Okay, I want you to close your eyes and imagine this.

You’re in day three of your Disney World vacation, and you’re having the time of your life. You’re about halfway through the day at Epcot, sipping on your beverage of choice. You’re in line for Frozen Ever After.

You’ve been standing in line for about an hour, and then bam, your calf seizes up.

Or maybe imagine this.

It’s Princess Weekend over at Disney World, you’ve run the 5K, you’ve run the 10K, and you’re about halfway through the half marathon, and then bam, your calf seizes up.

What exactly happened? How can you treat it? And more importantly, how can you prevent it from happening in the first place?

That’s what we’ll be going over today on this episode. We’ll be covering exactly what a muscle cramp is. We’ll go over the different theories behind what muscle cramps are and what causes them. We’ll be dispelling a couple of myths behind those theories.

And then more importantly, we’ll be talking about what you can do to treat them and then prevent them from happening in the first place.

All right, here. We. Go.

Have You Had a Muscle Cramp at Disney?

So before I get into defining what a muscle cramp is, I do want to say what I found interesting was the other day, I ran a poll on Instagram asking everyone, have you had a muscle cramp at the Disney parks in the past?

And what I found interesting was roughly half of people that voted said they have not had a muscle cramp at the Disney parks.

But the other half either said that they have had cramps or they knew someone else that has had cramps.

So if you fall into one of those last two categories, this episode is definitely for you.

If you’re training for run Disney races, if you’re a runner, if you ever had cramps during a Disney race or during training, this episode is most definitely for you.

However, we’ll be focusing a little bit more on what you can do to treat muscle cramps while you’re at the Disney parks.

And then more importantly, if you’ve had cramps in the parks or during running, we’ll be going over how to prevent them from happening in the first place.

What is a Muscle Cramp?

OK, so a muscle cramp.

What exactly is it? It’s also known as a Charlie Horse.

But to be specific and to be clear, a muscle cramp that we’re going to be talking about today is different from the muscle cramps that happen during pregnancy, period cramps, cramps that happen due to statins or those cholesterol medicines, nighttime cramps. And these are definitely different from those abdominal cramps that happen when you’ve eaten a lot of food and then you all of a sudden go for a walk and you really feel it then.

Very different.

Today, we’re talking about what are called exercise associated muscle cramps.

The definition of an exercise associated muscle cramp, and I’ll just be referring to it as a muscle cramp from here on out, the definition is an involuntary contraction of skeletal muscle that occurs suddenly, occurs without any other serious injury, but can still be very painful.

Let’s break that down a little bit.

So, involuntary, that means it’s not under your control. These muscle cramps tend to affect muscles that are normally under your control, you know, the muscles that move the joints in your body.

A muscle contraction is when the muscle tightens or it shortens, and then it actively pulls and exerts force on the body, allowing you to move.

So, as many of you may know, muscle cramps are notoriously unpredictable. They can happen during exercise, they can happen towards the end of exercise, they can even happen after exercise has even been completed.

And remember this also, when I say exercise, I also mean, you know, when you’re walking at the Disney parks, when you’re standing at the Disney parks, or when you’ve been walking a long time, you stop to stand in line for a ride, and then it happens.

And then, finally, they occur without any serious injury. So while this means that no major damage happens to the body when a muscle cramp happens, that does not take away from the fact that they can be very painful and they can feel very debilitating.

The most common muscles that are affected with muscle cramps when, specifically when you’re at the Disney parks, or even when you’re out for a run or racing for a run Disney event, are usually the calf muscles. The hamstring muscles at the back of your thigh, the quadriceps muscles at the front of your thigh, and then also the adductor muscles or those groin muscles.

Now, that doesn’t mean that those are the only muscles that are affected.

Remember, there are also muscles out there that are affected less. We’re talking about those muscles at the hands, the feet, the arms, the abdomen, and the rib cage. Muscle cramps can definitely happen in those areas as well.

