Thought this would be the best place to ask but Mods feel free to move. Did a trackday school on friday, 5 sessions of 20 minutes, and my thighs are killing me today. I did spend a lot more time shifting body position than previous days but my thighs have never been this bad. In fact I even resorted to sliding down the stairs on my arse this evening. I do a fair bit of cycling and regularly spend 1 to 2 hours out peddling, and I have also started horse riding, but never suffer like this. So the question is why the f@@k do my thighs hurt so much 2 days afterwards? Also apart from the obvious answer of spending more time on track what exercises can I do to help myself in the future?
Basically it comes down to how much you're gripping with the thighs, shifting yourself around and generally hooning yourself around the bike. Motorcycle Rider Fitness | Diseno-art.com
Being in to body building a few years ago, it is always 2 days after that you feel the pain in your legs. More to do with how your muscles repair themselves. If you are into cycling I can highly reccommend going out for a ride for say half an hour at about 80% of your usual work effort. This will ease them off nicely. Either that or I used to go swimming afterwards and found this also eased the legs off.
Muscle fatigue kicks in almost like clockwork on the 48 hour interval. It's known as DOMS - Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. As Colin says, stretches or a bicycle ride will free them up. As for why they're sore - unless you're John McGuinness and just sit stock in the middle you'll be using your legs to lift and push your weight from one side of the bike to the other. You'll be using your quads and VMOs a lot - more so than with cycling, unless you do a lot of hill-work. You can do a few exercises to help build up your quads by doing squats, and VMOs by doing Peterson Step-ups. There's some examples on this page, but you'll naturally build them up if you do a few TDs in quick succession.
Exactly the info I needed Hill work will be a bit difficult near where I live though, so will have to look at other options as I don't have gym membership either. May have another look at Insanity again as that had a fair number of squat type exercises. Will have a look into the Peterson step-ups as well.
The good thing about squats and Petersons' is that you don't need a gym to do them. If you have stairs in your house or steps outside (or even a high kerb), you can do Peterson's by doing this: Stand at the bottom of the stairs/steps, facing sideways so you're parallel to the bottom step Put the inside foot flat on the first step, the outside one flat on the ground. Raise the heel of the foot that's on the step about 6", keeping your toes flat on the step. It should be the same shape as if you're wearing the missus' stiletto, so cast your mind back to the weekend! Keeping the lower leg completely straight with the foot flat (as though you have a full-leg cast on), lift your weight up by pushing down through your heel on your upper leg until that foot is flat on the first step and the lower leg is up at the same height as the upper leg. Reverse the movement to return to the original position. It's important that all the work is done by the leg on the step - the leg on the ground is a passenger, so make sure you don't use it to spring up and assist the upper leg. Do 6 reps, then turn 180° and do 6 reps with the other leg. Repeat for 3 sets. You'll know you're doing it right if your VMO starts complaining, which will be about 1-2" up from the inside of your knee. You can do squats and Peterson's with body weight at first, but if you have dumb-bells then 10-12kg are good weights to use. ETA: of course, you can always put your bike on a paddock stand and just practice locking left-leg to tank/weight over right then moving to locking right-leg on tank/weight on left and back, which is replicating what you're doing when on track.
