Just getting going again for the season and brought my CTL from 22 up to 41 over a 4 week training block and the body is calling for a recovery week.
The plan states that i should be doing about 230 TSS for the week which would bring my CTL down by 1 point, but as of now my body is telling me i need more rest, considering i have been hovering around -20 to -30 TSB for a bit now.
I’m not sure any science has yet been applied to necessary CTL drop but what about your anecdotal experiences with how do you determine how much or little to do on a recovery week and do you have a rule of thumb about how far to allow your CTL to drop?
Rather than thinking “how much will CTL drop,” just accept that it needs to drop, and that it will. It’s not a measure of fitness. How many watts you’re putting out at AeT and FTP (or whatever data point you’re emphasizing at the time) is your measure of fitness. CTL is just a measure of chronic stress.
Cut training load by ~50%. What will happen to the CTL will happen – the truth is in the cells, not the numbers.
(says the guy who doesn’t rest enough, and sort of owes it to @brendanhousler to show that he is actually taking a de-loading week right now).
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Yeah, CTL is going to drop, but your TSB is getting back to a fresh state, and that’s more important, I think. I just ended SSB2 HV with a CTL of 83 and my TSB at -21 this past weekend, and it’s been negative for several weeks. Today, I’m at 79 CTL and TSB of 1. Hopefully, this recovery will get me recovered, make some gains following the work of the past few weeks and get into the next phase ready to rock.