5 ms·

When I was in the army, one of my roommates drowned right in front of a bunch of people he was swimming with. He was in about 3 meters of water, got a leg cram

When I was in the army, one of my roommates drowned right in front of a bunch of people he was swimming with. He was in about 3 meters of water, got a leg cramp, went under, and never came back up. I found him face down on the bottom of the lake with his face in the mud. He was later declared dead. Took a while to get over that.

leaveyou 5y ago
I'm a very amateur swimmer and I try to understand why people drown from cramp in one leg? Because me being a novice, I learned how to swim without using the legs too much (mainly because it takes skill to coordinate everything well) and one of the very first things was me floating by turning my head hard backwards while standing vertically in the water and sinking in water up to the nose, basically sticking as little of my face above water as possible and IIRC I was floating fine with very little help from hands and no use of the feet at all. That seemed easy, especially in dense cold water..
- Rendello 5y ago
  My lifeguard mother almost drowned from a leg cramp (see my sibling comment), she explained that the pain of movement becomes so unbearable that your body basically goes into the fetal position and sinks to the bottom.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  I occasionally wake up from extreme leg cramps. It literally feels like someone is taking a knife on the serrated edge and pulling it down from the top of your calf muscle for a solid 20 seconds. All you can do is writhe in agony and scrounge up into a ball because naturally that is your response. After it's over you're in a ton of fatigue, your heart is racing, and just want to rest. Now do that in a pool.
  - leaveyou 5y ago
    Ok, I understand.. it seems I had milder versions of cramps. The one I remember the most was when I basically had to grab the toes of my foot and pull hard counter to the cramping muscle and basically it ceased after several seconds. It was very painful but I didn't know they can be paralyzing.
    - kibwen 5y ago
      This kind of extreme cramp is known as a "charley horse", if you want more information.
  - treeman79 5y ago
    Used to get that a lot. Leg once cramped super hard which smashed my knee into a metal railing. Double agony that night. Magnesium supplements really helped a lot. Later on, stretching lots and lots of stretching. Now a massage gun. Cramps are a thing of the past.
  - MisterTea 5y ago
    I get those in bed from time to time and my course of action is to keep the leg strait during the onset, get out of bed and stand up stretching the leg muscle. The pain can be very intense but once I stand up and apply pressure by standing on the leg, it almost immediately stops the cramp and the pain subsides within a few seconds. I used to let the leg contract and curl up powering through the cramp pain until it subsided but a few times it lasted over a minute which is agonizing.
    - Natsu 5y ago
      Sometimes I get leg cramps in bed and I've found that I have to pull my toes upward to make it recover. Doing that seems to release whatever is cramping up for me after a few seconds. I used to have to get out of bed and stand on it before I discovered the other trick.
      - difosfor 5y ago
        Same here, have also tried that in the water, but didn't work that time. I get the feeling that some of the cramps people talk about here are worse though, or perhaps it's also about how much pain you can stand or how you react to such a situation in general.
        Natsu 5y ago
        Yeah, I don't think mine have ever felt like a serrated blade going through my leg, as another comment here mentioned, so probably not quite as bad. But it's definitely bad enough that I can't use the leg properly and it seems to manifest when I move my leg just wrong somehow, even in bed. The trick to pull the tip of my foot backwards really helped a lot because then I don't have to try to stand or anything. I've never had a cramp like that in water, thankfully.
  - anonymousiam 5y ago
    As a young adult, I had the same problem once or twice per week. There are many potential causes, but I was lucky to find the cause of mine on the first try (after suffering with them for a few years). Now I take a daily potassium supplement. (One 550mg tablet of potassium gluconate daily.) I haven't had a leg cramp for decades.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
      Aye! That's it usually- electrolytes.
    - difosfor 5y ago
      Lack of hydration has also caused me light cramps. E.g: I was too excited about learning to surf to want go out of the water one summer. Plain water did the trick for me there.
    - loonster 5y ago
      You could try using a salt substitute like nusalt or lite salt. They contain potassium chloride. Cheap easy way to remember to get potassium, just eat.
- em-bee 5y ago
  it doesn't take much movement to get a cramp. the few times that i had a cramp, i was doing things like getting out of bed or standing up from a chair. horribly painful and the only thing you can do is to stop moving and try to relax. if you do that in the water, you sink. by the time you realize that this was a bad idea it's to late. i can imagine that the pain would distract me to much to be able to focus and use my arms to keep me afloat. never mind that i'd probably also not think about taking a deep breath to get enough air before sinking.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
    Hm, maybe that's why - see my other comment, I 've had a few cramps while swimming and I've handled them without help, but I get those cramps out of the water also (especially when I stretch my legs during sleep) and I can actually feel them coming and I know what to do: the cramping muscle fights to pull the leg one way, I fight to extend it the other way. Eventually, I win, although it hurts like hell. Obviously I roll about in the water when I do that, but I don't have to sink, I can use my other leg and arms to float. Anyway maybe that's something that can be trained? (btw, this is not a humblebrag. I'm dumb enough that I almost drowned at least once and it was 100% just being dumb. Just nothing to do with cramps.) Edit: I realised you can feel cramps coming by speaking with a friend who's a bodybuilder. He related a story where he felt a cramp coming in the middle of a set of squats and thankfully recognised it in time to place the bar on the hooks. When I first started having cramps I paid attention and you can actually feel the muscle tensing up so there's time to react to it, although I don't know how you can avoid the tearing pain. I only know to try and unlock the muscle by pushing the other way and massaging it. Edit 2: Oh, er. There's menstrual cramps of course. I'm lucky not to get those. I don't think you can "push the other way" with them. Ugh.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
Rendello 5y ago
My mother was a lifeguard and was swimming in a medium-sized empty pool surrounded by other lifeguards (her colleagues). Her leg cramped badly and she went under, she said the pain of trying to move was unbearable. She crumpled up at the bottom of the pool and nearly drowned before her one of her fellow lifeguards noticed something was wrong and saved her. That story's always stuck in my head.
- MandieD 5y ago
  That is the most personally terrifying thing I’ve ever read. I’m a strong swimmer, and have never been afraid for myself in still water. Hopefully, if I ever get a leg cramp, your story will make me realize the danger and quickly scream for help before going under.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
    I occasionally have leg cramps while swimming- I never felt I was in danger though. Is it really that dangerous? I'm talking about painful cramps where I really can't use the leg that's cramping before a few minutes go by. Generally what I do is swear the air purple (it really bloody hurts) and try to keep the cramping leg extended (it's normally the muscle in the back of my tibia that cramps and it wants to draw my heel back, so I push the other way until it gives up). I thrash a lot and go under the water for sure, but I can still swimm with the remaining limbs. I don't know what I'd do if both legs cramped at the same time, but one leg so far I've been able to handle. Edit: now that I think of it, I've had both legs cramp, except not at the same time- a few minutes apart. I was getting used to very long flippers (fins?) and I got two cramps a few minutes apart, one in each leg.
    - Rendello 5y ago
      It may have been both legs in that story. I know another time, she was swimming next to a canoe and they started cramping, and so she had to grab on. In that case, the leg cramp(s?) were less severe, luckily.
EvanAnderson 5y ago
This topic has come up on HN several times before and it never ceases to unsettle me. I'd never had a personal experience with it before. It's even more chilling after having had an experience with it. My 8 y/o daughter recently attended a "pool party" w/ sports teammates. One of the mothers, fully clothed and there only acting as a chaperon, jumped in to pull out one of the girls who was in distress. The distressed girl's mother had commented, just a few moments before, on how the girl was "fine" and "just playing" as she flailed about in the water. My wife said the girl didn't look to be in distress, per se, but was kind of "jumping around". I found out later that the mother who rescued the girl she'd been a lifeguard. She recognized the girl was in distress. There were 8 to 10 other adults present and no one else, in or out of the pool, was thinking too much of it. It's absolutely chilling.
- Natsu 5y ago
  The problem is that drowning looks exactly like someone just "jumping" in place in the pool. If you don't know what to look for, you might not realize what's going on, but for anyone who knows, it should rightfully set off alarm bells. I hope someone sends the parent this game so they can learn without having a dead kid :(

