Every cyclist knows the struggle of sore legs! While soreness can be a sign of your hard work and progress, it can also make your rides tougher. Luckily, Manon & Conor have some great tips to help you prevent and manage that muscle discomfort!
00:00 How do you prevent sore legs?
00:34 Are sore legs normal?
01:17 Take rest days!
02:19 The Importance of Recovery
02:55 Always Warm Up
03:42 Get your nutrition and hydration right
04:30 Gearing
05:24 Final advice on stopping sore legs
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What did you do to get your sore legs?๐ฆต Did we miss any tips?
Let us know in the comments down below! ๐ฌ
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44 Comments
What has been your worst experience with leg pain after a long ride?
๐๐๐๐
100 grams of sugar per hour will eliminate sore legs.
The cycling action is same as climbing a ladder. "If you can climb a ladder, you can ride a bike up a hill".
The Prime Movers are the Gluteus group. These are really hard to tire. Use the buttocks before any other muscle group. Quads will come in automatic. Tertiary groups are Hamstrings and Iliopsoas together. Calves stabilise the foot.
Don't think so much of pedaling is 'pushing the foot down on the pedal', think of it as pulling the knee down with the hip. Power comes from the hip. Remember, you are climbing a ladder to the handlebars. How many steps per minute would you climb a ladder?
In a nutshell, cycling is NOT twiddling.
Iโve found that having a few drops of organic black cumin oil is useful for reducing inflammation. โฅ
Magnesium supplements? Did the trick for me
I'm not too concerned about having sore legs after a ride. It's the sore legs during my ride that's a problem.
My back and shoulders get sore not really my legs then again dont do much cycling compared to some people
Define Poodeling, please?
The value in a light spin the day after, or going for a walk, is the blood needs to move more and supply the healing to the legs. Do it if you can, and don't push much at all
i actually prefer low cadence, high torque riding. i kinda like the feeling of my quads burning up when climbing with a 35 to 60 rpm cadence. it is an effective way of lowering your heart rate too and gives you the knowledge that if you ever make a bad gear change on a hill and get stuck on a 52 – 21 – then you still have the power to keep moving whilst resolving the issue
Pain is weakness leaving the body. There is no such thing as pain, there is only gain, especially when your audience, me included are not at a level of training that the average person is going through. I lied about me but I'm disgusted by this topic and how it makes males into shemales. I could be wrong, so now I'll watch this woke gibberish and see if there is anything right or wrong about the click bait title. BTW, if I am wrong, will the UK government come to America and arrest me for speaking my mind?
I watched, I'm sad ti say that this tripe is not going to float GCN, What a shame.
Maybe you can make a video about flat breads and flat tires while you are throwing stones and pots and pans at your new neighbors.
I do a recovery after a long ride, every time, with or without sore legs. Itโs called โa bottle of beerโ.
I picked up a more upright bike (Specialized Sirrus) for rest days. I find that I tend to push a little too hard on my road cycle on recovery days while the Sirrus is a more "slow down and enjoy the scenery" sort of ride.
One of the most important things to avoid is getting old. ย
If you can stay under 35 years old the whole time you're cycling, you should be good.
An ounce of prevention is worth a kilo of cure. My routine is to ride 4-5 days per week, riding 2-3 days on and 1-2 days off, weather permitting. Rest days is always #1, and gearing is always #2.
Avoid overdoing it; you don't need or want to go for a new Personal Record each and every day or even each and every time you get on the bike. I recently dropped 2t on my singlespeed cog, and that turns out to have been a mistake, so after 2 days in a row of grinding too hard on the climbs, I'm going back up 2t and I'll have to be content with spinning out of my gear on the descents. Nutrition is obviously #3, and this means hydration, sodium, calcium, potassium, and magnesium, and it won't hurt to get some iodine in their, either, not to mention protein, all critical for muscle recovery. Another benefit of lower gearing is that you will be less likely to get into the anaeorbic range that will burn your muscles' glycogen reserve faster.
I somehow seem to end up getting sore and stiff legs from kayaking (white water boats are just so comfortable ๐ ) then suffering on my bike the next day
My "easy, recovery rides" always ended up being "whoops I went too hard rides", so I've started to call them "small ring only rides". That helps me keep a relatively high cadence at an easy gear, no matter what.
I had quite sore legs yesterday. Took a hot soak last night and a rest day today
Air compression leg massagers.
more important than warm up is cool down to reduce soreness, then compression in cold water. also incorporating weight training can help reduce leg soreness from the bike, but its always relative to how hard you go on the bike stronger legs means stronger efforts on the bike. like they say cycling doesnt get easier you just get faster.
Sore muscles donโt bother me. But hard cramps in thigh muscles a few hours after a 35 mi. ride are really painful..
Shut up legs could have sorted that ๐
I got such a severe cramp in my thigh, I got up to try and stretch it out, passed out and cracked my head open on a bookcase.
Thank for this video. I though I had something wrong with me โ my legs gets really sore. โ now I know what to do. ๐
Pickle juice. Lots of pickle juice
I give it a rest day, then go running instead to loosen up the cycling muscles. Then another rest day, and then back to cycling.
a nice ice bath after an intense ride helps with recovery
The motorcycle is so loud
My legs always feel tight and crampy, whether I've exercised or not. Not sure what the problem is.
Is that an AI generated Manon?
I was invited to a gravel-tour with my workmates. In lack of a real gravelbike I normally would choose my old trusty 90's semisport with gullwing-bars, which is a fine substitute for Flatland Gravel, but lacks those Mountain-Gears and tyre-width for the muddy sections. This time it was going to get hilly and muddy, so I took my E-MTB with flat pedals and choosed to not use the assist to be fair to the others and my own pride. The tour was 70K with 25K flat, 25k mountains and back 20K flat. Halfway of the 20K back home I really was struggeling with sour legs but somehow had to make it home. At this time every crank rotation felt like the next revolution would not be possible, not powerwise but just bending the leg was a pain. Then I realized that on one hand my bike was almost tripple the weight of the others and I am used to ride clipped in on such rides which stopps my feet from floating around and provides the usability of the up-stroke. I then used the assist to have a lighter pedalstroke while keeping up with my mates. After a while I overcame the sourness and was able to spin on my own again for the last few KM of the tour.
Miss you already Manon!
Conorโs head tube will never not be funny to me ๐ฎ๐
Why I am getting sore legs after 12 kms ? ๐ข Is it because I am new to this or over weight ?
have Manon massage your legs after every ride. ๐คฃ๐คฃ๐คฃ๐คฃ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐
Never had sore legs on a ride. Next day though, sure!
I canโt immediately start smashing it. Well, I can, but Iโll be out of breath and then will not really recover during the ride. I always just ease in to it. And then after say an hour I can go deeper and recover when Iโve had it and go again.
You lost me at rest days
How does sauna/cold plunge factor into recovery?? I havenโt seen a GCN show on this??
y'day i did a 96km ride with 1700 metres of climb.took me a long time too ๐ and I was very pleasantly surprised that I wasn't tired at the end of it . bananas!!! bcaa, lime juice when I could find it and plenty smiles.
My personal experience – a protein shake with creatine right after the ride. It helps a lot! ๐ช
I find dry needling works amazingly well (I had no luck with acupuncture), far more effective for me than massage/traditional physio
Is this Manon's last video for GCN??