Muscle Spasms - Causes and Prevention
When you feel a pain in one of your muscles, it can be caused by many things. However, all you know is that you want the pain to go away as quickly as possible. With muscles spasms that pain can come on quite quickly and then leave just as quickly without any explanation. But if you want to know how to prevent muscle spasms from returning, here are the basic facts.
What are muscle spasms?
Muscle spasms are involuntary contractions of your muscles. These occur when you’re not trying to contract the muscle; it just seems to do it on its own. But there are actually many causes for muscle spasms you can learn about in order to prevent them from happening again.
Are you drinking enough?
The first and most often cited cause of muscle spasms is poor nutrition. When you don’t get the proper balance of water and electrolytes in your body, your muscles can contract without cause.
This is seen often in long distance runners and other competitive athletes, but it can also be seen in the average everyday fitness enthusiast. The muscle can not work properly without the right balance, so it contracts.
Another possible cause for muscle spasms is a quick movement to a muscle in the wrong direction. If you’re ever been in a car accident and gotten whiplash, this is part of the pain. When you’ve moved your muscles very quickly and in a way that they’re not accustomed to, you can have muscle spasms as a result. You might have experienced this when you’ve done something that you normally don’t do.
Yet another cause for muscle spasms is failure to be properly prepared for a sport or other movement. This is why exercise programs recommend that you prepare your body in more than one way to be ready for additional stress and prevent injury. You need to build up to hard workouts instead of just jumping into them without the proper conditioning.
How can you prevent muscle spasms?
One of the easiest ways to prevent muscle spasms is to warm up properly before you work out. This means that you should do a slower version of your intended exercise or go for a short walk. After the warm up, you will want to stretch the muscles that you will be using. This prepares your muscles for movements and lessens the possibility of muscle spasms.
You will also want to make sure that you are properly fueling yourself as you are exercising. This means drinking water during shorter workouts and sports drinks during longer workouts when your body needs more fuel to continue.
Muscle spasms can just happen for no reason at all, but if you’re careful about how you move and take the time to prepare for the movements, you will be able to experience fewer and fewer of them.
