Hey I was wondering what is the difference when having pain? How do you know if it’s a cramp and not just general soreness?
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you instantly know if you have a cramp. it feels like 1 muscle suddenly deciding to pull at 100% strength.
as for soreness and strain, they can be a bit harder to tell appart, but strain feels worse and keeps getting worse as you use the muscle
A cramp is a muscle contracting at 100% and instantly. It hurts so much, you will know if you have one.
Soreness is a short-term overload, strain is a permanent excessive load.
It’s hard to explain. If you’ve ever torn a muscle, it’s like that but more intense. Plus, it’ll tighten up like you’re actually bending the joint and you have to physically pull it open with the opposite muscle or with your hand or table or whatever else works.
Some muscles hurt much worse when cramped. The large muscles in the back of the leg hurt the most. I refuse to ride in the back of small cars because I can’t stretch out my leg if I get a cramp and based on how much those muscled hurt when they first start cramping, I couldn’t imagine how much it would hurt if the leg was fully bent backward. I once walked the lake placid olympic park and did tubing and bobsledding all day when I was maybe 8 or 9. We stopped at pizza hut and that’s when I had my first experience with major leg muscle cramping. I’d get one in the back of my leg then in the front when I tried to straighten my leg. Then my calf started cramping in the back then the front then it was both legs I had to eat my pizza standing up with tears running down my face from the pain.
I know people who say they’ve never had a cramp and they can’t force a cramp. I can tighten and pretty much make any muscle in my body cramp. I can tighten a bicep, triceps, stomach, forearm and other muscle and get an instant cramp.
If I’ve been doing muscle intensive activities, my muscles will cramp with just the smallest of movement. When I’m sleeping, in my legs especially. I found that taking ibuprofen will significantly lessen the chance of getting sleep cramps after strenuous exercise.
A cramp will be pain in one very specific area as in a muscle contracting itself more than you have ever felt. A strain will usually feel painful only when you use that muscle but the pain will be far greater than soreness. Soreness usually will feel a bit achy.
Like someone suddenly grabs your muscle and twists it. Your muscle contracts more than you can contract it naturally and will cause the part of the body that has the cramp to contort unnaturally. You will definitely know the difference.
Soreness is more of a gradual deep ache, it could also be a sharp ache. Generally not sudden or instantaneous. Like if my foot is sore, I’m going to want to keep off of it and let it rest. Maybe I’ll want to ice it. I’ll be able to sit and read or watch TV or go to bed even though I’m sore.
But if I get a foot cramp, I will literally throw myself off of the couch, the bed, a reclining chair to try and get it to stop. It will be the most sudden, out of the blue, with no pain before it, sharp intense pain that you won’t be able to focus on anything but trying to get it to stop. I would never be able to fall asleep with a foot cramp. And I will bend my foot in every direction trying to find the right way to make the cramps stop.
Does that help?
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