Do you do a warm-up and stretching of those muscles before your main set? I used to get lots of cramps in my calves and arches. Now I make sure I warm up properly and do lots of stretching between every 50 or 100 m of my warm-up and I'm fine. I alternate swim 50 m / kick 50 m with stretching between. That gets my legs really warmed up before the "real" swimming begins.

D.

Happens to me mostly in cooler pools. Since I don't have a strong kick the only time I use my legs is to push off the wall with a lot of calf muscle, of course. So I have changed three things - 1) better leg warmup with stretching; 2) more kicking during my set to keep the legs warm and worked; and 3) less calf action on the wall pushoff. I think stretching has helped the most. I would imagine you would not have this problem in the open water (no wall). But, depending on where you live, you'll have to wait a while to test my theory. Hope this helps.

Steve

I thought I was the only one with this problem. Happens a lot on the speed sets when I push off the wall or like you about 1 km into a long set. The worst was ¾ of the way through the Wildflower swim the each side locked up and I looked like a jackass rolling over on my back grabbing my feet to stretch them out. The run up the boat launch stretched them out well. Like Chubby Hubby said, less calf action on the push off and I stretch between sets now. That seems to help.

Dave