditions on the day. TrainingPeaks has a fantastic guideline for basic pre-, during, and post- race nutrition & hydration planning.
  • There is also a potential genetic predisposition to cramping. so… get different parents? 🙂

How to Relieve Cramps Once They Start?

  • The fastest & most reliable method of temporarily easing cramps is passive stretching. Trying to stretch a cramping hamstring while on the bike is a good way to come to grief, but if you can slow up or even dismount and stretch the affected muscle it can provide much needed relief.
  • Continuing to hydrate remains important when you begin to cramp. Cooling via fluid intake will also help. However by the time cramping is occurring, hydrating and cooling probably won’t have a quick enough effect. You’ll be forced to slow down first, which probably has a more direct benefit.
  • Speaking of slowing down, an obvious (and often unavoidable) way to reduce cramping is simply to reduce your effort. This eases the demand on your working muscles, your heart & lungs, and also your neuromotor system by reducing the amount of voluntary nerve signalling to your muscles. This allows your entire neuromotor system to relax and recover.
  • Finally, recent headlines have highlighted using pickle juice, capsaicin (spicy pepper, chili powder, etc.), vinegar, or mustard as cramp cures. I haven’t explored the evidence in-depth, but the proposed mechanism is not actually the salt in those foods, but rather that the spice/acidity of these foods overpowers the rest of the neurological system and reduces nerve firing activity globally through your body. Similar to how biting your tongue “distracts” you from the pain of your stubbed toe.

Cramping, Electrolytes, & Hydration…

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*This Article was contributed by TORQ USA whose products are based around science and natural ingredients for optimal performance. You can find their products in our I Love Bicycling Shop.

Cramping and hydration are two subjects that many people consider to be inevitably linked (like Fish & Chips or Gin&Tonic), but this isn’t necessarily the case. Dehydration can cause cramping for sure, but you might want to look at a few other things first…so lets…

WHAT LEADS TO CRAMPING?

The most commonly overlooked cause of cramping is actually ‘over-exertion’. You could be doing absolutely everything right from a hydration perspective, but it’s just that you’ve asked your body to do more than it’s used to doing. It makes sense really doesn’t it? If you’re calling upon your body to do stuff it’s just not used to doing, it’s going to say ”Look mate, you’ve asked a lot of me in the past, but this is new territory. You must be joking, thus I’m going to punish you with pain…” (queue titanic contraction of hamstrings and calves).

The solution is simply to introduce some harder, more focused riding into your week.  The more riding you do, the higher your cramp threshold will become, so in short, you need to build up your fitness. Bizarrely, if you fuel and hydrate yourself properly (which will be discussed later on in this article), this will allow you to maintain a higher power output on the bike for longer, which in turn will put your muscles under more strain, which can then lead to cramping! I do think it’s very important not to get ‘cramp hang ups’ though, because cramping due to over exertion has to be a good thing. It’s a clear indicator that you’re overloading your muscles and causing adaptation. When I get to the point in my ride/race that I’m getting little twinges of cramp, I know that I’m breaking into new territory and pushing the boundaries. Once I’ve rested up afterwards, I’ll be stronger for it, so the rewards will be sweet. The diagram below shows how short term over-exertion will bring rewards in fitness providing you give your body sufficient time to recover.

 

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Remember that over-exertion comes in two forms, duration-based and intensity-based. If you can ride for hours, but cramp up on climbs or in races, you need some more intensity in your training, so think about doing some intervals or shorter harder rides. On the flip side, if you’re good at the fast stuff, but cramp on longer rides, you need more endurance, so try to get out and ride for longer (i.e. base riding).

A BIT MORE ON DEHYDRATION…

With this said, dehydration can’t be ignored as a cause of cramping.  Quite simply, if fluid and electrolyte intake doesn’t equal fluid and electrolyte loss, you will start to dehydrate, so you need to address high perspiration rates by putting more fluid and electrolytes back in to your body. Normal table salt is made up of Sodium and Chloride (2 of the electrolytes), but you will also need Magnesium, Potassium and Calcium – 5 ‘core’ electrolytes all together. Electrolytes are necessary elements for muscular contraction, so it doesn’t take a genius to work out that if you start to lose these valuable salts, your hardware’s going to start coughing and spluttering. And no, there is no one magic bullet electrolyte, thus we cannot overstate this, you need to sufficiently maintain adequate levels of all core electrolytes as well as some other nutrients. A bit further into this post we get into electrolytes in more detail.

The diagram below demonstrates the potentially catastrophic effects of dehydration.  For every 1% of bodyweight you lose through dehydration, you get a corresponding 5% drop in performance.  This is a huge performance loss and by way of putting some figures to it, a slightly dehydrated individual who usually kicks out 300 watts at threshold (time trial effort) will drop off to around 285 watts.  Suffice to say that races are won or lost by much smaller differences in power than this.  If dehydration reaches 4-5% of bodyweight, performance drops a whopping 20-30% and a fluid loss of 9-12% can be fatal.

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The physiological effects of dehydration are interesting.  The fluid losses cause blood volume to drop and as your blood plasma loses water, it becomes thicker.  This decreases blood pressure, which then reduces blood flow to the muscles and skin.  As less blood reaches the skin, thermoregulatory efficiency (the control of body temperature) is reduced and heat is retained within the body.  The worse the dehydration gets, the more pronounced this cycle becomes.

PREVENTION…EVERY RIDE/RUN IS DIFFERENT

In order to prevent dehydration, you’ll need to consume fluid, as well as fuel sufficiently. For the purpose of this post, we will focus on the hydration part.  So, how much fluid you take on board will depend entirely on the environmental conditions that you’re exercising in.  If you’re exercising indoors or in dry or hot conditions, you’re going to lose more fluid than in cooler or more humid conditions.  The paradox is that you actually feel like you’re losing more fluid in humid conditions when actually you’re not.  Sweat drips off you, but because evaporation rates are lower, you won’t actually perspire as much and your thermoregulation systems will be much less efficient at driving heat away from your body.  So as not to confuse the matter though, let’s make this assumption: You will perspire more and have greater fluid losses in hot than cold environmental conditions: You will perspire more at higher than lower exercise intensities and finally: You will perspire more in dry than humid environmental conditions.

When perspiration rates are high, you should aim to consume as much fluid as possible.  Pure unadulterated water will not hydrate you as quickly as an energy drink mixed at a 6% concentration though because of the osmolality (potential to diffuse) in the gut.  Sports drinks that are marketed as ‘Isotonic’ are designed for this use, but providing your energy drink is mixed at 6% (60 grams of carbohydrate per liter or 16oz H2O) it will be in balance with your body fluids and will hydrate you rapidly.  Hint hint…check out TORQ Energy…it’s really good at knocking two birds out with one stone…

As an aside, it’s a little known fact that we are actually self-hydrating organisms.  Through our metabolism (oxidative phosphorylation), we actually produce water as a bi-product and according to Wilmore & Costill, authors of ‘Physiology of Sport & Exercise,’ during rest we actually produce 150 to 250ml per day.  In addition to this, a 155lb cyclist will also produce about 150ml of water per hour during intense exercise.  During very cool weather, this would help to explain why one has to get off the bike to have a pee every now and then.  It’s a combination of this canny self-hydrating mechanism and perhaps drinking a little too much for the environmental conditions.

ELECTROLYTES, WHATEVER THEY ARE, GIMME GIMME GIMME…

Last and by no means least, lets get a little deeper into electrolytes.  These are dissolved salts that are capable of conducting electricity, so are vital for muscle and neural (nerve) function.  They also play a major roll in maintaining fluid balance within the body.  There are 5 electrolytes: Sodium, Chloride, Potassium, Magnesium and Calcium.  The last one is less important than the other four and by far the most important are the first two.  Having electrolytes in your energy drink has the following benefits:

  • They help to replace electrolytes lost through sweating (in case you hadn’t noticed, sweat is salty). Sodium and Chloride help to maintain the volume of the blood and also help to transport nutrients into cells so that they can be used for energy production, tissue growth and repair.  Potassium is present in much higher concentrations in the muscle cells than in the blood, so losses through sweating are much lower than with Sodium or Chloride.  Potassium deficiency would typically be symbolised by muscle cramping.  Low magnesium levels are linked to muscle fatigue and cramping too, but again losses through perspiration are less substantial than with Sodium and Chloride.
  • Electrolytes help prevent hyponatraemia. This is a rare condition that affects ultra endurance athletes and is also referred to as ‘water intoxication’.  If you consume water-only or an energy drink without electrolytes over a long period of time, the combination of sodium chloride loss through sweating and the dilution of the remaining salts in the blood steam with the fluid you’re taking in can cause headaches, cramping, loss of strength and nausea.  If left unchecked, this could become quite a serious condition.

To summarize, Ed Burkes’s book ‘Serious Cycling’ makes the following recommendations with regard to the amounts of electrolytes that should be present per liter in an energy drink, so check yours (check out details on TORQ Energy hydration & fueling mix here):

  • Sodium: 400-1,100mg/l          [TORQ Energy: 550mg/l]
  • Chloride: 500-1,500mg/l        [TORQ Energy: 940mg/l]
  • Magnesium: 10-100mg/l        [TORQ Energy: 12mg/l]
  • Potassium: 120-225mg/l        [TORQ Energy: 130mg/l]

Note that TORQ Gels also contain all 5 core electrolytes. Following our TORQ fueling system, you can hydrate and fuel with 2x 500ml bottles of TORQ Energy mix (2 TORQ Units), and 1 TORQ Gel per hour to achieve optimal 90g carbohydrate per hour, as well as be fully topped up on fluids and electrolytes for even the worst conditions.

So, in summary, when perspiration rates are high, do not consume bars or gels, just drink an electrolyte-containing energy drink mixed at 6% carbohydrate – and drink as much as you can (up to a little more than a liter per hour).  This is the quickest way to hydrate and you’ll be fueling yourself adequately by virtue of the fact that you’re consuming significant quantities of this 6% solution.  When perspiration rates are low, drink less or you’ll be taking numerous ‘comfort breaks’ and satisfy your energy needs through more concentrated ‘dryer’ forms of energy like gels and bars.

So, enjoy the heat and stick it to summer. You’ve got this. #Unbonkable

TORQ’s assortment of products to help you achieve optimal performance, not bonk, and stay hydrated for your ride can be purchased by clicking the image below.

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5 Electrolyte Products To Keep You Rolling Strong

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What is the importance of electrolytes during exercise, better yet what is an electrolyte? An electrolyte is composed of sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, bicarbonate, and hydrogen phosphate. All of these minerals are vital for basic human functioning. During exercise electrolytes are lost due to sweating and need to be replaced quickly in order for the muscles to continue firing at its highest state. Dehydration is the effect of to many of these electrolytes being lost; severe symptoms of this include dizziness, weakness, and vertigo.

Replacing electrolytes can be relatively easy because they are found in many things such as fruits, vegetable, specific electrolyte products, and many more everyday foods. Too many electrolytes can also be a bad thing, such as too much calcium causing hypercalcemia. All electrolytes are not created equally either. Some are much more important than others. For instance excessive sodium that is lost during exercise will decrease performance dramatically and can cause cramps if severe enough. There are many electrolyte products on the market though to help you avoid this!

