Does draining your legs after a hard running work out have any benefits?

So in high school track practice my coach has everybody sit with their back on the floor and their legs on the wall to theoretically “drain the lactic acid from them” but I’m pretty sure that’s not how that works. So I need to figure out if that actually works or if it’s just a load of waffle.

Forgive me for putting on my HS teacher hat, but I can’t help it.

Have you taken chem yet? First question is what happens to acids in aqueous solution? Second, what are you mostly made of? Then tell me what you think of lactic acid in the body. 

Spopepro O. wrote:

Forgive me for putting on my HS teacher hat, but I can’t help it.

Have you taken chem yet? First question is what happens to acids in aqueous solution? Second, what are you mostly made of? Then tell me what you think of lactic acid in the body. 

According to Google acid dissolves in aqueous solutions. Your blood is an aqueous solution thus lactic acid dissolves in blood and its distribution in the blood is not impacted by gravity because it's dissolved up in there? Or is the blood not pushed up in your legs as much because of gravity? Hmmm

I almost failed highschool chem. 

Lactic acid leaves the muscles pretty quickly. The soreness you feel is because you are tired and worked your muscles. Lactic acid is more of the culprit when you feel a burn in the middle or peak of a hard effort. It’s not why you’re sore the next day.

Light stretching seems to help. As do light workouts.

I’ve got a smart trainer in my garage. If I do a 30 minute ride, and break a light sweat, I can recover much faster than lounging around cursing my soreness. This is after a soul crushing workout of course.

Well, I was hoping our young runner would play along but no luck it seems. The whole idea was to try and encourage some critical thought before immediately appealing to an outside authoritative source. It's a real problem! At one point we were all kind of thinking that with the internet in our pockets we would be able to correctly answer any (known) question at any time, but the reality with bad actors, intentional misinformation, no filtering of bad/good information, and hallucinating AI is that critical thinking is now required at all times, *especially* when trying to find information on the internet. Not to mention that mountain project forums hallucinates bad advice even more than AI...

Adam is right, acids ionize in aqueous solution which is you, being mostly made of water. The point of the question was to try and apply some personal knowledge to evaluate the quality of the source (the key skill in media literacy). As there can't possibly be lactic acid in your body you should deeply interrogate advice from anyone who says so. It is true that the ion Lactate is produced in anaerobic respiration through the oxidizing of pyruvate, and that your body needs to work to clear it at higher levels, but once you stop working hard it can effectively do so, returning it to pyruvate or glucose. Which is important because it means that lactate is also an important energy source, not just a byproduct. In fact, there's some recent studies that seem to indicate that the brain may even prefer lactate over glycogen as an energy source. It's ok if you didn't know all that stuff. My larger point is you don't need to, but if you ask good questions at first then you can more effectively look deeper.

Also important is that I said "interrogate" not "dismiss" the source. Lots of times people are doing the right things but assigning the wrong reasons why they work. So just as important ask asking the question "does this work this way?" is asking "does this work for me?". There is weak evidence elevating legs can reduce some inflammation (compression clothing works better, but there's also now evidence that you don't want to suppress the inflammation response *too* much because it's an important part of overcompensation). You might be getting something of a gentle stretch that's beneficial. You might be benefiting from a team ritual with some reflection time to transition out of the workout. So while it wouldn't be the activity I would choose, and it certainly doesn't work the way the coach says, there could still be some value to it.

Thanks everyone for the input

Spopepro O. wrote:

Well, I was hoping our young runner would play along but no luck it seems. The whole idea was to try and encourage some critical thought before immediately appealing to an outside authoritative source. It's a real problem! At one point we were all kind of thinking that with the internet in our pockets we would be able to correctly answer any (known) question at any time, but the reality with bad actors, intentional misinformation, no filtering of bad/good information, and hallucinating AI is that critical thinking is now required at all times, *especially* when trying to find information on the internet. Not to mention that mountain project forums hallucinates bad advice even more than AI...

Adam is right, acids ionize in aqueous solution which is you, being mostly made of water. The point of the question was to try and apply some personal knowledge to evaluate the quality of the source (the key skill in media literacy). As there can't possibly be lactic acid in your body you should deeply interrogate advice from anyone who says so. It is true that the ion Lactate is produced in anaerobic respiration through the oxidizing of pyruvate, and that your body needs to work to clear it at higher levels, but once you stop working hard it can effectively do so, returning it to pyruvate or glucose. Which is important because it means that lactate is also an important energy source, not just a byproduct. In fact, there's some recent studies that seem to indicate that the brain may even prefer lactate over glycogen as an energy source. It's ok if you didn't know all that stuff. My larger point is you don't need to, but if you ask good questions at first then you can more effectively look deeper.

Also important is that I said "interrogate" not "dismiss" the source. Lots of times people are doing the right things but assigning the wrong reasons why they work. So just as important ask asking the question "does this work this way?" is asking "does this work for me?". There is weak evidence elevating legs can reduce some inflammation (compression clothing works better, but there's also now evidence that you don't want to suppress the inflammation response *too* much because it's an important part of overcompensation). You might be getting something of a gentle stretch that's beneficial. You might be benefiting from a team ritual with some reflection time to transition out of the workout. So while it wouldn't be the activity I would choose, and it certainly doesn't work the way the coach says, there could still be some value to it.

Holy crap you have a massive, condescending ego. Calm down buddy, you teach high school science. 

grug g wrote:

Holy crap you have a massive, condescending ego. Calm down buddy, you teach high school science. 

That's fair. Actually my credentials are in music education and mathematics, and I'm the most reviled of people these days (administrator). It's a hot topic, and there's new Ed Code in CA around media literacy. So I'll stand by the any push to try and get anyone to think more critically, even if I end up being a bit of an ass in the process. Our (USA) country might depend on it. This stuff really doesn't always translate well over the internet, so apologies for the any bad feelings.

Braden Burns wrote:

So in high school track practice my coach has everybody sit with their back on the floor and their legs on the wall to theoretically “drain the lactic acid from them” but I’m pretty sure that’s not how that works. So I need to figure out if that actually works or if it’s just a load of waffle.

That's not how it works. Lactic acid can be used as fuel. If you work on your aerobic conditioning (long slow runs), you can utilize it more efficiently and go faster, with less effort over time. That's what "base training" is all about.