Hey kids,i'm an ageing 999s rider(46) & i'm regularly getting cramp/pain in the muscle at my right hip when i'm crunched up & going for it.. It seems to 'attack' me having rode for a while & is so acute I sometimes have to stop!!!! I could cope with this on the road but on the track its a bloody nuisance & can cause me to pull in halfway thru the session.. I'm trying to stretch regularly as i have tight hamstrings but thus far its not stopped.. P.S. Seems to grab me on the left hand turns.. Any tricks out there?,Cheers Chris
Seems typical to me. I get it when I try to lift my right leg from the ground onto the peg. Total cramp and almost unable to move leg. Afraid age doesn't come on it's own my friend!!!(54 years for me)
Have you ever injured your right knee or slipped a disc to the right hand side? There is a nerve that runs from your knee up across the top of your hip. If you have had an injury or shock to your knee or hip, a sharp cramp across the hip as you describe is sometimes one of the symptoms if the nerve has been affected. I am not a doctor, but I recently saw a knee specialist consultant for an MRI after a skiing incident and he mentioned this symptom during his investigations. FWIW, I have the same problem of cramp across the hip - it's phenomenally painful so understand your pain! :frown:
Blimey! that was quick..thanks guys you're absolutely spot on.I am 'recovering' from a 2 year bout of sciatica(right leg),caused by a slipped disc.Only since the last 3 weeks have i have been pain free at my lower calf/ankle & expect i have done some nerve damage as its still numb.. Its a bugger,eh? Stops me from enjoying my rides like b4
I've been suffering attacks of cramp for years, enough to drive me away from sportsbikes completely. No knee injury, I reckon it's just cos I'm a lardarse:frown:. But I've found a couple of things that help. Firstly a bit of cycling or rowing machine work wakes up the muscles and gets them doing as their told, and potassium helps too. I take a bottle of potassium tablets with me on tour and it certainly seems to hold off the cramp unless I'm really going for it.
There you go! As I said, I am not a doctor, so always worth getting an informed expert opinion if the discomfort does not go away. In my case, I was advised to do exercises to strengthen my abdominal and lower back muscles (to counter a slipped disc I endured about 5 years ago) in addition to leg exercises for my knee (swimming was recommended) to help realign the muscles and the primary nerve that connects over my hip. Several months later, and at least 60-70% of the pain has gone in my knee and the hip cramp when folded up on the bike. Benefit is I've also lost about 3kg!
Suppleness exercises might help (they might not). Can you touch your toes, legs straight? Fists on the floor? Hands flat on the floor? If you can't, I bet you can with practise. Stretches those leg muscles.
+1 Sort out some flexor exercises .... they can give pain in a variety of places from you calf to your lower back, but especially your hip ..... only took me about a week of stretching each flexor for 20 seconds, twice a day, to get rid off a persistent hip pain that felt like I'd broken the damn thing.
can certainly sympathise here, there is a muscle near the buttock area that can cause sciatica all by it's little self and even more likely if you had compression of spine nerves already. It's called the piriformis and i've been stretching mine regularly for over ten years now and it works. There are various ways to achieve a satisfactory stretch but i've found only one that is easy and doesn't risk damage to other areas (neck in particular). There are many sites (one in the states I found to be the best) that will help you by describing this particular stretch and it's nothing I could easily put in words here anyway. If you would like to know the one I use, I could tell you over the phone or do my best to find the website with the details on it.
You've got a few years on me still, but maybe we should just stop kidding ourselves, give up on the sports bike thing and get our kicks from zimmer racing..... :biggrin:
It was one of my motivations for buying a Multistrada grasshopper. What is your lower leg orientation like ? Check the heals of your shoes for uneven / lopsided wear and if that is the case a trip to a podiatrist could help.
My biggest problem is cramp on the inside of my thigh; once it takes hold it's a good hour before I can ride again, every time I try to lift my foot onto the peg it bites, and the only cure is to get off and hobble around until the pain stops. Normally only happens once on a big trip, but it cramps up so hard it bruises or tears the muscle and it hurts for days after.
ain't the Internet amazing these days? - if physically able you could also try this one Figaro :- Lying Piriformis Stretch - YouTube it's that simple and it's better than all the other daft ones you do on your back which can upset other parts. You lower yourself onto the bent knee carefully as if it's in spasm it won't like all your body weight on it necessarily. You can tell when you've stretched it out because you can easily let your whole upper body sag down on top of it. I should ad that the leg that you choose to tuck under your stomach is the one that's causing sciatica etc. As I said, some people can't physically do this for other reasons but it's the best one 'in my book'.
Bananas are a great source of potassium - hence you see so many athletes eating banana during events to keep cramp at bay... but there are other fruits with higher potassium content you might prefer to eat as opposed to taking tablets see: Top 10 Fruits Highest in Potassium
Now I'm home I've taken a look at the vid. Chris, buddy, have you not seen my avatar..? The only time I'm ever likely to achieve that position is after being shot dead:frown:
I've suffered from cramp in most parts of my body for almost all of my adult life (I'm 40) and know the hip cramp you mean all too well. I've found counter-stretches to alleviate nearly all of them but I struggle with those hip ones too. I get it worst if I've been riding, stopped and got off for a break, then got back on again. I try to tough it out but find that sometimes the only cure is to get off the bike again. I sometimes find standing up on the footpegs helps or shifting onto the pillion seat. I've also had lower back pain for the last 3 years and have had physio, chiro and osteo treatment - the physio wasn't much use, the chiro helped a bit but the osteo was much better (for me). I wear my work clothes under my textiles and have a theory that trousers stretching tight from the waist to the knee are part of the problem, so Spareparts could well be onto something - and with the strengthening of core muscles too. Oh, and beware of doing piriformis excercises without that being diagnosed as the problem. Some of them can cause damage to if it's not actually the prirformis that's the problem. I self-diagnosed a piriformis problem early on with my back pain, and while doing exercises helped the pain temporarily, the physio reckoned it caused me more problems because my piriformis wasn't the issue. If you find a cure, please let us know. I'll do the same.