It is not uncommon for weight trainees to experience muscle cramping for any muscle which has been recently trained, if put into a fully contracted position and tensed. Is this intense involuntary muscle cramps good for progress or should you try and avoid muscle cramps like the plague?
Let me first explain that I do not believe in flattering people with terminology or anything fancy like that. What I will give you is my opinion as to what causes it, why it happens, and how to reduce muscle cramps from my own experience.
First off, why do you get muscle cramp? Generally when we subject our muscles to intense training, we tear the fibers. To look at a smaller level when you work your muscles the bands of fibers are forced to shorten or contract from the firing of the neurotransmitter ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate). Grueling set after set the fibers experience more and more trauma, to prevent us from seriously damaging the tissue beyond repair the body begins to produce some serious byproducts, mainly lactic acid.
In the day after working out you experience this to the fullest extent with delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). So what is likely happening is when you contract the muscle hard the body tells it to do so but when you stop the signal to relax is a little slow getting there. During this point in time the muscle stays contracted, cramped, and you experience the pain of a hard contraction and the burn from the waste products on the damaged fibers.
Now for the next part, is this good for progress and should you encourage it? For this I would have to say if you are experiencing this fairly regularly you are definitely training with high intensity. This is not a bad thing because it’s required for basic progressive training to gain muscle.
How to Reduce Muscle Cramps When Lifting Weights
Vince Delmonte’s muscle building program has a whole section dedicated to stretching which helps with avoiding muscle cramps because stretching muscles lengthens the muscle fibers and is especially useful for muscles which are prone to cramp up.
Looking at your diet is also important if you want to reduce muscle cramps. What I would do if you are experiencing this too often is to make sure that you are consuming a good multivitamin and lot’s of milk. You can conveniently add milk to protein powder, fresh fruit, and oats to make a tasty weight gain shake which is good for post workout nutrition. If you don’t like milk a good calcium and potassium supplement should help with muscle cramping problems. Be sure to pay close attention to your diet instead of being too concerned with these cramps, because I think it’s normal to experience it every now and then when you are pushing yourself hard in the gym, but you shouldn’t be plagued by them.
Training very intensely can sometimes cause a real shortage in these vital building blocks, no matter how good our diet is, so that is why I encourage you to start with these. If after a couple of weeks with the above you are still experiencing bad cramping often try reducing your overall volume of your training and cycle your weights, heavy for so many weeks then light and so on.
All in all I think it is healthy and good for muscle growth to experience muscle cramps every now and then, just as long as the involuntary cramps are not ruining your workouts. Cramping can be particularly troublesome for those new to weight training because their muscles simply aren’t used to the workload they are experiencing.
It is not uncommon for weight trainees to experience muscle cramping for any muscle which has been recently trained, if put into a fully contracted position and tensed. Is this intense involuntary muscle cramps good for progress or should you try and avoid muscle cramps like the plague?
Let me first explain that I do not believe in flattering people with terminology or anything fancy like that. What I will give you is my opinion as to what causes it, why it happens, and how to reduce muscle cramps from my own experience.
First off, why do you get muscle cramp? Generally when we subject our muscles to intense training, we tear the fibers. To look at a smaller level when you work your muscles the bands of fibers are forced to shorten or contract from the firing of the neurotransmitter ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate). Grueling set after set the fibers experience more and more trauma, to prevent us from seriously damaging the tissue beyond repair the body begins to produce some serious byproducts, mainly lactic acid.
In the day after working out you experience this to the fullest extent with delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). So what is likely happening is when you contract the muscle hard the body tells it to do so but when you stop the signal to relax is a little slow getting there. During this point in time the muscle stays contracted, cramped, and you experience the pain of a hard contraction and the burn from the waste products on the damaged fibers.
Now for the next part, is this good for progress and should you encourage it? For this I would have to say if you are experiencing this fairly regularly you are definitely training with high intensity. This is not a bad thing because it’s required for basic progressive training to gain muscle.
How to Reduce Muscle Cramps When Lifting Weights
Vince Delmonte’s muscle building program has a whole section dedicated to stretching which helps with avoiding muscle cramps because stretching muscles lengthens the muscle fibers and is especially useful for muscles which are prone to cramp up.
Looking at your diet is also important if you want to reduce muscle cramps. What I would do if you are experiencing this too often is to make sure that you are consuming a good multivitamin and lot’s of milk. You can conveniently add milk to protein powder, fresh fruit, and oats to make a tasty weight gain shake which is good for post workout nutrition. If you don’t like milk a good calcium and potassium supplement should help with muscle cramping problems. Be sure to pay close attention to your diet instead of being too concerned with these cramps, because I think it’s normal to experience it every now and then when you are pushing yourself hard in the gym, but you shouldn’t be plagued by them.
Training very intensely can sometimes cause a real shortage in these vital building blocks, no matter how good our diet is, so that is why I encourage you to start with these. If after a couple of weeks with the above you are still experiencing bad cramping often try reducing your overall volume of your training and cycle your weights, heavy for so many weeks then light and so on.
All in all I think it is healthy and good for muscle growth to experience muscle cramps every now and then, just as long as the involuntary cramps are not ruining your workouts. Cramping can be particularly troublesome for those new to weight training because their muscles simply aren’t used to the workload they are experiencing.