Muscle Fatigue?

I’ve done it again… I went too hard riding with friends during SSBV2 and now have muscle fatigue (you know that deep muscle ache/pain) for the past week. I got destroyed on the Tuesday workout and barely made it through Thursday’s with some fatigue still lingering in my legs. In the past I have tried taking a week off to rest but all that has done is I lost my fitness and the fatigue returned when I tried to resume where I left off. Never have really found a solution for this and ultimately sabotaging the rest of my season and I would just ditch training all together. So how do I get past this fatigue and continue?

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Are you having enough recovery days to absorb your training? It’s usually during your base season that you build the fatigue resistance , but in order to absorb it, you need enough recovery and be eating enough protein.

I’m in the same boat. Although only doing LW Polarized plan, I also add high intensity strenght session twice a week. It all still took it’s toll. Failed workout, then had to skip another one. Still feel fatigue and not ready. I guess just the old adage of listening to the body and rest even the cost of loosing some fitness.

What does your recovery look like - eg. how are you actually helping yourself to best recover on your days off? Any self massage, stretching, mobility work or recovery spins? How is your nutrition and sleep?

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I struggled with this last season especially during V02 workout/ training block. What has really helped make the difference for me was counting my calories and finding out I was low on protein intake(added a shake). The other change I made was adding a Carb drink on any ride with any sort of intensity. The carb mix really helps later in the week where I think I was tanking my glycogen stores. Obviously getting as much sleep as possible with a consistent sleep schedule makes a world of difference too.

Right so last year I have finally got my sleep under control that to THC gummies! Those things knock me out! I’ve since quit using them and now have a regular sleep pattern. I only eat whole foods and rarely if ever eat out. So that’s not the problem. Int the past if I stuck strictly to the plan I know I could keep improving because I’ve had my FTP to 270 before and the past few years struggling to get over 200 because I keep overdoing it then losing my gain trying to find a recovery method.

Easy done. Sure we’ve all been there.
You don’t go into much detail about your training/racing history, so it is hard to comment accurately.
If you want to ride with your friends, and go hard, you will have to recover before taking on another hard TR session.
Here’s an example of what I do.
Sunday… have a blast with friends
Monday …rest
Tuesday… walk/stretch/jog, OR do a recovery TR workout like petit or a shorter 30 minute one.
Wednesday rest if still tired, or steady ride outside z2 if feeling ok.
Thursday …Do planned TR workout, by which time I will have recovered from the weekend.
Then follow plan . (unless you are going to blast it with your friends, in which case i’d have an easy day, or rest).

If it’s taking that long to recover, it means you are probably digging too deep.
Don’t think about ditching training, and you haven’t sabotaged your season.

You just need to make some decisions , and decide what your priorities are.

Good luck :biking_man: :biking_man: :biking_man:

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Amazingly after listening to some guy named Dillon on YouTube say that TR has too much stress each week it got me thinking about Long Slow Distance. So I gave it a try. Saturday’s ride was LeCunte and I was maxed out during that work-out and had to back pedal to make it through the final interval. Sundays prescription was 2 hours with 3 intervals at 90% ftp! No way was I going to make it through that one with sore fatigued legs so I skipped it. So Monday legs still fatigued, I decided to try 90 minutes of something more manageable lots of zone 1 and nothing higher than zone 2. Like magic the fatigue is all gone! Some mild soreness still lingering but nothing like the deep muscle ache/fatigue that was there for an entire week and stayed around longer in years past causing me to take longer periods of rest and losing most all of my gains. I’m feeling positive and ready to resume the intensity. I’m going to repeat last weeks workouts before a week of recovery then on to Short Power Build… wish me luck!

All that is good and if I stick strictly to the “plan” everything works out great. It’s when I over reach that everything crumbles. I know other people it and fi d way to recover from it much faster than I have ever been able to. I’ve tried Petit for recovery but it’s usually too much and it gets in my head that if I have to keep lowering the intensity that I shouldn’t be doing the workout at all, and that leads to why am I on the bike? Without a prescribed workout I didn’t have to worry about holding any specific watts.

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I’ve been dealing with some of this myself - a lot of it actually… I’m doing pretty high-volume, using the polarized plan, to get ready for a climbing-heavy training camp that’s coming up and to keep my daily calorie burn up to drop some flub. The lower-intensity work on the trainer has been no problem, and doing some higher intensity work outdoors has been easy-ish (I live where there’s a lot of 10%+ climbs so “going easy” isn’t really a thing) - it’s the V02 indoors that’s been a struggle for the back half of December and most of January.

I kind of had a breakthrough today though. I just finished a block and added 10W to my FTP - so I was dreading Black Pine today - 4x 4-min at 106% FTP… I hit it earlier in the day though, took down a banana right before it and two SIS gels during, and got through it no problem.

So, what changed? Good question. I did a big ride on Saturday (6.5hrs), recovery spin Sunday (1.5hrs), and rest day yesterday, so I’m not exactly fully fresh today… maybe it was the extra fuel? Maybe doing it earlier in the day when I’m more mentally fresh? Dunno. But I’ll take it.

Anyway, the point of my story is that maybe you’re just going through a rough patch that’s about to break - maybe you’re gaining fitness you aren’t recognizing and you’re just a bit away from it all coming together. Or maybe you just need to shake things up - earlier workout, different music, an extra gel - whatever… We aren’t robots. We have to try and try and try again. That’s what comes to mind for me anyway.

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Try doing a recovery ride, not one like Petit! Or any other fixed erg ride, just free wheel it and noodle around mindlessly, well not total mindlessly cuz you need to stay below zone 3. Even the the numbers on Petit only say you’re riding at 60% ftp (which seems low enough) the problem is it’s constant 60% and that’s too much, at least it was for me. So this time what worked was a zwift free ride for 90 minutes that I stayed in z1 and 2 and when I spent too much time in z2 I went back to z1. I really didn’t over think it just made sure I didn’t accumulate more stress. Last night I redid the 6 three minute at 120% intervals (I think Tamerack +2) even though I had to back pedal on the 6th interval today my legs feel great. :+1: