Hi,
I am sure there are plenty of you who tend to feel bad doing nothing on a recovery day. What is your strategy to stick to the plan and not feel bad or lazy doing nothing?
Do you really do nothing?
How contraproductive would a short low effort workout be?
YES! You need to get over the stress of “doing nothing”. You need to trust your body IS DOING SOMETHING VALUABLE during rest/recovery days. There is plenty of workout text summarizing how this works – the workouts wreck/destroy your muscles and rest/recovery days your body builds them back a bit stronger. Without rest/recovery you get weak not strong.
What you can do to keep your mind off of no workouts is maybe read these forums. Watch/listen to the TR podcasts (focus on Amber’s comments). Work on other personal projects in your project queue. Cook up some good food, visit (safely though) with friends and family. Look into another hobby or past-time.
On your last point now. If you are crushing the planned workouts and are looking forward to the next hard planned effort then it may be okay to add in some low effort endurance work. I’m adding in half-hour endurance workouts now and will increase to 45 minute workouts (at least while I’m on vacay from my jo-job).
Good luck!
On rest days, I engage in a vicious cycle of guilt-ridden, self-loathing Oreo-consumption. My Garmin scale conspires against me, and a week’s worth of productivity is mostly squandered. FTP actually falls by the hour. For real. I’m irritable from the moment I wake up to the moment I go back to sleep. I usually want to punch babies (or drop kick them 60 yards – in the words of Vegan Cyclist), and find myself writing hateful email to the TrainerRoad staff.
I count down the hours until I can climb back onto my trainer and hammer myself into a sweaty pulp of middle-aged lycra-clad goo.
In other words, I guess my recovery days are probably like most folks.
Just consider it an extension of your next training day.
Commit 30 - 40 minutes to lying of the floor, feet up on the sofa. Take long slow breathes, it is great and is actually very challenging. Think about how it is making you stronger for the next sessions.
Remember training makes you weaker, the recovery and body rebuilding makes you stronger.
I don’t do this as often as I should, but when I do I normally have an amazing weeks training.
Re: the 30 - 40 minutes, until you are use to it, 15 minutes is a challenge.
Maybe do yoga or a long stretching session during the time you would normally workout? Not that I’m doing this yet, but I’ve dug a hole over the last couple of blocks by taking no days off of the bike and really need to figure out how to recover and be ok with it.
I use them to clean and generally tinker with the bike, clean my shoes, and have recently started doing some yoga. I always think if you’re going hard, you start to want the days off by week 3 of the block.
I can get through a recovery day, grudgingly. I’ve started using those days to do some body strength exercises, core work, and yoga with the kids, they enjoy that.
Now, the recurring recovery week…
You need to find something else to equally obsess over which doesn’t tax the body.
Cooking / Meal prep (to complement your next week’s training), cleaning the bike / kit, or doing a completely different sedentary hobby to take your mind off for the day will do wonders for when you get back on the bike.
Maybe try Lazy Mountain -2 (45min z1) and even cut it short on a recovery day and see how you feel the next day?
I used to take Monday / Friday off and would usually not feel great the following days, especially Tuesday. I switched to short active recovery days instead of days off and feel and perform so much better. I do them in erg mode to force me to behave and ignore spin-up and other instructions. If I’m not feeling great have no issues pulling the plug before the full workout is done. For me, Monday is currently Lazy Mountain, though I have done all variants, and my second light day is Pettit -1 or Lazy Mountain if I’m feeling particularly worked over.
Go for a ride? As far as I can tell the only reason not to ride 6-7 days/week is if you don’t have the time or desire to do so. I certainly find that I normally feel better and fresher after an easy spin than I do from doing nothing. Exceptions being if I’m sick, injured, or did something daft the day before that dug me into such a big hole that I need total rest.
How about reframing “recovery” days to “preparation” days? There are many ways this shift in framing could occur, from preparing your food for the coming week, stretching or core, bike cleaning, educating yourself on your next session(s) or going outside for a walk to mentally prepare.
Ok - its holiday at present but I love my Monday off - get home from work - don’t need to find the bibs, get on the trainer…read, play on the Playstation …talk to the cat or your significant other…whatever floats your boat - always feel good Tuesday for the first hard session of a new week. When it’s summer I do sometimes go for a walk in the evening sun though along the river near where I live…relax! 
It shows how obsessed we are 
If you train consistently you are not lazy! Rest is a part of the process. That’s it. If you have to much time just try new things and trust the training process, yoga is not a bad idea too.
I’ve taken to building RC model gliders out of balsa. It’s a great low stress hobby and you can lose hours engrossed with all the fiddly bits.
Really helps balance out my training.
Going for a walk in a bit to relax…looks a bit 
though - probably better on the trainer 
I mix core exercises (plank, sit-ups, Pilates) with a bit of running. These all help with general health (great for aero position also) without taxing the cycle-specific recovery.