Sometimes after a bike ride or run, drinking a massive sports drink is not in your best interest to replenish electrolytes after working out. Most of the big name sports drinks out there are full of carbohydrates in the form of sugar and simply want you to drink more of their product. Complex carbohydrates are good for endurance athletes, but not simple sugars that are found in most sports drinks. Steve Born at Hammer Nutrition said “Complex carbohydrates (polysaccharides) are the best choice for endurance athletes, as they allow your digestive system to rapidly and efficiently process a greater volume of calories, providing steady energy”.

5 Electrolyte Products We at ILB Have Used Regularly Over the Years

Below are a five electrolyte products to help you recover quicker and ride stronger that we at I Love Bicycling have used many of times! They’re listed here because we think they’re some of the best in the industry. Find what you like, both taste wise as well as performance wise, and stick with it.

Boulder Salt

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“Boulder Salt is a balanced blend of sodium, magnesium, potassium and calcium, developed as a nutritionally superior alternative to sea salt and traditional table salt.” Boulder Salt is $29.99 for a pack of 60 individual single-serving packets. This is one of the less well known electrolyte products but has received excellent reviews from users. It’s formulated based upon what pure spring water should taste like with the proper amount of minerals. This ratio is also what your body needs for good pH levels as well as electrolyte levels. It’s also a good substitute for table salt on your food and gives a nice, different touch to dishes.

Torq Nutrition

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Torq Nutrion offers electrolyte products, one being a hypertonic solution that is claimed the “fastest possible way to hydrate”. It is “formulated with 2:1 Glucose: Fructose derivatives” and contains no artificial sweeteners, colors or preservatives. It contains 5 key electrolytes and has multiple complex carbohydrates for not only good electrolyte levels but also energy levels as the 2:1 glucose: fructose ratio gives you quick energy as well as longer lasting energy. The taste is also exceptional being tasty yet not too overpowering.  This solution sells for $25 for a pack of 20 or larger, more economical sizes are also available.

nuun

Tri-berry

Nuun has several hydration electrolyte products to help replace lost electrolytes. Some of them include the active, energy, plus, and all day products. All of there products are used to fight cramps and improve recovery. Nuun has a very wide range of flavors and prices range but typically around $7.00 for 10 tablets. They are also very handy in that they come in little tubes of 10 which can be added individually to bottles. They also are just electrolytes so don’t have any carbs which are great to have before going to bed with a big ride the next day.

Skratch Labs

Skratch labs offers an exercise hydration mix that include simple sugars, but also electrolytes and real fruit flavoring. The mix is non-GMO, gluten free, dairy free, vegan, and kosher. Skratch prides itself on going beyond the expected point to create, simple good products for athletes. Skratch hydration mix sells for $19.50 for 20 16oz servings.

Clif Bar

CLIF Hydration Electrolyte Drink Mix Cran Razz Pouch

Clif Hydration Mix is made with 90% organic ingredients and contains sodium and carbohydrates. The Cliff hydration mix claims to be “less sweet and lighter tasting compared to other sports drinks”. This hydration mix is $19.99 for a 15.5 oz pouch. This electrolyte product is one of the most well known products on the market and continues to help cyclists hydrate properly!

Boulder Salt Company – Salt For Cycling Too?

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In order to live, be healthy, and perform at your athletic peak, your body needs adequate electrolytes and a proper pH balance. There are a lot of products out there with the goal of getting you all the electrolytes you need for sport. There are less products for balancing your pH but a lot of that has to do with your diet. A product that accomplishes both of these needs that we had the pleasure of trying and testing is Boulder Salt. Unless you complete a controlled research study, it is difficult to discern the differences from one product to the next but Boulder Salt not only has the real potential of giving you athletic improvements as well as everyday benefits but also comes with no down sides. At worst, you don’t notice a difference.

