Recovery — bouncing back after cycling (myth-busting included)

Summary:

• Between cycling sessions, you need to eat well and sleep well; everything else is less critical.

• If you’re not training daily, recovery exercises aren’t necessary — recovery techniques are unlikely to improve your performance (though they might feel nice).

• The only activity that may (slightly) speed up recovery is stimulating blood and lymph flow in your leg muscles in one way or another. There are a few simple and effective ways to do this — and a million silly ones (ranging from useless to outright harmful).

Disclaimer #1: The closer you get to the end of this post, the higher the chance I’ll challenge some misconception that might have taken root in your mind. If you feel triggered, don’t forget there’s a comment section in my Strava.

Disclaimer #2: As always, to write this, I’ve read a ton of scientific and educational materials and evaluated them through the lens of my 25 years of experience in cycling and snowboarding. Beyond riding, my instructor training included courses in adult and children’s sports physiology, and I’ve been fascinated by this field (and related ones) for years. However, I don’t have a formal degree in this area, and this isn’t a scientific paper or medical advice — I simplify a lot. Always double-check information you find online.

Nutrition

Between training sessions, your body needs enough protein (to repair microtraumas in your muscles) and carbohydrates (to replenish glycogen stores in your muscles and liver for the next workout). In general, this is the only thing you really need to focus on regarding nutrition for recovery. Everything else — vitamins, micronutrients, etc. — tends to take care of itself if you eat enough healthy, diverse food made from basic, minimally processed ingredients.

Proteins are found in meat and fish — and if you don’t eat those, you probably already know where to get them. Carbohydrates are in side dishes like rice, pasta, grains, potatoes, and bread. As always (outside of training sessions), the darker and less refined the carbs, the better: brown rice instead of white, whole-grain pasta, buckwheat instead of semolina, baked potatoes with the skin instead of mashed potatoes, and darker bread with bran and seeds.

Although it doesn’t directly impact recovery, your diet should be built around colorful vegetables and leafy greens. These are high in fiber, which isn’t digested by the human body but feeds the beneficial bacteria in your gut — and there are more of those bacteria than there are cells in your body. Modern medicine believes that properly feeding your gut bacteria is key to good health. So, recovery or not, eat your veggies. Potatoes don’t count!

Protein isolates, powders, drinks, and other sports supplements

All of these make sense only to quickly deliver nutrients to your muscles during and immediately after training — so recovery can start without delay. If you’re not training daily on a strict schedule to achieve competitive results, such products don’t make much sense. In fact, they’re more likely to harm your health than help it.

Update: In the comments, someone rightly pointed out that I hadn’t covered hydration. Naturally, you need to drink plenty of fluids. During exercise, we sweat and lose electrolytes (primarily sodium — that crust of salt on your helmet straps). Electrolytes ensure nerve conductivity in muscles, and when deficient, you might experience cramping. That’s why many people drink isotonic beverages during workouts. As far as recovery is concerned, electrolytes and other trace elements are present in regular food. But if you’re craving mineral water (the sour, medicinal kind), go ahead — it’s good for you (in moderation).

Sleep

An adult typically needs seven to eight hours of sleep. If you’re training actively, you might need significantly more — proper recovery requires enough sleep. Sleep quality is just as important as sleep duration. Several factors influence it:

• Caffeine: Ideally, stop consuming it by early afternoon (no later than lunch).

• Alcohol: Physiologically, it’s best not to consume any at all. That said, who’s stopping you? But at least try to go to bed without feeling even lightly intoxicated. It might seem like you sleep soundly in such a state, but in reality, the quality of your sleep suffers.

• Light: Let’s skip the circadian rhythm debate and the effects of blue light. The key is to sleep in complete darkness. If blackout curtains aren’t an option, use a sleep mask.

• Air: It should be fresh (low in carbon dioxide) and moderately cool. Keep a window slightly open and use pajamas and blankets to stay warm.

• Noise: Studies show this is the least critical factor. As long as sudden noises don’t wake you, background noise doesn’t significantly affect sleep quality.

