Do you guys actually do the rest week as prescribed? My volume goes from 260tss to like 80 on rest week. That seems like a big dip. I get the idea but does it really need to be that low?
I usually do endurance ride but bump it up to Z2 rather than the Z1 prescribed. Usually outside.
My training calendar does look like a Christmas tree though with lights everywhere…soooo…
What have you had most success with?
PS I know the TR admins are pulling their hair out reading this!!
I know this is crazy on a Trainerroad forum, but I normally listen to my body. I normally do the first ride with the intensity and then bump the next one up/down depending on how I fell.
Normally (for me) it’s pretty easy to tell when I need rest.
It’s being pushed into a box that it have to be a whole week of resting. If you have 4 relaxing days and your body feels good, then I can’t see the reason why not to bump up the rest of the week.
I’ll jump in to give my two cents, although I appreciate you’re not necessarily looking for TR feedback on this one.
Why Such a Big Dip in TSS?
That steep reduction in training load is intentional. The goal of a rest week is to reduce accumulated fatigue while maintaining fitness, allowing for optimal adaptation in the following training block.
Training creates physiological stress. If training stress accumulates without sufficient recovery, fatigue can impair adaptation, increasing the risk of non-functional overreaching—where fitness gains stall or even regress.
A well-structured rest week reduces both intensity and volume to facilitate recovery.
This enables:
Glycogen replenishment, restoring muscle fuel stores for future training
Muscle fiber repair
Neuromuscular recovery
Regulation of systemic stress, supporting autonomic balance (sympathetic vs. parasympathetic function)
Without a reduction in both volume and intensity, fatigue can accumulate to the point where subsequent high-quality training becomes difficult, limiting long-term progress.
Zone 1 vs. Zone 2:
Zone 1:
This low-intensity effort increases blood flow to assist in metabolic byproduct clearance without inducing meaningful fatigue.
It does not significantly deplete glycogen or cause additional neuromuscular strain.
It may support parasympathetic nervous system dominance, which has a buuuunch of restorative affects.
Zone 2:
While excellent for endurance adaptations, Zone 2 rides still impose a moderate metabolic cost and can contribute to residual fatigue.
It can still induce moderate glyocgen depletion.
What Happens If You Skip Rest Weeks?
Skipping structured recovery weeks can lead to cumulative fatigue, suboptimal glycogen replenishment, and suboptimal neuromuscular function, all of which negatively impact subsequent training quality.
By reducing training stress temporarily, you set yourself up for greater gains in the next block. Rest weeks are desinged intentionally. We all have the same goal! We also want to make you as fast as you possibly can be :).
Obviously previous comment is a joke but I suppost I was looking for a answer from you guys. I use trainer road partly as i dont have to plan or think about training, but I also cant help but question these things even if that is to reinforce or justify the plan.
Could you eloborate more on why its so low. It’s about 30% which is lower than most other plans will offer. I get the concept but wouldnt 50 to70% reducipn in volume /intensity also allow recovery or is the idea that by wk3 we are buired and need a week off essentially?
I think in your specific case it’s really amplified by the low volume plan TSS. 80 in a week is REALLY low, so I can see why you get antsy to get moving.
I also play it by ear. I take the beginning of the week to recover, but if I’m feeling good by the weekend, I’ll usually keep at least my long Z2 ride intact. I do appreciate that it kind of gives me “permission” in my head to do something short and easy and spend an extra day with family though, and will sometimes plan my recovery weeks that way.
My thoughts exactly. I’d imagine if you take out the intensity workouts from a low volume plan, you strip out most of the 260 TSS hence you’re left with just 30%. My rest weeks typically look like 50-60%, which I’m fine with.
I’ll largely adhere to there best week for 4-5 days, but at the weekend like to bump things up a little (either duration or maybe a tempo ride) as I find going back into the first threshold session after a week of recovery is too much of a shock to the system!
I handle my rest weeks similar to what @Flashpoint51 described. I will decrease hours (~10ish to 7-8ish) with all rides being Z2. The rides early in the rest week are low Z2 and I’ll increase the intensity towards high Z2 by the end, depending on how I feel. Because there is no intensity, the TSS drop is more substantial.
I also find that first workout of the next block to seem quite hard. I’m going to experiment with a little bit of intensity over the weekend at the end of the rest week, something like an opener, to take the edge off.
EDIT: And I did skip my most recent rest week, which was at the end of Traditional Base III, and went straight into General Base I. I felt great, and accelerated my schedule a week to align the next rest week with a week-long business trip. I also have a 4-5 hour gravel event scheduled for the end of the upcoming rest week, so I’ll go into it fairly well rested, sort of like a taper but within the normal periodicity of the plan.
