Jet Lag Recovery for Active Travelers
There is a special kind of tired that only shows up after a long flight. The kind where your brain says “bedtime” while the sun is having brunch on the beach, but your calves feel like jello from sitting on a 6 hours flight, and your motivation to train dropped off somewhere over Nebraska. Jet lag is not a character flaw, it is a clock problem. Your internal clock, your circadian rhythm, takes its cues from light first, then from the timing of sleep, movement, food, and caffeine. If you line those cues up on purpose for the first forty-eight hours, you can feel like yourself faster without a heroic workout or a pharmacy’s worth of supplements.
Benjamin Franklin had a point: “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” You do not need to live like it is 1750, you just need to use light and timing to nudge your clock back in sync.
The Four Cues That Run Your Clock
Think of recovery in a new time zone as a small puzzle with four big pieces. Light is the king piece, morning light tends to shift your clock earlier and evening light tends to push it later, a pattern mapped by the human phase-response curve to light (American Heart Association 2025). Movement is the most persuasive supporting actor, short, frequent “movement snacks” wake your nervous system, get blood flowing to stiff areas, and help set a rhythm for the day. Sleep and caffeine are your guardrails, wake at a consistent local time and use caffeine as a little boost, but be careful drinking caffeine later toward the evenings as it can disrupt your sleep many hours later (Gardiner 2025). Finally, hydration plus a protein-forward first meal lowers the “travel tax” on energy and mood.
Flying West or East, how to time the cues
Westbound trips, like New York to Los Angeles or Los Angeles to Hawaii, make your body think it is later than local time. We want to delay your clock a bit. Lean into late-afternoon or early-evening daylight, allow caffeine a little later than usual while still cutting it off about eight hours before your target bedtime, and put most of your movement later in the day. Evening light exposure creates a delay and yes that includes your blue light smart phone (Kent 2022).
Eastbound trips are flipped. Los Angeles to New York or Europe makes your body think it is earlier. Chase morning light as soon as you can, dim screens at night, load your caffeine toward the early morning only, and stack your movement on the front half of the day. Morning light advances the clock, and that is the nudge you need (American Heart Association 2025).
The Pre-Reset, what to do before you land
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Hydrate early and often, add electrolytes every 3 to 4 hours of flying.
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Eat protein and fiber before boarding, keep in-flight food simple.
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Every 60 to 90 minutes: stand up, heel and toe raises, gentle hip airplanes, band pull-aparts. These are done before the flight
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Near destination sunset, switch devices to warmer color modes or Night Shift.
Arrival Day, simple cues, steady energy
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Get outdoors within 60 minutes of morning or afternoon arrival for natural light.
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Sprinkle movement snacks: a flight of stairs, 8 to 10 squats, calf stretches straight and bent knee, 5 slow breaths with long exhales.
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If you want a workout: short, submax circuit, carries, push-ups or incline, slow split squats, around RPE 5 to 6.
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Light dinner, warm shower, 10 minutes of hips, upper back, and calf mobility, then bed at local time.
Day Two, proof you are back on track
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Same wake time as Day One.
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Take a 30 to 40 minute steady walk or an easy full-body circuit, RPE 6 to 7.
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Cut caffeine by early afternoon, dim screens in the evening, keep the room cool and dark.
No gym needed, restore range and calm
If you like a structured routine that works anywhere, use this: sit into a 90/90 on the floor and gently switch sides, half-kneel and reach your hip flexor while lightly squeezing your glute, take a few slow “world’s greatest” lunges with rotation, open your chest and upper back with lying open-book turns, then finish with a quick calf ladder, straight-knee and bent-knee raises to wake both muscle layers. Cap it with slow breathing, four seconds in, brief pause, six seconds out. That two minutes of downshifting can make falling asleep in a new room much easier.
Caffeine, naps, melatonin, when and how
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Caffeine: Use it to start your day, not finish it. A conservative cutoff is about eight hours before your target bedtime, since even six hours prior can reduce total sleep time, and higher doses have longer effects.
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Naps: A short nap is fine as a pressure valve, 20 to 30 minutes max. If you wake groggy, get daylight and take 1 to 2 minutes of brisk walking or stairs.
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Melatonin, optional: A very low dose, 0.5 to 3 mg, taken 2 to 3 hours before the new bedtime for a few nights can help, especially eastbound (Herxheimer 2002).
Training While Jet-Lagged
Here is the honest take. You are most likely traveling with a purpose whether it is for a much needed vacation or for work. So don’t pressure yourself to keep up with your at-home routines. And anyways, the first one to two days are about circulation, positions, and rhythm, not about beating your old numbers. But if you are adamant about working out, keep effort levels around a six or seven out of ten. Use carries calm the system and make you feel sturdy. Goblet squats and split squats restore range you lost in the seat. Controlled hinges remind your back how to share work with your hips. Then push-ups and rows reintroduce posture to your upper body. But if you feel awful, walk fifteen minutes, do your mobility, and call that a win.
Bonus, timed exercise can nudge your clock, there is human phase-response curve data showing exercise can shift circadian phase depending on when you do it (Youngstedt 2019).
Make your space sleep friendly
Put your phone and laptop on warm color modes after local sunset. Keep the room cool and dark. A simple eye mask and white noise help a lot. If your room lighting is bright in the evening, sunglasses inside are not a fashion statement, they are a circadian tool. Compression boots can feel fantastic on the lower legs after long walking days, use them as a supplement to movement.
Do the right things, not more things
Jet lag does not have to follow a strict one-day-per-time-zone rule. With smart light, movement, and timing, most travelers can cut the misery in half. The art is not in doing more, it is in doing the right things at the right times, chase the light that matches your direction of travel, stack small bouts of movement through the day, respect the caffeine cutoff, and keep dinner easy while your clock is settling. Travel should add to your life and not take you out of your routine.
Your routine should work in busy seasons, not just perfect weeks. Grab a Free Assessment at Pure Function Fitness Center and we will lay out a simple plan for strength, conditioning, and recovery that respects your schedule. Want a little community too, explore Semi-Private Training for focused coaching with teammates, or sample our Signature Classes to build consistency and have fun.
References
- American Heart Association. “Role of Circadian Health in Cardiometabolic Health and Disease: A Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association.” Circulation, 28 Oct. 2025.
- Gardiner, Carissa L., et al. “Dose and Timing Effects of Caffeine on Subsequent Sleep.” Sleep, vol. 48, no. 4, 2025, zsae230. Oxford Academic
- Herxheimer, Andrew, and Keith J. Petrie. “Melatonin for the Prevention and Treatment of Jet Lag.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2002, CD001520. The Cochrane Library
- Kent, Brianne A et al. “Circadian lipid and hepatic protein rhythms shift with a phase response curve different than melatonin.” Nature communications vol. 13,1 681. 3 Feb. 2022, doi:10.1038/s41467-022-28308-6
- Youngstedt, Shawn D., Jeffrey A. Elliott, and Daniel F. Kripke. “Human Circadian Phase–Response Curves for Exercise.” The Journal of Physiology, vol. 597, no. 8, 2019, pp. 2253–2268. Wiley Online Library