Sleep tracking gadgets

There are various gadgets available now to help you understand your sleep quality. Perhaps the most useful are fitness bracelets that vividly demonstrate the impact of caffeine and alcohol, as well as CO₂ sensors (either standalone devices for smart home systems or those built into scales, baby monitors, home weather stations, and similar devices). By the way, CO₂ concentration matters not just during sleep but also while you’re awake — don’t ignore it.

Active Recovery

This area is so full of myths that we need to start with the basics.

A) Burning sensation. When we pedal hard, our leg muscles produce lactic acid (lactate). As a result, the muscles become acidic, and we feel a burning sensation — both during the workout and shortly afterward. Within a few hours at most, excess lactate is flushed out of the body, even if you do nothing, and the burning completely subsides.

B) Pain. In addition, heavy loads cause microtears in muscle fibers. This is not only normal but desirable — it’s the subsequent repair of these tears that strengthens muscles and increases their volume. These microtears are why we feel sore for up to several days after a workout.

Both the burning from lactate and the soreness from microtears can only be reduced in one way (unless you use chemical pain relief): by stimulating blood circulation in the affected muscles. Increased blood flow both washes away excess lactic acid and accelerates the healing of microtears by delivering proteins to the muscles — provided we’ve consumed enough of them.

While the method is the same, the timelines for reducing burning and soreness are inherently different.

To address the burning sensation, helping flush out lactate only makes sense within a short period after the workout — before the body clears it out on its own. Doing so can help create an optimal recovery environment as quickly as possible, which is useful if you have another physical effort scheduled the next day.

For soreness, even if we eat protein immediately after the workout, it will take some time to enter the bloodstream and be delivered to the muscles. Therefore, active recovery targeting microtears makes the most sense an hour or two after the workout. By this point, the lactate will likely already be gone.

It’s important to understand that muscle microtears heal much like cuts on the skin — no matter what you do, it will take time. While you can slightly accelerate healing, there’s no magic bullet: the primary healer is relative rest. Even with active recovery methods, the more rest you can maintain while recovering, the better.

Based on this principle, I’ve ranked popular recovery activities from the best to so bad they’re almost good.

1) Massage

Massage allows for complete rest (just lying on a massage table) and has proven medical benefits. However, these benefits are quite limited: even the highest-quality studies show only short-term effects, such as relieving muscle tension for a few dozen minutes (as well as potentially reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression).

The essence of massage is very simple — even banal: agitating the muscles. Despite this, you’ll encounter endless classifications: sports, rehabilitative, medical, therapeutic, hygienic, aesthetic, exotic, esoteric, and many more types of massage.

Trust me, all of this boils down to one thing — “agitate muscles”. The key, however, is this: a good massage therapist, regardless of what they call their school or approach, knows which muscles need attention and, just as importantly, how to avoid manipulating what shouldn’t be touched (ligaments, tendons, joints, bones). Everything else is either fluff or outright nonsense (more on that later).

2) Self-Massage

I’m giving this its own section because, without a massage therapist, you’ll have to sacrifice at least a little bit of rest. Self-massage can be done either with bare hands or with various tools — ranging from vibration guns, which only require you to glide them over your muscles, to rollers and balls, which essentially turn the process into a whole set of energy-draining exercises (and quite often lead to injuries).

I can’t recommend anything other than vibration massagers — this is one of those cases where having a battery and an electric motor allows you to maintain beneficial rest, making everything else inferior. I used to test and compare different models, but I’ve come to realize that almost any of them will do the job.

Luckily, being a good self-massage therapist is much easier than being a professional one. All you need to do is avoid causing significant pain and steer clear of applying pressure to hard parts of your body (especially around the knees). And just agitate your aching muscles in some way until they feel loosened up — it’s far from rocket science.

3) Active Compression

Active compression is when something squeezes your legs and then releases them. Repeatedly. In practice, this usually refers to special compression pants. Like massage, this is an excellent recovery method because all you have to do is lie down and do nothing. However, I’ve ranked it below self-massage because these pants are expensive and take up a lot of space. Active recovery is often needed in training camps where you ride daily, and these pants are not exactly easy to bring along.

