How to stop legs burning when cycling
Your legs are burning because of lactic acid. If you are feeling the burn of lactic acid every ride, throughout your ride, it’s really painful – the reason is that it’s the body’s last resort to output high amounts of energy for a short amount of time. The difference is, that when cycling, you want the body putting out low amounts of energy for a long amount of time. If you want to learn how to stop legs burning when cycling, then you need to decrease the amount of lactic acid in your body while cycling. Here is how:
In this post, we will go over the 4 different ways to decrease the amount of lactic acid in your body. The first is by not riding as fast. This will seem like a big “of course” to you, but we’ll also explain in more detail why and how riding fast will actually make you faster. The second in by warming up correctly. The third is by cooling down correctly. Finally, you need to know how to recover the right way so that your body can bounce back when you ride again and not pre-emptively tighten up.
Knowledge is power:
Before moving forward, here are some useful pieces of information as well:
- How to decrease Lactic Acid Buildup [Full Guide]
- How to Ice Your Legs Correctly after Cycling
- How to Lower Heart Rate While Cycling
- How Much Riding Is Too Much?
How to stop legs burning when cycling
To stop your legs from burning when cycling, you need to do 4 things. This is the four below and we’ll go over them in more detail afterwards.
- Ride Slower
- Warm Up Correctly
- Cool Down Correctly
- Practice Good Recovery
Ride Slower
You’re probably riding too fast for the level of shape that your body is in. If you’re trying to get faster over longer distances (anything over a couple of miles) you actually want to strengthen a different part of your body called the cardiovascular system. If your legs are burning while riding, you’re not training that system and you are going to feel pain in burning your legs, and you also are not going to be able to go long distances very fast.
If you ride slower, then you will train the correct bodily system and then you will start to get faster over certain distances without feeling the burning in your legs. The way to tell if you’re going the right speed is if you are able to breath evenly in and out of your nose (Except for hills, you can pant, hoof and squeal all you want then).
Warm Up Correctly
If you don’t warm up before your ride, your muscles will be very sluggish because they don’t know that they’re supposed to actually do the things that you are asking them to do. They won’t fire correctly, and they will wear out faster.
The way to get around this is by doing a warmup. If you want, you can take a light walk around the block before riding. Another alternate is to find one to two leg stretches before-hand. Static stretching (stretches that you sit still while stretching) is OK if you are a beginner, but when you start to do longer rides, you may want to switch to dynamic stretches (stretches where you are moving while stretching).
If you do this for 10 minutes or so before your ride, your body will be very happy with you and not respond to you by making your legs burn while cycling.
Cool Down Correctly
If the muscles are not tired, then the legs will not burn as much when riding. Another good idea is to have some sort of cool down regimen. What you should do is take a 5-10 minute walk around the block. If you have a moment to take a warm bath, that is a plus, but not needed. This will help your body recover afterwards so that it is still not tired when you ride the bike the next day.
Cool downs are pretty important. When I ran in school our cool down regimen on the field was about 45 minutes to an hour, and then massage, and ice would probably be another hour if it was a short day – so two hours total. You don’t need to do this, though. It can be very very short.
Practice Good Recovery
Riding about 3 times a week is plenty for your body and will help decrease leg burning while riding your bike. Your muscles need a couple days to relax, rebuild and become ready to ride again. If you think over the long term for your body, you’ll develop more muscle over time. This will also lead to your legs burning while cycling.
Why does cycling burn so much?
The burn you are feeling is lactic acid. If you are looking to become a long distance cyclist, you should not feel that burn throughout the majority of your ride. If you do, slow down to find yourself in the correct “exercise zone.”
Cycling will burn if you are training in the higher “exercise zones” of your body. If you are in a higher “exercise zone” then lactic acid will build up in your legs. A lot of my training when I was younger was to (1) develop a tolerance to lactic acid and (2) learn to ignore lactic acid. In short, it hurt a lot. If you ride in the correct zone (at a slower pace over a long period of time) you will get faster. You just need to ride a lot. For more information on “exercise zones” for cardio fitness you can follow this link.
How do I stop being sore when cycling?
The easiest way to stop being sore is to cool down correctly. If you cool down correctly, your body will recover a lot faster than if you go straight from riding your bike to the couch. A good cooldown relaxes the muscles and begins to tell the body that the workout is over.
A good cooldown would include:
- A brief walk
- A swim a pool
- Anything where your muscles are working, but in a more relaxed way
Also, if you ice, your muscles will be far more relaxed afterwards.
Conclusion
How to stop legs burning when cycling:
- Ride Slower
- Warm Up
- Cool Down
- Provide enough space in between rides.
If you do some of these four steps, you will notice that your muscles don’t get as tired. You’ll also notice that you feel better while you’re riding, and the day after you ride.
