Workouts might be causing pain in my legs

I’m having some issues with my legs, specifically in my calf muscles.

While the whole leg aches, those specific muscles forever feel on the verge of cramping.

The pain is much worse at night and makes it nearly impossible to sleep. I’ve been taking magnesium pills, turmeric and Advil before bed. I rub glycerin into my skin and wrap my lower legs in heating pads. I am willing to try just about anything to alleviate the pain. However, I haven’t been willing to give up on my daily workouts. I exercise for an hour every morning, and these sessions are typically quite strenuous. I often run six miles or spend the whole 60 minutes jumping rope. On the days when I concentrate more on strength training, I still include mountain climbers, squat jumps, lunge jumps and burpees. I know that my workouts are very hard on my legs. For a little while, I tried to avoid high intensity cardio and excessive stress on my legs. I focused more on ab crunches and lifting free weights. This got boring and frustrating very quickly, especially since I noticed no improvement in my legs. I then started riding the stationary bike every other day for an hour. I read that this was a great exercise to avoid leg cramping. I feel the pedaling made the problem worse. I enjoyed a brief reprieve when the pain completely went away for about a week. I put the heating pads away and assumed I was cured. However, last night, the ache in my legs woke me up out of a sound sleep. I needed to get out of bed and thoroughly stretch to alleviate the cramping. My legs are very sore today, and I’m worried about what I’ll face tonight. For my workout, I took it very easy, spending the majority of the time doing crunches.

 

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