Just curious if anyone has tried these with any success, I finally picked up some samples today because I’ve been curious for a number of years. Different forums suggest they’re useless, Amazon reviews are generally good but it’s amazon lol. What say you people? Mainly I was hoping to help take the edge off the legs during really hard workouts
I’ve tried them before but mostly chalked any perceived benefit (which was minimal) up to the placebo effect after they didn’t seem to have a positive effect in most circumstances.
As far as taking the edge off the legs during hard workouts, a very non-sexy approach that I have found to be successful is as follows:
- Good sleep
- High quality recovery from previous workout
- Sufficient carbohydrate intake
- Timing my pre-training meal within a 2.5-3hr time frame before the workout
Seems simple and not exciting, but it always works.
very practical advice, thanks! The types of workouts I struggle with are ones like Megantic and Ansel Adams, I tend to get to a point after the first sets where my legs feel overloaded and I basically have to pause for a few seconds to finish the rest of the set. I kind of think it has something to do with erg mode, as I’ve tried some workouts on resistance mode with the Hammer and had some more success. Either way, I’ll keep at it with the hard ones. All I know is I’m finishing 40min CX races with stuff left in the tank (not that I’m even top 50% of my field lol) so the suffering is paying off in the real world.
I have found the PR Lotion has a slight effect of reducing lactic acid build up as opposed to nothing at all. I just use it for races or super hard workouts.
Interesting. I use Hammer produces and I had a question about SportLegs and its comparison to Hammer’s Race Day product. Hammer provided a rather detailed comparison, concluding in a number of ways why their product is better…of course. I’ve been using Race Day for some time and honestly I can’t say I feel any difference or stronger on the bike. Honestly, let’s just ride more and we won’t need this stuff. Just a thought.
The sports supplement industry is largely unregulated and hugely marketed. I tried Sportlegs a few years ago and found it a useless product. As has been said on the podcast many times, if something like this really works, it’s likely to be classified as performance enhancing and therefore made illegal by governing bodies. Extrapolating, when it doesn’t work, then you can buy it pretty easily.
ha, my topic came back from the dead! I did get a sample pack of the sportlegs during the fall and don’t think there was any appreciable effect (I used it in a CX race, don’t know if I used it during training), as it wasn’t doing anything to make my legs burn less that wasn’t already accomplished through training before the season.
Not sport legs but, I continue to use Topical Edge now AMP lotion (sodium bicarb). Maybe maybe maybe it helps with reducing RPE while attempting very short bursts of power such as covering moves in criteriums or breaks.
As previously written, there aren’t any shortcuts to magically produce more power. No legal shortcuts that is.