Don’t confuse active compression with passive compression — like wearing compression socks or sleeves. Passive compression doesn’t promote blood circulation; it actually hinders it. Active compression works by repeatedly squeezing and releasing the muscle, causing blood to flow. Essentially, it’s all about — you guessed it — agitating the muscles. With compression garments, this cycle only happens once.

4) Temperature Contrasts

Some people use ice baths for recovery, while others prefer a sauna or steam room. There’s no contradiction here: the point isn’t the cold or heat itself, but the transitions between them, which also stimulate blood circulation. The takeaway is simple (and supported by scientific studies): there’s no need to endure extremes like an ice hole or a blazing sauna. Once one extreme temperature has done its job, it’s time to move on to the other.

Why is this ranked below massage and compression? It’s a hassle, and the overall stress on the body likely hinders recovery more than it helps (though it might be beneficial in other ways, if done in moderation — kind of like vegetables). Scientific studies on temperature effects show mixed results, but the positive impact of a simple contrast shower has been confirmed. That makes sense, given that you can complete more cycles in the shower than in an ice hole or hammam.

As we move further down this list, the likelihood of universal and unshakable “but it works for me” arguments in the comments increases. So, I’ll end each of the following points with a universal response: if it feels good to you, go ahead and enjoy!

5) Low-Intensity Exercise

The classic recovery rides. I’m ranking them fairly low — for an obvious reason: the increased blood flow that aids recovery here doesn’t come with the even more beneficial rest. That’s why it’s recommended to keep recovery rides at the very bottom of Zone 1 (minimal effort on the pedals) and limit them to an hour or an hour and a half, no more.

That said, recovery rides might serve another purpose for serious athletes: the chance to occasionally enjoy cycling without rigid training plans — a kind of psychological reset. If you’re not a serious athlete, you already have this freedom — plus, we all know the heart rate we actually ride our “recovery rides” at! So, it’s better to drop the self-deception about recovery altogether and just enjoy cruising from café to café.

6) Stretching / Static Stretches / Isometrics

None of the numerous studies on post-workout stretching has shown any meaningful positive effect. That could be the end of this section, but since stretching isn’t just used for recovery — and sometimes does have its uses — let’s explore the topic a bit.

Stretching can be either dynamic (swings, jerks, twists, rotations, lunges, etc.) or static (holding a specific pose to stretch a muscle). Dynamic stretching can be quite helpful as a warm-up in sports requiring complex coordination (like snowboarding or tennis), where sudden, unpredictable movements with a wide range of motion are common.

However, in endurance sports, it’s mostly unnecessary because you can warm up simply by doing your usual activity at low intensity — just like professional cyclists warming up on rollers before a race.

Static stretching isn’t suitable for warming up because it temporarily reduces muscle performance. As for recovery, it could theoretically work — through the same mechanism of “muscle agitation” (cycles of tension and relaxation, stretching and contraction) — but if you do it in cycles, it’s no longer static stretching; it becomes dynamic stretching.

And dynamic stretching, in terms of recovery, essentially turns into low-intensity exercise — but without the joy of a café ride on your bike. A dull thing, really.

To fully wrap up the subject, I’ll add that static stretching can be used to improve flexibility, which can be beneficial in specific areas for cycling. But there are many caveats, starting with the fact that a cyclist's primary muscle (the quadriceps) is biomechanically resistant to stretching, and ending with the potential risk of injury. In short, none of this has anything to do with recovery or health.

And yes, I get it — you personally feel like stretching really helps you recover and feel better. I also enjoy those few pleasant seconds (especially after standing like a stork on one leg for a minute). By all means, stretch to your heart’s content!

7) Yoga

Setting aside enlightenment and self-discovery (apologies for the bluntness), yoga is essentially a set of physical exercises that include stretches, isometric (static) loads, some bodyweight exercises, plus balance work and breathing practices — though the latter have nothing to do with the topic of recovery.