First – There are a Number of Ways to Obtain Electrolytes

An electrolyte is a substance that produces an electrically conducting solution when dissolved in a polar solvent, such as water. (Citation Link) Electrolytes are what allows your cells to pass voltage over cell membranes to transmit impulses. In short, this is what makes your muscles fire. There are 8 major electrolytes in your body:

  • sodium (Na+)
  • potassium (K+)
  • chloride (Cl–)
  • calcium (Ca2+)
  • magnesium (Mg2+)
  • bicarbonate (HCO3–)
  • phosphate (PO42-)
  • sulfate (SO42-)

You can obtain all of these from normal food items but the issue lies in us not getting the right foods at the right times on a daily basis, particularly when exercising. This is why we have sports drinks for cycling. Depending upon the sports drink, you may be getting the majority of these or you may not be and additionally, you are probably getting some other things as well to color it and make it taste better.

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What is Boulder Salt?

Boulder Salt was developed to improve the taste of tap water. The taste of tap water is determined by the minerals within it so if you take pure water and add an exact ratio of minerals, you can get tap water that tastes as it should. This is particularly rare with the majority of the population on city-treated water. With getting this ideal tasting water came the additional benefit of it containing the majority of the electrolytes that the body needs. Additionally, with this comes the benefit of alkalizing the body, or bringing it to its proper pH balance.

An Alkalized Body

A lot of foods in the modern-day diet cause an acidic effect within the body which has a negative overall impact on health. In fish, if the water they live in is either to acidic or alkaline, they die. Our bodies are no different except for the fact that we can control what are body pH is through the foods and additives we consume. A few of the health benefits of an alkalized body are as follows (Citation Link)

  • Skin more elastic, youthful
  • Deeper more restful sleep
  • Abundant physical energy
  • Suffer from fewer colds, headaches, flu viruses
  • Good digestion
  • Less arthritis
  • Reduction of candida (yeast) overgrowth
  • Won’t support osteoporosis
  • Increased mental acuity, mental alertness
  • Legal natural high

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Field Testing Boulder Salt

When testing any product, particularly for athletic performance, it will be difficult to discern a difference if you already have your system dialed. On the other hand, if you frequently suffer from cramps, don’t have enough endurance, or don’t drink enough normally, trying something such as Boulder Salt is going to give you a clear view of if something works or not. I used Boulder Salt on rides for two weeks from seven hour jaunts in the mountains of Colorado to short, but very intense one and a half hour efforts, all in temperatures in the 80’s and 90’s. On the longer rides, I had the portable packets in my pocket and added them to my bottles whenever I stopped for water. Normally on rides I will drink a standard sports drink mix but Boulder Salt is only electrolytes so I should have seen a slight decline in performance from fewer carbohydrates. I did not on shorter nor longer rides so this was seemingly advantageous.

Taste Of Boulder Salt

Although Boulder Salt was made particularly for improved tap water taste, to me, it did taste a little bit different. Almost a smoother taste like normal salt. Not bad, just different. The taste of water and if it is good or not is largely dependent upon what you are used to. Normal, good tasting water will be what you have on a day-to-day basis whereas anything outside that realm will taste a bit different. If you find you are not a fan of the salt itself in just water, you can easily add it to other drinks such as iced tea which is great on a ride particularly with lemon.

Additional Uses for Boulder Salt

Because Boulder Salt is a substitute for traditional table salt, it can be easily used for it with cooking and on salted-foods. It adds a subtle yet noticeably tastier touch to dishes. At first you will be like “was that taste just from the food or was it the Boulder Salt?” You will put it on half your food to see and you will then likely begin to use it instead of regular salt on your foods. It also contains half the sodium or traditional salt so can be used if you are watching your salt intake for health reasons.

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Electrolytes

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What Are Electrolytes?

what are electrolytesElectrolytes are salts and minerals such as sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium that are essential for maintaining hydration and regulating key bodily functions. Many electrolytes can be found in the ingredients lists in their uncharged form, for instance sodium chloride and potassium chloride. In the body, however, electrolytes break down into charged ions and are then utilized in a number of critical pathways. [Read more…]

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