Other Interesting Facts About Muscle Cramps

Some other interesting facts that I want to point out before we move on.

If you have had a muscle cramp, or if you’re having a muscle cramp, your likelihood to have another muscle cramp afterwards increases significantly. And then also, muscle cramps, the muscles they affect, they tend to affect what are called two-joint muscles.

These are muscles that go over two different joints. Usually they’re joints that are right next to each other.

So for example, the rectus femoris, at the front of the thigh, it’s part of your quadriceps muscle, that goes over your knee joint and your hip joint. And it helps to extend and straighten the knee, but it also helps to flex the hip.

Okay, another example of a two-joint muscle is the gastroc muscle, which is part of your calf muscle complex. That goes over the back of the knee and also goes over the ankle. So it helps to point your toes, but it also helps to flex your knee and bend it.

Now, considering the symptoms of muscle cramps where they’re painful, they can be debilitating, they can be something as little as a twitch that lasts a couple of seconds, but they can also be something that is so painful and so seizing that lasts up to three minutes.

When to See a Physician

If you have the following symptoms, you should definitely consider seeing a doctor.

So we’re talking about symptoms where the cramp causes severe, severe discomfort, or if you have any other symptoms with those cramps, such as swelling, redness, or skin changes, dizziness, nausea or vomiting, confusion, dark urine, or maybe even if you collapse from a muscle cramp, those are symptoms that tell you, okay, something else is going on here, you need to get checked out.

So let’s dive into the main theories that are behind what cause muscle cramps.

The Main Theories Behind Muscle Cramps

There are two main theories to go over, and these are two main theories that have been talked about in the research more recently.

That first theory is called the dehydration and electrolyte imbalance theory.

What that says is excessive sweating that happens during exercise depletes electrolytes like sodium, potassium, and calcium, which then leads to increased muscle excitability and muscle cramps.

The second theory is called the altered neuromuscular control theory, and what that states is when a muscle cramp happens, it’s usually due to some sort of disruption in your brain’s ability to communicate with those muscles, causing that muscle cramp.

So let’s go ahead and dive into that first theory, that electrolyte imbalance and dehydration theory, and let’s talk about the issues behind that theory.

Electrolyte Imbalance and Dehydration Theory

Yes, while there are a lot of stories of guests at Disney or people that have gone for runs, that have said that they’ve had muscle cramps while in the heat, very common at Disney World, of course, because it’s hot and humid out in Florida.

While it’s very common to hear stories about that, and it’s also common to hear stories of people that have had cramps only to realize that, oh, I forgot to drink water for the last six hours. I must be dehydrated and that must be the reason behind my cramps.

So while anecdotally that is true, there’s an issue, there’s a couple issues to talk about.

So the first is, if there is truly an imbalance in the electrolytes in your body, why does that imbalance not affect your entire body or a big set of muscles as opposed to one or two muscles in the body? Usually when we hear stories of cramps, we usually hear stories of just the calf cramping up or just the quadriceps cramping up.

So when you have a depletion of electrolytes in your system, that is a systemic issue. Depletion of electrolytes happens throughout the entire body.

Now, how would a systemic issue only affect a localized muscle group?

So as it turns out, there are no studies that have found that electrolyte concentrations are abnormal in people that have had muscle cramps. There’s also studies that have said that risk factors for developing a muscle cramp include a history of cramping and competing at a higher level than usual.

This is referring to athletes competing at a higher level than the level that they usually do at training. Now, those same studies that talked about those risk factors don’t mention anything about dehydration and electrolyte imbalances being risk factors themselves.

Okay, so with that out of the way, let’s go on to the next issue with the electrolyte imbalance and dehydration issue.

And one of the things that’s always talked about with this theory is heat.

So heat is usually correlated with this theory in that the hotter it is, the more likely you’re to develop muscle cramps. Now, if that is the case where heat is more likely to cause muscle cramps, why have there been so many studies that have found that muscle cramps tend to happen in colder weather?

