How easy should recovery rides be? The article below recommends 30-90 minutes with no more than 50% FTP.
Another question⊠if you take more than one day off a week do you even need recovery rides?
For what works for me, I donât agree with this: âA recovery ride shouldnât give your body any real training stimulus at all. In other words, it should be of a level so easy that youâre not actually exercising.â
If that is true, why even do it? Just take a day off.
Recovery for me @ 55-65% of FTP.
Because some people complain about days off and say they need to move their legs on recovery days.
How about in the context of a recovery week?
How many super easy days do you usually take/are recommended?
Is there some form of detraining if itâs a full week of easy riding?
My recovery rides are a spin to take the soreness out of my legs. Usually 30-60 min. I do it the next day.
Recovery week is what TR suggests.
You will not lose any real fitness with 1 week off the bike. Your legs might get really relaxed and first day back on the bike might feel hard at first.
Everyone is different.
As if your cranks are made of glass. That easy.
45 minutes seems perfect for me.
- It helps recovery, keeps the muscles moving. I feel better on a hard ride having done an easy ride the day before than having had a day off
- Good for mental health to get out in the fresh air and do something
- Burns some calories. Even if not very many it helps me maintain a calorie balance. Iâm so used to piling in the calories on training days that itâs easy too overeat on total days off (and I know on the podcast they say you shouldnât reduce calories on rest days anyway, but they do seem to have slipped into a mindset of fueling everything all the time. That works fine with most of their guests who are pro cyclists training huge volumes and burning it all off, it doesnât work for me)
- Chance to ride with the kids, or with slower friends who you canât ride with on training days
- Strava annual mileage and challenge posturing
I throw all my support behind #4!
That said, I am all for recovery rides, and agree with all their benefits. But the article suggested a max of 50% of FTP. Thatâs the crazy part to me. Understand & appreciate it is different for everyone but for me it is way too easy.
Yeah, Iâm still struggling to find the balance in recovery weeks and I am also quite sensitive to my body shutting down pretty quickly even after a single full rest day.
The recent EC podcast was also clearly indicating the need to go super easy the first few days and thatâs fine.
It was not clear though after those initial 4-5 days what kind of intensity they were reintroducing for their athletes (I might listen to it again) as in I wasnât sure they were going much above z2 at all.
Would you suggest some short anaerobic bursts after those initial super easy days or have another prescription I might try? Thanks
So if your FTP is <300W or 4W/kg you probably shouldnât even be doing them? I certainly canât cycle < 56% of my FTP
Canât is a strong word, what happens when you try and ride <56%FTP?
My FTP is <300w and <4w/kg, Interval workouts in Erg mode commonly have me doing recovery sections at 40-50% FTP Iâd describe it as super easy spinning with a feeling of not actually applying any force on the pedals. My HR stays under 120bpm, which is the same as I observe on a very brisk walk. I donât have a powermeter on my outdoor bike so folow the same HR limit the pedalling feels the same, it just takes some discipline not to change up a gear or increase the cadence.
A recovery week is a reduction in overall volume and intensity, typically 50% of the TSS in a normal training week, so shorter Z2 rides, perhaps only 1x Z4 or above interval session, A recovery week doesnât normally include recovery rides <50%FTP but I donât think it would hurt to add in some if you still want to go out and ride/walk.
Have a listen to this from @empiricalcycling . Probably the best advice you can get.
Itâs a recovery ride, itâs supposed to be way too easy. Over 50% of FTP you are doing an endurance ride, which is fine and should allow recovery if you donât go too hard or too long.
Then I was doing it all wrong 
I was pretty sure listening from the podcast that the first days are super easy and possibly only in the weekend youâd want to reintroduce intensity.
This recovery week thing is getting rather frustrating 
Iâll keep experimenting when the next rec. week is due.
My recovery week* contains rides at 40% of FTP, the same as pretty much every other week.
If youâre doing 25 hours a week, your recovery week may well be 12 hours. If youâre doing 8 hours a week then you might just drop one of your two hard workouts and still do 6 or 7 hours. Itâs a massive âit dependsâ because recovery especially is so individual.
*4 or 5 days, in reality
For me itâs very difficult to do less than 150W i think I would tip over going that slow, on the trainer it almost feels like spinning out
Kolie from Empirical Cycling prescribes recovery rides at 100 watts and lower and that includes his professional athletes with monster FTPâs.
As others have commented on another thread, I donât wholly trust TRâs approach to recovery weeks. It seems like there is just too much recovery/detraining in them. I also question there not being any intensity in their recovery weeks. Iâm used to having one intensity workout, albeit not at max effort.
I use Training Peaks to monitor what they call âfatigueâ and âform.â I wish TR had something similar, but thatâs another discussion. At the end of a 3 week block before a recovery week, my form is usually around -23 or so. I try to calibrate my recovery week (by TSS) so that at the beginning of the next 3 week block, my form is around +23 or so. This will put me back at around -23 or so at the end of the next 3 week block.
Another thing I shoot for is having my recovery week be approximately 50% - 60% or so of the last weekâs TSS before the recovery week.
Like any good plan, my recovery week is not fixed.
I will generally take a day off the bike and then jump back on with some easy endurance for a day or too and see how I feel. If I need another day I take it off. If my legs are feeling good I will do a bit of intensity to open the legs back up before heading into a more formal endurance ride and then kicking the next block off.
A recovery âweekâ might be 2-3 days or might be longer.
I donât really pay that much attention to where my form etc ours me during these weeks. I rely on how I feel, the numbers are just a description of where I ended up after the fact.
I tend to end up about 70% TSS of my last block FWIW.
I am not using TRs plans thoughâŠ