How to Prevent Leg Cramps From Ruining Your Ride

Technically, exercise-associated muscle cramps feel like noticeable pain with rigid muscles, often described as a knot. The muscle sometimes twitches and then tightens. Almost instinctively, the athlete experiencing a cramp will stretch and massage the muscle to loosen the cramp.

While cramps aren't life-threatening (which is one reason there isn't a lot of research about them, according to Miller), they can greatly inhibit an athlete's performance. Just look back to the 2017 Tour de France as an example. During Stage 8, Lilian Calmejane suffered a calf cramp that threatened his ride. The good news though? He still went on to win that stage.

While no researcher has been able to definitively point to one reliable cause of muscle cramps, they seem to occur when “you’re doing work that your body is not ready for or pushing your muscles beyond what you’ve been training to do,” Miller says.

The research also points to dehydration, muscle fatigue, and lack of sleep, as the most likely contributors to a muscle cramp, although, again, no one is sure how those three things create the cramp at any one time.

Also, in addition to not being trained enough to handle a tough workout, avoiding a solid warmup could also contribute to muscle cramps.

If being tired and thirsty with cold, untrained muscles leads to leg cramps, then the best way to prevent leg cramps is to do what you typically do to get ready for any ride: Get enough sleep, warm up before going all out, and drink plenty of water.

“There are major benefits to a proper dynamic warmup,” Miller says, “but pre-event stretching is not a preventative for cramping and flexibility doesn’t seem to be predictive."

Similarly, don’t ask your muscles to do something they aren’t ready to handle. That means gradually increasing your mileage or intensity, rather than jumping into super hard, long workouts you haven’t built up to tackling.

“The fastest, safest, and most effective treatment for a cramp is gentle stretching,” Miller says.

Miller breaks down some of the best ways to stop a leg cramp by stretching:

• Calf cramps can often be relieved while riding by standing on your bike and dropping your heel at the bottom of the pedal stroke so you feel the stretch at the bottom of the leg.
• For cramps in the front of your thigh (quadriceps) unclip your foot and raise your heel toward your buttocks, bending your knee. Gently pull on your foot with the same-side hand. Just be careful: In some cases, this may lead to cramps in your hamstrings.
• For hamstring cramps (the backs of your thighs), stretch it out by straightening the leg with the cramp, popping the toes, and sending the hips back as you keep the cramped leg straight and bend the other leg.

While it’s possible that dehydration can lead to muscle cramps and electrolytes play an important role in helping you stay hydrated, most people get more than enough salt and even potassium in their diets. Sweaty cyclists may be an exception to that, so it’s especially important to get these electrolytes if you perspire heavily.

Potassium-rich foods, such as bananas, can certainly help keep your electrolytes in balance, which is important to fight muscular fatigue. But that doesn’t mean it’ll stop you from experiencing leg cramps.

Pickle juice is another common go-to when it comes to cramping, considering it’s high in sodium. “The research shows that drinking 100 milliliters of pickle juice relieved cramps more than drinking water or doing nothing,” Miller says. “The investigators hypothesized that vinegar triggered an oropharyngeal reflex [or gag reflex] that inhibited cramping.” In other words, it could just be that the bad taste distracts you from the cramp.

The bottom line: It’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly leads to cramping and therefore, how exactly to avoid them. There’s no one solution for how to prevent cramps or stop them. Staying hydrated, getting quality sleep, and avoiding fatigue by easing into workouts can all help in lowering your risk of cramps, though, and if you do feel a cramp coming on, take a minute to stretch it out.