That said, feel free to practice yoga for your enjoyment (!) and health: improve your flexibility, strength, balance, self-control, and harmony with the universe. But understand that when you’re in a cycling camp practicing yoga every day, you’re not aiding recovery. In fact, you’re adding extra stress to your body, which is already dealing with a more intense riding schedule than usual.

8) Myofascial Release (MFR)

Here’s where the full-on pseudoscience starts. MFR stands for “myofascial release,” a fancy-sounding term meant to appear scientific. “Myo-” means “muscle,” “fascial” also refers to muscles, and “release” is just synonym of “relaxation.”

Fascia is a real physiological term. It’s the sheath that holds muscle fibers together — that’s exactly the membrane you don’t want in a well-trimmed steak, or an analogue of the casing around sausage. However, it’s also a favorite buzzword for charlatans or simply ignorant practitioners of manual therapy, osteopathy, and chiropractic (all three of which are pseudosciences).

Now, just because you hear or read the term “fascial” doesn’t mean you should immediately label the person using it as an MLM scammer. After all, it’s simply a word from anatomical textbooks. But you should ask yourself why someone feels the need to describe basic “muscle relaxation” with a vague pseudoscientific term (usually paired with an overpriced foam roller).

In essence, MFR is the same as massage: you agitate your muscles, and they relax. The problem is that manual therapy and kinesiology add unnecessary fabrications (for extra money), osteopathy brings morally questionable practices, and chiropractic (bone setting) introduces outright dangerous ones. Chiropractors regularly injure people.

So, I’m breaking from my usual “if it feels good, go for it” conclusion. Manual therapy, applied kinesiology, osteopathy, and chiropractic “help” people only insofar as they involve basic massage techniques. But they come bundled with so much nonsense that any reasonable person should stay away. All this talk about energy flows, subluxations, and cracking joints as “treatment” — how can anyone take that seriously?

By the way, if you’re surprised to hear that manual therapy is pseudoscience, it’s probably because it was, until recently, an official medical specialty in Russia. It’s since been removed but replaced by osteopathy (insert a grim joke about constitutional amendments here). That’s why some legitimate doctors now operate under the label of “osteopath.” Still, let’s not forget that osteopathy is essentially a guru-like doctrine (on par with a cult), one that tries to treat cancer by massaging temples. People die from this who could have been saved.

Since I’ve already gone off on this tangent, let me shock you further. A physiotherapist — sounds legitimate, right? Well, physiotherapy includes one evidence-based method: therapeutic exercise (which includes massage). The rest is a massive pile of either ineffective or outright anti-scientific practices, like electrophoresis (delivering medication into tissues via electric current — what?!).

Then there’s air baths, drinking radon (radioactive) water, bee stings, landscape therapy, bibliotherapy, and weightlessness therapy (yes, treatment via zero gravity) — just a few examples of officially recognized physiotherapy methods. I kid you not — this is the medical system we’ve earned.

But all this applies to Russian practice — while physiotherapy is understood differently in the western countries, where it relates more to trauma rehabilitation.

9) Acupuncture

Acupuncture is technically also considered a method of physiotherapy, but since some otherwise reasonable cyclists unironically use it, let’s take a closer look. Not only does acupuncture lack evidence of effectiveness, but it also has proven nonsense behind it.

There are studies where acupuncture practitioners inserted the proper needles in the “correct” spots, while scientists poked random objects into random places. Both groups reported the same level of “improvement.” But scientists didn’t stop there, because just being “random” isn’t rigorous enough. They also gave some participants fake needles — similar to movie prop knives, where the needle telescopes inward without ever piercing the skin. That “helped” just as much, too.

So, whenever something “undoubtedly works” for you, don’t forget that the placebo effect, while real, doesn’t provide any practical benefit beyond the fact that your brain convinces itself that it’s good for you.

By the way, acupuncture is part of “traditional Chinese medicine” — which isn’t the repository of ancient Eastern wisdom you might think. It was actually invented in the 1950s during Mao’s era, as a marketing gimmick for foreigners. Look it up if you’re not afraid of being overwhelmed with qi energy in the process.