Footballers sweating on a big result find some instant muscle relief
A formula to help sports stars recover almost immediately from muscle cramp may be a secret weapon for athletes competing in finals underway across Australia’s COVID-impacted major sports codes.
Cameron Munster of the Storm receives assistance after sustaining an injury during the second NRL Qualifying Final . (AAP Image/Darren England)
Fresh from supplying Japan and South Africa’s national rugby teams, international cricket sides, and English soccer clubs including Manchester City, the Gold Coast company that created anti-cramping formula CrampFix has secured a deal with Australia’s National Rugby League’s Melbourne Storm and a number of Australian Football League teams.
CrampFix founder Jan Buchegger said from his Burleigh business base that the tonic was exported to 16 countries.
“It’s fast becoming a tool for the professionals,” Buchegger said.
“The irony of the whole thing is that our least known market is at home, our home base.”
Buchegger said a pre-pandemic trip supported by the City of Gold Coast to the Arab Health tradeshow, considered the gateway to health sectors in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, also saw the UAE the national soccer team sign on as a customer.
He said the UAE deal followed the World Cup-winning South African rugby team using the product, with Japan Rugby also signing on in the past few weeks.
“There’s also the English Cricket Board and we have supplied some Olympic teams as well,” he said.
“Then just last week we shipped an order out to the Melbourne Storm.
“It’s taken off recently. It’s getting out there.”
Buchegger said CrampFix was specially developed to be used by cramp-prone football players.
Players suffering from painful muscular cramps during matches meant they lost valuable game time sitting on the sideline recovering.
“We developed CrampFix largely to keep players on the field because in the old days if they did get a muscle cramp that was it, they were off and generally they didn’t come back on,” he said.
With many winter codes playing finals unusually late in October due to the impacts of COVID-19 on the season, Buchegger said there was potential for heat to trigger more cramps. Although the condensed format of games such as shortened quarters in AFL may also help limit the heat effects on athletes, he said.
“We still don’t know what causes muscle cramps, but what we do know nowadays is that when you are cramping, your nerves are over-firing. Because we know that, if we can basically shut down the signal to the over-firing nerves, the cramp will shut down instantly,” he said.
CrampFix’s no-mix, concentrated liquid formula works neurologically to almost immediately combat cramps.