So I want to mention this research paper that found that 95% of muscle cramps within football players tend to happen during hot weather, and they also tend to happen during the first three weeks of football practice in the preseason. There’s also plenty of stories of people that have had muscle cramps at Disney World, usually when it’s really hot.

Now, the thing is, while that research paper had mentioned that, there’s a lot more research out there that says that muscle cramps happen more in the colder weather.

There’s a research study that had found that marathons tend to experience cramps more often when the temperatures are between 50 and 54 degrees. So the issue here is, if the body’s core temperature is increasing in the heat, there should be some sort of direct correlation between heat and muscle cramping.

Now, science has found that the body’s core temperature is in fact not directly correlated with muscle cramping. And research has also found that passive heating alone does not cause muscle cramps.

So if heat does cause cramping, if that were theoretically true, then cooling should be an effective treatment for muscle cramping.

The thing is, that’s not the case.

Okay, the next issue with this electrolyte and dehydration theory is that if it’s a heat or if it’s a dehydration issue, why is the main treatment stretching?

So over time, we found that the most effective treatment for a muscle cramp is stretching. Now, obviously, stretching a muscle doesn’t really change electrolyte levels in the body. It doesn’t really change the body’s temperature.

So if that’s the case, then this theory of the electrolyte imbalance or dehydration is not as strong as we once thought it was. In fact, there is at least four studies that have found that dehydration doesn’t even have a correlation with muscle cramps.

Neuromuscular Control Theory

So that leaves the second theory that we mentioned earlier, that neuromuscular control theory.

What controls muscles? Well, the nervous system does. What happens with a muscle cramp is when you have muscles that are poorly deconditioned, they tend to fatigue faster.

When these muscles fatigue faster, what happens is it changes the way your brain communicates with those muscles. So the neuromuscular control theory states that altered neuromuscular control is connected with muscle cramping.

Now, what creates that muscle fatigue? In this case, the muscle fatigue is created by repetitively doing a physical activity at an intensity that your body is not used to.

Research has found that exercise intensity and cramps are actually linked. So that means that the harder you work or the harder you exercise, the more likely you are to get a muscle cramp.

In this case, your muscle cramp risk is higher if your exercise intensity or if your movement intensity is either too high, meaning things like, you know, you’re 20,000 steps in at EPCOT and you try to speed your way over to Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure from the Land Pavilion.

Or you know, you’re on day three of your Disney vacation and then you’re trying to catch your kids because they’re running away from you trying to meet a character, you know, off in the distance. It can mean that your intensity is too high, like what we just talked about, or it can mean your intensity is too long.

And what I mean by that is walking, starting at 7 a.m. and then walking all day at Magic Kingdom until, you know, after hours, until midnight or past midnight.

Or it can mean even something like, you know, you’re halfway through your day at Animal Kingdom, you’ve walked 10 or 15,000 steps, and then you step in line for Flight of Passage, which is a two hour wait, and now you’re standing there for, you know, two hours or so.

What Happens in the Body When a Muscle Cramp Occurs?

Let’s quickly define two important parts of the muscle that are connected with this whole cascade of events: The muscle spindle and the Golgi tendon organ.

The muscle spindle is a part of the muscle that senses when the muscle is stretched or contracted. So it’s also known as a sensory receptor, and it’s a type of sensory receptor that is excitatory. That means when the muscle spindle is stimulated, it causes more muscle contraction.

The Golgi tendon organ, otherwise known as the GTO, is a part of the tendon that also senses when the muscle is stretched or contracted. But unlike the muscle spindle, the GTO is inhibitory. So that means when it is stimulated, the GTO causes the muscle to relax.

So what happens when your muscle wants to contract to help you to move with regular movement is your brain sends a signal down your spinal cord and then it causes a whole cascade of events before getting to your muscle, and it either tells the muscle to contract through that muscle spindle or it tells the muscle to relax through that GTO.

