How to Rest Tired Legs After Your Long Rides

So you overdid it, and while your legs felt great on the long, hilly ride, now they feel like they’re made of lead. You know your tired legs need time to recover, but you should also know there are ways to make the most of your downtime and potentially feel better faster.

To get you back on the bike and feeling your best STAT, we gathered five expert-endorsed methods for resting tired legs and helping them recover quicker, plus an explanation about why your legs get so tired, and how to minimise this effect in the future.

Why Your Legs Feel Tired

“Leg muscles that feel tired, heavy, or sore are essentially damaged.”

Leg muscles that feel tired, heavy, or sore after a grueling ride or back-to-back workouts are essentially damaged. “When we use our muscles to drive force, what actually happens is we create little micro tears in the muscle itself,” Jessie Duppler, creator of the Chain Reaction Strength Revolution program tells Bicycling.

These tears are essential to building strength and muscle mass. “The muscle repairs itself with stronger and bigger fibres,” Duppler explains. But the recovery process can be uncomfortable and, depending on how tired and sore you feel, put a damper on your training.

Your body also responds to hard work with fatigue and, sometimes, muscle cramps, which are signs that you need to both rest and refuel.

5 Ways to Speed Recovery for Tired Legs

1. Refuel and Rehydrate to Replenish and Repair

When an athlete complains about tired and heavy legs, Steve Weller, cycling-certified coach tells Bicycling he first considers their hydration and nutrition status. “Is the athlete properly hydrated and adequately fueled? A post-workout recovery drink or meal is a critical part of recovery,” he says.

If your ride is on the lengthier side — typically an hour or more — you should fuel on the bike, Duppler tells Bicycling. This is when easy-to-consume sports nutrition products like gummies and gels can come in handy.

“We only have so much glucose and glycogen stores in our body,” says Duppler, and that’s what your body needs for energy. So once you run out, you can become fatigued, leading to those tired, aching legs. Staying on top of your carbohydrate intake will help prevent that tiredness during and after a ride.

Likewise, “proper hydration permits an adequate volume of blood to flow around your body, removing waste products generated by exercise, repairing damaged tissues, and replenishing energy stores,” Weller says.

Drinking between 700ml to 800ml of fluid per hour of riding, or 170 to 200 ml every 15 minutes of activity, is a general guideline for staying on top of your hydration.

2. Keep Moving — Gently

“When we talk about taking a day off, it doesn’t necessarily mean no movement. It means movement that is less intense and different than whatever you’re taking a day off from,” Duppler says. “Something like yoga or walking uses different muscles [than cycling] and gets the blood pumping.”

The appropriate dose of movement falls more on the low-intensity side. “Get some blood moving around to help flush metabolites [waste byproducts] and bring oxygen and nutrients to tired muscles,” Weller recommends, but take it easy and stay off the bike.

Movement can also reduce uncomfortable swelling by stoking the lymphatic system, which, Duppler says, “is like the garbage disposal system of the body.” Muscle contraction acts as a sort of pump for the lymphatic system, helping to carry fluid and remove waste products, she adds.

3. Take Advantage of Compression

Slipping on a compression garment may help revive tired legs. “Compression makes it easier for our bodies to pump blood around, and it helps prevent the pooling of fluid in extremities,” Weller says, pointing to research suggesting that compression garments, which are generally affordable and easy to wear, may reduce delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).

Keep in mind that the research on compression garment’s success as a recovery aid is ambiguous, according to a 2022 systemic scoping review published in Sports Medicine. They do, according to the researchers, reduce “perceptions of muscle soreness and pain following exercise,” but they don’t necessarily change your recovery metrics or performance the next day. In general, if they feel good to you and you believe they work, slip them on after a workout!

The same goes for compression boots a.k.a. intermittent pneumatic compression devices. These boots enclose your calves or entire legs in a cuff that fill with air and squeeze and release the leg to improve blood flow. Researchers have found they do provide short-term relief of delayed onset muscle soreness and according to a small study of 16 participants published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology in 2023, they can speed up cardiovascular recovery.

4. Elevate the Exhausted Parts

Most of the time, gravity is working against your muscles, and because our feet are (obviously) always below us, they constantly experience that pull down. “We tend to see, especially if we’re not moving, a pooling of blood down in that area because all of the vessels have to work against gravity to get that blood back up to the heart and pumping,” Duppler explains.

Propping up your feet or practicing the yoga pose known as “legs up the wall,” (pictured above) allows you to reverse the effects of gravity. “It basically drains the system and allows blood flow to come back to the heart [and, therefore, to the rest of the body] a little easier,” Duppler says.

5. Roll Away the Aches

Self-myofascial release, a.k.a. foam rolling, can promote blood flow and encourage muscle relaxation by communicating with the nervous system, which can help rest tired legs.

“What it’s basically doing is putting pressure on a muscle that might be tight, which sends a signal to the brain that goes, ‘This muscle is tight. Maybe I should allow it to relax a bit.’ And then it relaxes,” Duppler says. “That can be helpful for people who feel tight or sore after a workout.”

What to Avoid When Your Legs Are Tired

It’s easy to think that anything that feels good is actually helpful to recovery, but Weller cautions against some common methods, such as spending too much time in the hot tub. “There’s a high risk of dehydration — especially with the consumption of adult beverages—and it does little to help reduce muscle damage,” he says.

The sauna poses a similar risk. While the heat can encourage blood flow, sweating can lead to problematic levels of fluid loss, especially after a workout.

Cold plunges can be helpful in that they facilitate blood flow, but if you recoil at the thought of an ice bath or can’t stand a cold shower, Duppler gives you permission to skip both.

“The biggest thing in recovery is we want to make sure your nervous system is getting recovered too. For some people, an ice bath is a pretty big shock to the nervous system,” she says. “To my athletes who like an ice bath, I say go for it. For my athletes who are like, ‘this is terrible,’ don’t bother.”

How to Prevent Tired Legs

Just like nutrition and hydration help muscles recover, they also play a big role in preventing and minimising muscle fatigue, say both Duppler and Weller.

Getting enough high-quality sleep is also critical, Weller says. “The nervous system needs time to repair and recover,” he says.

When training, consider frequency, volume, and intensity to avoid tired legs, too. “Between those three things, pick one or two [to progress]. You can’t increase all three at the same time. That’s when you see a lot of fatigue setting in,” Duppler says.

Also, resist the urge to compensate for missed or sluggish workouts by going all out. “If you’ve missed some training, ramp back into it rather than riding harder to make up for missed workouts,” Weller says. “Proper training requires progressive overload so our bodies can adapt to moderate levels of fatigue, not extreme fatigue and heaviness in the legs.”

This article originally appeared on bicycling.com

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