Hydration and Athlete Cramping

Debunking Common Myths

Nick, Jason & Zac
May 08, 2023

In this episode of the podcast/newsletter, we are discussing the issue of hydration/dehydration and how it relates to muscle cramping. This is a concept that comes up a lot, usually as we transition to different sports seasons. We touch on pickle juice, mustard packets, and everything in between. Hopefully in the end, things make a little more sense.

Spoiler alert, we don’t think pickle juice and mustard does anything to the muscle to relieve a cramp. We put this belief somewhere in the middle of old wives tale, placebo, and playing tricks with your nervous system (similar to when you bang your shin on a table and then rubbing it helps it feel better).

We then pivot to discussing what actually is causing a muscle cramp. The two prevailing theories are dehydration and nervous system overload. Muscle cramping due to dehydration will be much more prevalent in the endurance sports where a contestant has lost about 5% of their body weight in sweat. The typical football player that goes down in the first or second quarter with a hamstring cramp is most likely the victim of nervous system overload. This simply occurs when someone is loading their muscles to a degree and with a speed that they are not used to. You are moving at a rate much quicker than normal on game day, and this can lead to over-contraction and cramping. It wasn’t that they didn’t drink enough Gatorade.

That being said, we do have several studies that demonstrate how performance decreases with increasing dehydration. When someone has lost 2-3% of their body weight while exercising, this results in a 10% decrease in exercise capacity. By the time they get to 4% of body weight lost, we are looking at a 20-30% decrease in capacity. In other words, you hit the wall. This is why we discuss taking an occasional pre-practice and post-practice weight to see how much you are typically losing. So if you determine you typically lose about 2-3 lbs in sweat during your sport, be sure to drink back 2-3 lbs of sweat after. Ideally, this would be a drink that is roughly 4:1 Sodium to Potassium. You can find these mixes commercially. We also discuss monitoring the color of your urine and degree of thirst to get a clearer understanding of your hydration status.

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Simplified Takeaways…

Very often when an athlete goes down with a muscle cramp, it is not because they are dehydrated, but rather their nervous system is not used to firing at the rate or load that it is being asked to.
It is not uncommon to loose between 1-5 lbs per hour of sweat (depending on humidity and intensity of exercise). So if you have never taken a pre-practice and post-practice weight, it might be a good metric to learn.
If you have lost sweat, be sure to drink back sweat which is a combination of sodium and potassium with smaller amounts of chloride and magnesium. Look for a 4:1 ratio of sodium to potassium in your mixture.

Hydration and Athlete Cramping

Debunking Common Myths

Simplified Takeaways…

Further Reading…