Now research has found that muscle fatigue disrupts that whole process, and instead of the muscle contracting when it should and relaxing when it should, the muscle fatigue causes the opposite. It causes the muscle spindle to increase its activity, causing more muscle contraction, and then it causes the GTO to decrease its activity, meaning the muscle has a hard time relaxing.

So let’s quickly jump back to that research study that was looking at football players in the preseason.

While 95% of those football players had cramps during hot environments, they also had them during the first three weeks of that preseason training. Usually during those first three weeks, those football players are not as conditioned. They’re not used to being at football practice for that long. And of course, in the first three weeks of preseason, it is hot.

But more importantly, I mean, they’re deconditioned.

Deconditioning Leads to Muscle Cramps

They’re not acclimated to being in those training environments. Therefore, they do not have enough resiliency to withstand the demands of their training. They don’t have enough capacity to handle all that weather.

They fatigue and they’re likely to get those cramps.

Now, remember, while we talked about how there’s a lot of issues with that electrolyte theory and the dehydration theory, electrolytes and dehydration still play a factor in muscular fatigue. There are also other factors that come into play with that muscular fatigue, like stress, the quality of your sleep, how much glycogen is stored in your muscles to have available energy to be able to walk longer distances all day. So while those factors do affect muscle fatigue, it is in fact muscle fatigue that is the main issue when it comes to muscle cramps.

So that leads into how to prevent muscle cramps from happening during your Disney vacation.

Now, you want to decrease your risk of cramps by decreasing your risk of muscle fatigue. In other words, you want to be able to improve your fitness and your strength. Now, there’s two main ways to do that.

How to Condition Your Body and Reduce Muscle Cramps

The first way is to work on a progressive walking program.

A progressive walking program continually challenges your body so that it can adapt to longer distances over time. I talk about this in great depth in my book, Disney Ready, Your Pain Free Parks Survival Guide. I even give you a customized walking program so that you can track how much you’re walking, making sure that you take steps towards your walking goals.

Now, remember, at Disney World, you’re walking 20,000, 25,000 steps a day. A walking program helps to build your stamina, helps improve your body’s resiliency, and then on top of that, it also improves your cardiovascular fitness. It reduces your risk of chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease, and improves your ability to manage your weight, and it builds the resiliency in your bones and joints overall.

Next, another thing you can do is to start a progressive strengthening and flexibility program.

That means continually challenging your muscles to adapt to heavier and heavier resistances and different levels of motions over time. So research has found that there is a negative correlation between muscle cramps and runners who train at least one time a week leading up to a marathon. What that means is your risk of muscle cramps tends to decrease as you strength train.

So other benefits of strength training.

It dramatically improves your functional ability to do everyday tasks. So we’re not just talking, you know, running for your next Run Disney event. We’re talking walking all day at the Disney parks. We’re talking standing in line for some of the longest queues for rides. We’re talking going up and down stairs at the parks. We’re talking going up steep ramps to get to the monorail. Even things like pushing your kiddo’s stroller all day, especially when it’s like a 14 or 16 hour day.

A strengthening program also improves your body’s resiliency and capacity overall.

It does that by improving its ability to store glycogen within the muscles, which gives you that energy for the day. And then in the end, it delays that onset or that risk of onset of muscle fatigue. And then on top of that, it also improves your recovery at the end of the day, so you can get good sleep and then do it all over again the next day.

When you’re doing some sort of progressive strengthening program, the muscles you would want to focus on are the muscles that are most prevalent when you’re walking.

So, we’re talking heel raises when we’re trying to strengthen the calves. We’re talking squats or the knee extension machine or the leg press when you’re trying to strengthen your quads. We’re talking deadlifts or the leg curl machine when we’re trying to strengthen your hamstrings.

When I want to mention even doing like exercises for your feet, because the feet can cramp up a lot. So doing things like toe yoga or towel scrunches to at least start to strengthen those feet muscles.