The answer to almost every training question is “it depends”!
There’s a few main things that affect how much recovery you need:
How hard you’ve been training, in absolute terms. For almost anyone, if you only ride for 1 TSS each day, you don’t need any rest days. I think we can all agree on that.
How hard you’ve been training relative to your fitness. Pick whatever metric you want (weekly hours, weekly TSS, CTL, ATL, kJ), if you’ve trained at a level above or similar to your typical load, you will need to rest after 2-5 weeks.
The intensity of the training. Some training load metrics factor in intensity and duration of the intensity (TSS, CTL, ATL), while others don’t (hours, miles/km). So if you use power metrics and have your FTP set correctly, this is mostly factored in. Though TSS kind of assumes everyone has the same shape to their power curve, which isn’t exactly true. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we’ve got (as a widely used metric). Base training is lower stress than VO2max. This should be obvious.
Your individual ability to handle high training loads and to recover from them. How much weekly TSS a person can handle varies between people. And some people are naturally high strung or naturally chill. Being high strung means increased cortisol levels and longer recovery times.
Lifestyle factors. Life stress, sleep duration and quality, diet, lifting heavy things, standing or walking a lot, etc. Don’t discount the impact of these things, especially your mental stress.
So you can take one of two approaches to recovery. Follow a generic recovery recommendation or go by feel. Some people just aren’t capable of going by feel, either due to impatience or not being in tune with their body. Just like some people can feel out their FTP, some people are patient enough to do a proper FTP until TTE test, and others just have to take shortcuts (ramp test, 20 min test, AI).
This is a good example of recovering by feel. I would add that regardless of feel, if you’ve really pushed yourself recently, you take it easy whether your planned recovery “week” is here or not. Basically the same concept as Red Light / Green Light, though I’m not saying the specific implementation is great.
Im curious about this - what plan have you setup, how many days a week, interval days? Something does seem off with the large drop - are all of your rest weeks going forward like that?
I agree that dropping down to 80TSS seems a bit excessive. My plan is set for 250-280TSS on a masters riding 4 days a week with 2 interval days. Looking at my rest weeks my TSS drops down to 160ish - still 4 days a week, but all Z2.
I have noticed a marked difference in TSS reduction in recovery weeks with custom plan builder, vs predefined plans. With the custom plan builder rest weeks prescribing more volume and typically slightly higher intensity (low z2 vs true recovery rides with the predefined plans).
I follow the TR workout bits of my rest weeks but I must admit that social rides tend just to be ridden as norm and often people end up relying on me to be strong at the front.
I don’t use TR but you can generalize my experience.
First, the closer you are to your recovery limit coming out of the ‘work’ block, the more recovery you’ll need during your recovery week.
For me though, a full week of recovery rides is just too much. Unless the block before was something super hard like a concentrated VO2 block. So my typical rest week looks something like: (with a normal week being 5-6 days of riding, 2 hard days, and one lift)
Mon - light lift (volume and intensity cut by ~50%)
Tues - Off
Wed - Recovery Ride
Thurs - Off
Frid - 1.5-2hr low endurance
Sat - 3-4hr ride with FTP intervals
Sun - 4hr endurance ride
So it’s super low during the week and then basically back to work on the weekend. It’s been working well for me for the past year and a half or so. Keep in mind that your body has no concept of ‘weeks’. So it doesn’t know or care that you went easy Monday to Sunday. Just that you’re fully recovered before going hard again.
But also don’t just get back to work cause you’re feeling antsy or like you’re missing out on gains. It would be better to recover a bit too much during these weeks than to get back to work early and slowly grind yourself down.
@JohnB if I’m trying to build fitness I will do enough work below 1st lactate threshold to maintain a flat chronic training load (or ‘fitness’ on intervals.icu). So if my chronic training load is 40 going into a recovery week I’ll still do ~280 total TSS endurance/recovery riding work. Sometimes I’ll increase the workout frequency so I can do more, smaller TSS workouts to achieve the same training stress.
In that way my build looks like three weeks of steady CTL increase followed by a week of CTL plateau…then more increase.
In the past when I’ve done structured programs, I follow the rest week pretty close, but maybe a longer endurance ride on the weekend.
My current training methodology is largely polarized. If I’m feeling good, my rest weeks will be similar in volume (maybe 80-90% time on the bike), but my power stays in the lower part of the 55-75% endurance zone for the week.
If my body is tired or I’m unexpectedly sore after one of these workouts, I’ll usually cut it back a bit more.
I’m only doing around 10-12 hrs a week on most weeks, so it might be different for people really in the process of building volume, or those already at a much higher volume. I’m mostly just not doing 15+ hrs due to time constraints at the moment, and not willing to cut into my sleep too much more to get there.