Recovery week seems so negative *added FTP post #43

You have nailed this - This is exactly how I feel. I guess I need to wait until my ramp test on Monday or Tuesday to see if the recovery has been useful.

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I’m in a recovery week right now as well, and all the things you said are what to expect during one. The fitness score will drop, the workouts are slow and boring, etc. But, you should also notice the fatigue score dropping as well, and it is dropping at a faster rate than your fitness. Withing a week it is likely that score will club back up to the same or a higher number. For example here is my graph.

Do you see all the shark tooth shapes with sharp drops for a week? Notice how with each block that peak gets higher and higher? That’s what you’re after. A short term set back for a long term gain. Trust the process will take you there and make sure you use your recovery weeks. You’ll deffo burn out otherwise.

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It measures different thing than FTP. What can be done is to find the relation of long test vs ramp test. So if you know your more real FTP from long test, find the percentage in the ramp test that relates to your FTP. It can be 72% or 78%. Do this three times and you have a data set. Thr question is - is it worth the fuss? Long test is also very good workout in itself but I understand why some people prefer ramp tests from mental point of view. I really like to know my long power at it gives you incredible boost in your mental game when it comes to longer intervals.

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By riding 6 days per week and not ever taking a rest week, you are missing out on one of the basics of exercise physiology. It’s dose and response. If you don’t rest, you don’t get the response and improved fitness. After doing this long enough, you’ll just be stagnated and tired all the time.

You can still ride on rest weeks. Just keep it easy. Do outdoor rides and enjoy the scenery.

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So people are guessing that your FTP is too low. But if that were the case then I would probably assume that you would go outside when not restricted by a power target and just blow those numbers out of the water. But I’m not seeing that (assuming you use the same PM indoors and out).

Out of curiosity, how old are you? I know HR is individual but yours seems much lower than I would expect if you are <50yr old. You only hit a max of ~155 on the ramp test. So that is something to keep in mind when looking at your workouts.

How did the below workouts feel? RPE wise. 3x20min@95% and 3x12min OU’s should be relatively challenging. I know it’s not easy to remember how hard but it would be a good way to gauge the accuracy of your FTP.

Sometimes when I feel the lowest during a recovery week is when I have been working too hard during the preceding loading weeks. Your body gets constantly turned on and thrashed for 21 days and then suddenly that ‘threat’ is removed and it breathes a sigh of relief and kind of shuts down. So that recovery week feeling could be a sign that you are just going too hard during your loading cycle.

How do you usually feel coming out of the recovery weeks? Recovered, ready to go mentally, but maybe a bit flat physically? I think that should be about right. It probably wouldn’t hurt to put a short opener on the final day or two of the recovery week to wake up the legs, especially if you are going to start with a Ramp Test right out of the gate.

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IMO this is the best post of this thread.

Looking your FTP fluctuations I see you made some nice gains back in 2019, but you seem to be stagnant, hovering around 200-215w for the last year…but your TSS is quite high. My guess is that you’re not really adapting and just piling on a manageable amount of fatigue, but because you don’t rest, you don’t really get stronger. It’s not that you’re doing a bad job, not at all, but there are some things you could change.

As other’s have said, it’s possible your FTP is set too low and these workouts are too easy. Even a 20-min test would identify whether or not this is true.

How you handle a recovery week (I prefer adaptation week) is purely a state of mind. If you go into it knowing that you’ll come out stronger, it’s easier to be compliant. If you go into it thinking it’s going to be too boring and don’t realize the reason why recovery weeks exist (on a physiological level), then you’ll botch it and see little to no benefit.

Ride hard, rest harder.

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The concept of periodization is embedded in pretty much all training plans for most sports - and there are good reasons for it. You get gains during recovery, not during efforts. My first reaction when I saw TR’s plans was that the cycles (5 weeks of efforts before 1 week of recovery) were longer than what I was used to (3 or 4 to 1).

This said, there are ways to make recovery weeks more fun. If you can, ride them entirely outside, take the time to explore places you’ve never been to. If inside, use workout versions with some sprints (e.g. Pettit +1 instead of Pettit). If inside, use to time to catch up on movies or series you’ve been wanting to watch. Just change mode. This will make you physically and psychologically stronger the following week.

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Your going to do great. Taking the rest also makes sure in july your still wanting to get out there and give it a go.

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I don’t think most of us need a full recovery “week”, especially if you are doing a LV plan. A few days of lower intensity rides should be enough the majority of time…

But you also need to remember this isn’t just about how you feel “right now”. The plans are built for the long- term and that does require ample rest along the way. Otherwise, at some point in the future, you will fall apart. That, IMO, is the hardest concept of a rest week…we don’t want to take one unless we feel we “need” it. But the truth is that if you wait until then, you have probably waited too long.