leaveyou 5y ago

I'm a very amateur swimmer and I try to understand why people drown from cramp in one leg? Because me being a novice, I learned how to swim without using the legs too much (mainly because it takes skill to coordinate everything well) and one of the very first things was me floating by turning my head hard backwards while standing vertically in the water and sinking in water up to the nose, basically sticking as little of my face above water as possible and IIRC I was floating fine with very little help from hands and no use of the feet at all. That seemed easy, especially in dense cold water..

Rendello 5y ago
My lifeguard mother almost drowned from a leg cramp (see my sibling comment), she explained that the pain of movement becomes so unbearable that your body basically goes into the fetal position and sinks to the bottom.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
I occasionally wake up from extreme leg cramps. It literally feels like someone is taking a knife on the serrated edge and pulling it down from the top of your calf muscle for a solid 20 seconds. All you can do is writhe in agony and scrounge up into a ball because naturally that is your response. After it's over you're in a ton of fatigue, your heart is racing, and just want to rest. Now do that in a pool.
- leaveyou 5y ago
  Ok, I understand.. it seems I had milder versions of cramps. The one I remember the most was when I basically had to grab the toes of my foot and pull hard counter to the cramping muscle and basically it ceased after several seconds. It was very painful but I didn't know they can be paralyzing.
  - kibwen 5y ago
    This kind of extreme cramp is known as a "charley horse", if you want more information.
- treeman79 5y ago
  Used to get that a lot. Leg once cramped super hard which smashed my knee into a metal railing. Double agony that night. Magnesium supplements really helped a lot. Later on, stretching lots and lots of stretching. Now a massage gun. Cramps are a thing of the past.
- MisterTea 5y ago
  I get those in bed from time to time and my course of action is to keep the leg strait during the onset, get out of bed and stand up stretching the leg muscle. The pain can be very intense but once I stand up and apply pressure by standing on the leg, it almost immediately stops the cramp and the pain subsides within a few seconds. I used to let the leg contract and curl up powering through the cramp pain until it subsided but a few times it lasted over a minute which is agonizing.
  - Natsu 5y ago
    Sometimes I get leg cramps in bed and I've found that I have to pull my toes upward to make it recover. Doing that seems to release whatever is cramping up for me after a few seconds. I used to have to get out of bed and stand on it before I discovered the other trick.
    - difosfor 5y ago
      Same here, have also tried that in the water, but didn't work that time. I get the feeling that some of the cramps people talk about here are worse though, or perhaps it's also about how much pain you can stand or how you react to such a situation in general.
      - Natsu 5y ago
        Yeah, I don't think mine have ever felt like a serrated blade going through my leg, as another comment here mentioned, so probably not quite as bad. But it's definitely bad enough that I can't use the leg properly and it seems to manifest when I move my leg just wrong somehow, even in bed. The trick to pull the tip of my foot backwards really helped a lot because then I don't have to try to stand or anything. I've never had a cramp like that in water, thankfully.
- anonymousiam 5y ago
  As a young adult, I had the same problem once or twice per week. There are many potential causes, but I was lucky to find the cause of mine on the first try (after suffering with them for a few years). Now I take a daily potassium supplement. (One 550mg tablet of potassium gluconate daily.) I haven't had a leg cramp for decades.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
    Aye! That's it usually- electrolytes.
  - difosfor 5y ago
    Lack of hydration has also caused me light cramps. E.g: I was too excited about learning to surf to want go out of the water one summer. Plain water did the trick for me there.
  - loonster 5y ago
    You could try using a salt substitute like nusalt or lite salt. They contain potassium chloride. Cheap easy way to remember to get potassium, just eat.
em-bee 5y ago
it doesn't take much movement to get a cramp. the few times that i had a cramp, i was doing things like getting out of bed or standing up from a chair. horribly painful and the only thing you can do is to stop moving and try to relax. if you do that in the water, you sink. by the time you realize that this was a bad idea it's to late. i can imagine that the pain would distract me to much to be able to focus and use my arms to keep me afloat. never mind that i'd probably also not think about taking a deep breath to get enough air before sinking.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  Hm, maybe that's why - see my other comment, I 've had a few cramps while swimming and I've handled them without help, but I get those cramps out of the water also (especially when I stretch my legs during sleep) and I can actually feel them coming and I know what to do: the cramping muscle fights to pull the leg one way, I fight to extend it the other way. Eventually, I win, although it hurts like hell. Obviously I roll about in the water when I do that, but I don't have to sink, I can use my other leg and arms to float. Anyway maybe that's something that can be trained? (btw, this is not a humblebrag. I'm dumb enough that I almost drowned at least once and it was 100% just being dumb. Just nothing to do with cramps.) Edit: I realised you can feel cramps coming by speaking with a friend who's a bodybuilder. He related a story where he felt a cramp coming in the middle of a set of squats and thankfully recognised it in time to place the bar on the hooks. When I first started having cramps I paid attention and you can actually feel the muscle tensing up so there's time to react to it, although I don't know how you can avoid the tearing pain. I only know to try and unlock the muscle by pushing the other way and massaging it. Edit 2: Oh, er. There's menstrual cramps of course. I'm lucky not to get those. I don't think you can "push the other way" with them. Ugh.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

