Lifting: The Cure to Cramping Might Be Hidden in a Dumbbell
When mountain bike and cyclocross champion Steve Tilford saw his Leadville 100 race ruined by cramps this year, another veteran mountain biker, hall of famer Dave Wiens, offered some intriguing advice. “Weightlifting is something that I used successfully to combat cramps at Leadville,” Wiens wrote on Tilford’s blog. “Up through 2005, I would have to deal with cramps of one sort or another in this race…. Beginning in 2007, I lifted right up to a few days before the race and didn’t have cramping issues anymore.”
Wiens doesn’t claim lifting could be a miracle cure for everyone, but a first-of-its-kind study published this month adds credence to the possibility that it might help.
The study, published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, concluded that strength training may help fatigue-proof your muscles by improving their capacity to burn oxygen—a key component of cycling endurance. In the study, University of Texas researchers put a small group of men on a 12-week, three-day-per-week, total-body resistance-training program. At the end of the study, the volunteers got bigger and stronger muscles, as one would expect. However, they also saw a significant increase in both the number and size of their mitochondria, which are the energy producing “power plants” inside your cells. More, stronger mitochondria in your muscle cells means you can keep up with the huge oxygen demands required to hammer down the road longer before going into the red and making energy—and lactic acid—without oxygen, pushing back the point of muscle fatigue and maybe cramping.
RELATED: Understanding Your Lactic Acid Threshold
Study aside, Andy Pruitt, founder of the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, agrees that lifting as a cycling-cramp minimizer makes good sense.
“Cramping is still poorly understood,” Pruitt says, citing the usual suspects, such as dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, in addition to neuromuscular fatigue. Everyone has to take care of their hydration and nutrition regardless (especially since they help fend off fatigue), Pruitt says, but making your muscles more fatigue-proof could go a long way in quelling cramping problems when you’re pushing harder than usual, as in race situations. “The bigger and stronger the muscle, the more fibers it can recruit during times of need.”
Cyclists new to strength training will benefit greatly from focusing on leg exercises and core strength work. Make sure you’re performing exercises correctly, though, or the only buildup you’ll see will be in your number of days off the bike.
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