Lots of athletes will know the feeling. It’s a bit like there’s a small knot forming beneath the skin, in your hamstrings or calves. The tension grows, and the muscle starts to contract involuntarily. The cramp usually begins as repeated twinges or flutter-like waves of contractions. It only builds from there, and shifts from discomfort to sharp, intense pain. You have to stop to stretch it out, which relieves the cramp momentarily, before it comes back, over-and-over again.

Cramp can be debilitating for some athletes, effectively ending races in a painful stop-start jerk to the finish. For lucky athletes, it never seems to happen at all. Exercise-induced cramps are, amazingly, still a bit of a mystery.

In this blog, we’ll discuss what we think might be going on with exercise-induced muscle cramping, and suggest some strategies that athletes might use to combat them.

 What causes exercise-induced muscle cramping?

Like I said, the precise cause of...

As you can imagine, I get asked a lot of questions about training. What’s the best type of training to improve VO₂max? How much protein do endurance athletes need? Do I need to do strength training? How early should I taper? These are all great questions, and I love working with athletes to find the answer.

Alongside questions, there are a number of assumptions – or myths – that come up again and again when working with athletes, that I work hard to bust. In this blog, I am going to try and bust six of the biggest endurance sports myths.

Myth #1: Training the gut enhances carbohydrate use.

“I consume carbohydrates at high rates during training, to train my gut to digest and absorb carbohydrates at higher rates. That allows me to get more energy from sports drinks and gels during racing.”

Gut training – the practice of consuming carbohydrates at very high rates during training – has been investigated by researchers. The idea behind gut...