Rendello 5y ago

My mother was a lifeguard and was swimming in a medium-sized empty pool surrounded by other lifeguards (her colleagues). Her leg cramped badly and she went under, she said the pain of trying to move was unbearable. She crumpled up at the bottom of the pool and nearly drowned before her one of her fellow lifeguards noticed something was wrong and saved her. That story's always stuck in my head.

MandieD 5y ago
That is the most personally terrifying thing I’ve ever read. I’m a strong swimmer, and have never been afraid for myself in still water. Hopefully, if I ever get a leg cramp, your story will make me realize the danger and quickly scream for help before going under.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  I occasionally have leg cramps while swimming- I never felt I was in danger though. Is it really that dangerous? I'm talking about painful cramps where I really can't use the leg that's cramping before a few minutes go by. Generally what I do is swear the air purple (it really bloody hurts) and try to keep the cramping leg extended (it's normally the muscle in the back of my tibia that cramps and it wants to draw my heel back, so I push the other way until it gives up). I thrash a lot and go under the water for sure, but I can still swimm with the remaining limbs. I don't know what I'd do if both legs cramped at the same time, but one leg so far I've been able to handle. Edit: now that I think of it, I've had both legs cramp, except not at the same time- a few minutes apart. I was getting used to very long flippers (fins?) and I got two cramps a few minutes apart, one in each leg.
  - Rendello 5y ago
    It may have been both legs in that story. I know another time, she was swimming next to a canoe and they started cramping, and so she had to grab on. In that case, the leg cramp(s?) were less severe, luckily.

EvanAnderson 5y ago

This topic has come up on HN several times before and it never ceases to unsettle me. I'd never had a personal experience with it before. It's even more chilling after having had an experience with it. My 8 y/o daughter recently attended a "pool party" w/ sports teammates. One of the mothers, fully clothed and there only acting as a chaperon, jumped in to pull out one of the girls who was in distress. The distressed girl's mother had commented, just a few moments before, on how the girl was "fine" and "just playing" as she flailed about in the water. My wife said the girl didn't look to be in distress, per se, but was kind of "jumping around". I found out later that the mother who rescued the girl she'd been a lifeguard. She recognized the girl was in distress. There were 8 to 10 other adults present and no one else, in or out of the pool, was thinking too much of it. It's absolutely chilling.

Natsu 5y ago
The problem is that drowning looks exactly like someone just "jumping" in place in the pool. If you don't know what to look for, you might not realize what's going on, but for anyone who knows, it should rightfully set off alarm bells. I hope someone sends the parent this game so they can learn without having a dead kid :(