The walking cramp man.

It’s been ridiculously hot recently.

I’m also pretty unfortunate, my bedroom faces the sunrise.

All day long the sun heats it up and if I’m lucky the heat disperses at night.

Half of the time when I leave my room it feels like I’m walking into a fridge…

Imagine how weird it must be for me on days where it’s just cold. Even though it’s supposed to be hot… England right 🙄

Usually when this is the case it completely throws me off.

Take this Wednesday for instance, I even ended up throwing on my heater because of it 😭

It ended up getting pretty hot that day.

The morning was just “a break from the ads”.

It gets pretty uncomfortable trying to sit at my desk and do some work when it feels like I’m on the surface of the sun.

Come on man I’ve got newsletters to write 🙄

• Thursday came along.

• I smashed out an early workout

• I immediately entered my post gym immobilisation phase

3 hours later I wake up feeling terrible.

My bed is completely covered in sweat and my head is spinning.

I get myself up to have a shower, and that’s when I hear it.

Click.

The sound of my heater ramping up.

This entire time, my heater had been on.

Anyone who’s a little inquisitive might be wondering why this is called the walking cramp man.

Well… waking up in a bed covered in sweat, then having to shower and change my sheets isn’t something new for me.

It’s standard summer in a room that is hotter than hell with no air con/fans.

About a week ago this happened a few days in a row.

• Then I woke up with a calf cramp.

• Then I went to do my workout.

• Every rep of every exercise felt like my entire body was seconds away from cramping.

I did as much as I could but I didn’t want to become a human Charlie’s horse.

Called that workout quits a little early.

It did make me sit down and create a protocol for moments like this though.

The Cramp Kryptonite.

The Batman contingency plan to put down the Walking Human Cramp man.

1. Carbs

2. Hypotonic Electrolytes

3. Movement

In its easiest form this is smashing back a Lucozade or two and walking around.

In its hardest form I use an even bigger intervention.

1. For carbs I get my hands on whatever I can that’s very easily digestible, I want to encourage hydration.

You should know all about how hydrating carbo-HYDRATES are from all my other content, they’re going to help bring water back into the cells.

1. For my electrolytes I have a custom recipe I use.

I’m not trying to nuke the water side of things. You want to encourage water retention, not drown the cells. Listen to your bodies’ signals.

Don’t exceed 1 L of water an hour.

Don’t exceed more than 1 use of this electrolyte formula.

This isn’t medical advice.

In serious cases of dehydration my method is not going to be the safe bet, just go to A&E.

3. For movement I do make sure to just keep moving. Keep it light. Don’t push yourself.

The aim here is to use this to encourage the body to turn on the engines, and work effectively.

Staying still isn’t the move.

If I’m supposed to hit the gym I’ll push it back as long as possible within the day to make sure I don’t become a human Charlie’s Horse.

When I do end up going, if I still feel off, I’ll just do my warmups, or just do one set of each exercise.

Usually bringing a Lucozade along makes this easier to complete.

If I ever feel too bad throughout this, I’ll call it quits early.

Since then the Walking Human Cramp Man is a supervillain I completely understand, and destroy.

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher