How easy is too easy on easy days?

Training
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I’m a software engineer, do my work day can be fairly sedentary. To combat this I got a treadmill for my standing desk and it’s worked better than I’d expected. I tend to focus in so much that I have literally walked the entire work day most days since and not really thought anything of it until I step off to go grab a drink or something.

I also use trainerroad to train for track racing. I have bike workouts 4 days a week with a crit training goal (I figured that was closest to track :person_shrugging:t5:). I also lift heavy twice a week at a gym.

I know the advice is “make the hard days hard and the easy days easy”, but how easy should I be making it? On my easy and off days if I don’t walk on the treadmill my normal step count can get as low as 4000 steps the entire day. When I use my treadmill I tend to hit a little over 10k. I tend to walk on my easy and off days and I figure if I’m walking it’s probably not too strenuous to hamper recovery, but I’m not sure.

Am I hampering my recovery and general training progress by walking on the treadmill on my easy and off days, or is the strain minimal enough that it doesn’t make a difference?

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We consider an easy day as anything that doesn’t include any hard workouts or high-stress activities.

Generally speaking, that means no high-intensity workouts (Sweet Spot, Threshold, VO2 Max, Anaerobic, etc.) but also includes long rides, which, might feel easy at first, but tend to get harder as you ride and still bring a lot of stress that hinders recovery.

Essentially, we want you to feel fresh and ready to go when you get to your hard workouts. We’d recommend avoiding anything that will impact your performance on those hard days if possible.

With that being said, live your life and make sure that you’re prioritizing things as needed for your specific situation.

Let me know if this answers your question. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Can you be training but still have a lifestyle that is too sedentary?

Yes. Absolutely. Doing a 90 minute threshold workout but doing pretty much nothing else for the remaining 22.5 hours is not ideal.

A moderately active lifestyle supports training. It shouldn’t be replaced by training.

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Ok awesome. Thanks for the feedback. I figured this would be the case, but it’s nice to have it confirmed. I’ll keep walking :slight_smile:

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I’d definitely keep the walking but also keep in mind that in the short term, if you’re not used to walking that much it can definitely impact your workouts. So I’d just keep an eye on it and maybe not doing it all day the day before a hard workout or just kinda slowly ramp in.

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