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As I’ve never really done a recovery week properly… as I dont like that dropping Strava graph for one… I hope it pays off :+1:t2:

The power meter indoors and outdoors is different - I use a smart trainer indoors and a left hand crank Stages power meter on my bike outdoors.

Age wise I am 48 and regarding my heart rate I have always felt it is low. My resting heart rate is about 44 and I have never once got my heart rate above 161 (that one time I was almost physically sick and I really think I was about to explode). I think perhaps I just have a slow heart rate - When I ride with a friend her heart is going silly crazy and she spends lots of time at >170 whereas my heart have never reached that point.

I love under overs and don’t find them difficult. My hardest workouts are VO2 - Put me above 115% of FTP and I poop out quickly.

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My outside rides tend to be mad uphills (I have a lot of hills around here) so they tend to be quite frantic by the nature of the hills.

Agreed. I’ve been following a plan from another service (FasCat) this year. It’s still a “Sweet Spot” plan but they do things a bit different. Notably the recovery weeks. TR tends to keep the volume (time) the same but drop all intensity to endurance. While FasCat drops time while keeping intensity. They will drop the amount of intensity (say from 45min of SS in a workout to 25-30) but not drop it all together.

This is a screen shot of a recovery week (bottom row) followed by the next loading week (top row). TSS goes from ~600 to ~350, hours from 6 to 10.5, days from 5-3 but they keep some SS intervals in there. I find that I still recover well but without that lazy, lethargic feeling that I would get from the all endurance weeks. However, I do sometimes find that it takes some extra discipline to not do too much and to remind myself that it is still a recovery week despite there still being some intensity.

So this may be an option for you to play around with.

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That is not what I’ve seen in other training plans, be it cycling or running.

This is kind of nice. It’s like turning the burner to low and letting the pot simmer versus turning the burner completely off (which is what TR does).

I just ended a 5-day rest week that looked like this:

Final day of 5-wk training block: 250 TSS (very hard ride)
Rest day 1: Off
Rest day 2: Off
Rest day 3: 60min Z2 (~45 TSS)
Rest day 4: 60min Z2 + 2 min all out (~60 TSS)
Rest day 5: Off
First day of new training block: 100 TSS (4x8 @ 105%)

This equated to 205 TSS over 5-days, which was exactly half the TSS of my previous training week.

What I liked is that I gave myself 2 full days to deload and shed a massive amount of fatigue accumulated over the course of 5 weeks that was punctuated by a really really hard day. Then eased back into it with a very light workout followed by another light workout with one really hard effort (to open things up), then a day off, then the first true workout.

There are so many ways to skin a rest week…I’m still experimenting.

Yeah, I’m not saying it’s the right way to do it. I’m by no means an expert but the guy that created these plans is a well known coach in the field and helped Allen and Coggan with developing TSS, the PMC, etc so he’s got something behind his name.

Maybe it should be noted that at this part of the plan there hasn’t been anything over SS so no super high intensity to recover from. Also, there isn’t the pounding of running to recover from. But it seems to have worked for me so far and might be an alternative to the all endurance weeks of TR.

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Real recovery weeks are absolutely critical, from endurance sports to weight lifting.

I was always coached, going back to high school when weight training for sports to take every 5th week as a de load / recovery week. Sometimes I miss some of my recovery workouts. I always come back stronger. Cycling is the same.

@rocourteau ’s post hit the nail on the head. Gains are made during recovery. It also gives a chance for your joints and everything else to heal and adapt.

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According to the infamous youtuber, there’s a fair amount of evidence that this is the best strategy for TAPER. Never heard that it was also good for RECOVERY.

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Hmm, typically I see tapers at a much higher intensity than SS. Closer to race intensity. It’s not keeping VO2 intensity or anything like that. I haven’t done any of FasCat’s race interval plans yet so I can’t comment on how the recovery weeks look when the plans have VO2 and above in them.

I’m assuming you’re referring to Dylan Johnson. I think I’ve watched his video on tapers but I don’t recall what he says with respect to intensity or how he might structure a mid-plan recovery week.

It might be I’ve plateaued but on my next rest week I might try doing ultra light workouts (IF 0.5) instead of the planned (IF 0.6-0.68) and hopefully I can battle the OP’s demons with the rest is making me stronger in the long run

I did get better results when I was coached by going that wee bit shorter and harder in on weeks and going ultra light on recovery weeks :thinking:

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