Hi,
I recently bumped up my training week and things go decently well. Though I am struggling to find some data regarding rest days?
When should they be taken, should you plan them in your schedule etc?
Lets say a athlete during base season trains 14-17 hours per week. Would you schedule 1x, rest day + 1x recovery day?
Eg. Monday - off, Friday - recovery ride/easy run?
Obviously this means you accumulate something like 7-9 hours Tue, Wed, Thu & 7-9 hours in the weekend.
I think it’s largely down to what works best for you as an individual. Nils van der Poel famously trained Mon-Fri and took every weekend off, and that worked out pretty well for him.
You also don’t necessarily need to be limited to a 7 day microcycle.
Like most things, it depends. Age, training history, what you’re doing when you’re not training, what works for you. To take 2 extremes, a 21 year old neo pro who can dedicate all their time not just to training but to recovering, napping, stretching, etc is going to have a different approach to a masters athlete who is squeezing their training in around a full time job and a family.
How much rest you need is very individual. What you describe with one day fully off, and another day very light, seems reasonable. But it’s worth experimenting - for example, I find “recovery” rides, even if very short and easy, don’t work for me and I’m better off resting fully. Others feel the opposite, they need to spin their legs to remove fatigue.
I wouldn’t neccessarily think the amount of recovery time needed increases with increasing training load. It can stay the same. The idea is that when you get fitter, you can do more training (more volume or intensity) for the same recovery needs.