Other Factors Affecting Muscle Cramps

Now again, remember, you are also less likely to fatigue when you pay attention to your quality of sleep, when you pay attention to the footwear that you’re using, making sure you’ve got comfortable shoes, which by the way, quality of sleep, footwear, two really big things that I do talk about in my book, Disney Ready, Your Pain Free Parks Survival Guide.

But you’re also less likely to fatigue with better hydration, electrolytes, managing your stress, you’re less likely to fatigue when you have glycogen in your body, so you’re making sure you’re properly fueled, and then you’re also less likely to fatigue when you’re moving frequently and moving differently.

So we’ll talk about that in a bit.

Strategies at the Disney Parks to Prevent Muscle Cramps

Now I want to talk about strategies that you can utilize when you’re at the Disney parks to help prevent muscle cramps from happening.

The big thing here, or the biggest thing I want to talk about, is varying the way you move throughout the day. Remember, cramps come from muscle fatigue, and muscle fatigue usually comes from repetitively doing an activity at an intensity that your body is not accustomed to.

So that means avoiding moving at an intensity that is too long.

So for example, walking for four or five hours straight without a break, or avoiding standing in line in the same position for two or three hours, depending on how long the ride weight is. Instead, you want to do some stretching throughout the day, and I’ve got some great stretches in my book, Disney Ready, Your Pain Free Parks Survival Guide.

You want to do things like shifting your weight side to side. You want to avoid, basically, you just want to avoid standing for too long, sitting for too long, or walking for too long.

A great rule of thumb here is if you’re walking or if you’re standing or if you’re sitting continuously for at least 45 minutes, you probably want to do something different.

Change up your position, shift weight while you’re sitting or standing, do some stretching. A lot of things you can do to make sure you’re not repetitively doing the same thing over and over again.

And then something else that you could do while you’re at the Disney parks to help prevent those muscle cramps include, I already talked about stretching, but you can also do some massage to some of the muscles that tend to be more tight. The calves, the hamstrings, the quads, things that you can massage with your hands while you’re sitting or while you’re standing in line.

How to Treat Muscle Cramps if They do Happen

Now, the last thing I want to go over is what you can do to treat muscle cramps if they do happen in the Disney parks, because let’s face it, sometimes it just happens.

You can prepare for the worst, but you can still get muscle cramps. They just sometimes happen.

Now, if a muscle contraction continues, so if you’re continually moving and contracting those muscles, of course, the cramping will continue. So, first thing you can do is to stop whatever you’re doing. And then the second thing you can do is stimulate that GTO.

Remember that Golgi tendon organ is the part of the muscle tendon that when you stimulate it, it helps the muscle relax. And the way to stimulate that GTO is by stretching.

Stretching is the best thing you can do when a muscle cramp occurs.

Remember, massaging can also help with that.

At the end of the day, if you’ve got that cramping muscle or you’ve had the cramping muscle, it’s gone away. And then you’re back at your hotel room. You can always use heat because that tends to help relax the muscles as well.

And then finally, do not forget that proper recovery means that you can decrease your likelihood for a muscle cramp the next day. So you want to think about hydrating and replenishing your glycogen stores. Maybe think about drinking some low sugar sports drink or a sports drink with no added sugar. Even something like low fat cow’s milk helps to replenish those glycogen stores. Banana, yogurt, bread, all good choices to help.

For good recovery, you also want to think about stretching before going to bed, and then doing some sort of stretching and active warm up the morning before you go into the parks.

And then finally, something that I found that helps my legs to recover is to elevate your legs. So when you’re sleeping, if you sleep on your back, put one or two pillows under your legs to help elevate them.

That tends to help, well, anecdotally, it tends to help me feel better at the end of the day after a long day in the parks.

Okay, that’s all for today’s episode.

Before we close, I do want to hear from you.

Have you ever had a muscle cramp at Disney World?

And if so, what did you do to help it out?