Rest Week-be truthful

[ddetch]

I just follow what TR tells me to do for ~400 TSS, which is usually converting all my rides to endurance and shortening my long weekend ride. My sleep and general well-being are much better after a rest week.

[MikeMunson]

266 TSS is about right for my rest week, maybe a little low. I usually take 4 days in a row off (but often do a recovery spin on the 1st or 2nd day to loosen up after the intensity from the weekend. Then F, Sa, Su are usually back to usual 2+ hour tempo, SS, and threshold rides…though I reserve the right to ease off or take another day if I feel the need.

[Jolyzara]

I posted this recently in the “what does your recovery week look like” thread. Personally I like to reduce volume and intensity but not to the extreme that TR does in their plans. Also of note I have no problem taking recovery when I need it. If I am not ready for the next workout I will push it back or skip it. The days of elite training and religiously sticking to the schedule are long behind me. One missed workout to make sure I recover at my age is probably the better choice.

As for other’s approach to recovery weeks… I asked a few running coaches if they take recovery weeks and if they do how they plan them in their training. It was interesting to see their similarities and differences. Ultimately I think it shows that recovery weeks are personal and different people use different things. I also think they aren’t used enough. (That goes for me especially).

What does your recovery week look like?

Personally I do most rides at recovery effort and keep one real easy “intensity day.” Something to keep the legs going like 30-30s (i.e. sleeping beauty -4) or a short tempo. This thread is timely because some buddies who coach distance runners in high school and college had a chat going a week or so on this exact topic. They have defined seasons, races and are peaking for one specific race… not to mention are coaching athletes who are 23 and younger and are competing at a high level… so youth …

[lee82]

My last two rest / taper weeks worked out really well. 6-7 days out is my last hard ride, then 5 days of reduced volume and no intensity over zone 2, so basically 3 days of shorter endurance riding and 2 days off during that 5 day period. One day before the race(s) is 60-90 mins of zone 1/2 with a few short openers at vo2. If it’s only one day of racing, I aim to be “pretty fresh”, but I could get by with maybe 3-4 days of reduced volume. For a 3 day race, I like to come in a bit TOO fresh, where I feel nearly 100% a few days out I’m starting to question if I tapered too much. I think this strategy can work for one day races too, especially if you are feeling like you might have overcooked the last block and want to give yourself a bigger recovery window just to be sure you aren’t flat come race day.

From a pure rest week standpoint where there isn’t a race involved, I’d err on the TOO fresh feeling by the end of it, so your body is primed to absorb whatever training you are about to throw at it in the next block. If you don’t get full recovery in and start having some fatigue or failed workouts within a week, then you’re not going to be responding and adapting very well the rest of the block and may have to cut it short to do more recovery. Better to take an extra day or two of rest up front than cutting the block short, especially if you were counting on that block to get some last minute fitness before an important race. If it takes 3 days great, but if you need to extend it to 8, that’s also ok.

[grwoolf]

@Brennus

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.

I think this approach also depends on how deep of a hole you are digging in the block leading up to a rest week. My body seems to respond well to pushing the CTL ramp pretty hard, but allowing CTL to drop during my rest weeks. So, basically overloading with a high ramp during the “on” weeks and really taking it easy during a rest week. Sort of 3 steps forward and 1 step back, but I try to make the steps pretty big. A rest week is generally going to be a ~50% tss drop for me, but the first 5 days of the rest week are very light and then typically back into a long ride for Saturday (where a majority of the TSS that week comes from). During my 3 week blocks, I’m usually watching my stress balance (called “form” in intervals.icu) and I like to keep it mostly in the green the first week, bouncing in and out of green in the 2nd, and dipping mostly in the red for the 3rd week. The TR red/yellow status kind of tracks to this, but it would be very rare for me to ever train on a TR red day but I’ll train with my stress balance (intervals.icu) in the red quite a bit.

[JohnB]

I’ll try to answer comments above together…
My current plan is low volume, in build now so its v02, threshold and a sweetspot( tues/thurs/sat. I might do a group ride and swap out the sat for that. Tss 250 to 400 some weeks. During the rest weeks I can see all rides go to z1 so that makes it 3nr 20-30tss rides and I now understand why (thanks Sarah). But I note that i am in the curious case of only doing intensity rides within the plan (due to time). This results in a huge drop to my tss as i dont have zone 2 rides in there that theplan leaves as is. Soooooo… my plan is to play this one out but to add a bit of zone 2 during the rest weeks, keep tss really low 60% or so and leave out the intensity. Then next plan i will build in 4 or 5 days of riding to include more zone 2 and hopefully the builder works out the rest weeks a little higher.

I dont want to fall into the beginner trap of going hard on those rest weeks but I think a little tweak is reasonable.

[GoLongThenGoHome]

I generally aim for somewhere between 40-60% of the load of the previous build week. I am in a taper week this week. Last week’s load 865, this week 461, so approx 53%.

[Brennus]

" this approach also depends on how deep of a hole you are digging in the block leading up to a rest week"

So true. I never dip into the red zone & keep things just in the green zone. ‘Walk down the hill’. I’m prone to injury to do weeks in the red…so here’s where you have an advantage over me.

[JoeX]

@JohnB

Thanks Sarah but I’m gonna go with the first guys answer as that was what i wanted to hear.

Radical honesty, love it. Need more of that!

[SarahLaverty]

@JohnB great question!

As others have mentioned, TrainerRoad’s rest weeks reduce both intensity and volume. We’ve found that this approach best achieves the goal of shedding accumulated fatigue while maintaining fitness, allowing you to start your next training block feeling fresh and ready to progress.

Since low-volume plans rely more on intensity, cutting both volume and intensity results in a steeper drop in workload compared to mid- or high-volume plans. In contrast, mid- and high-volume plans include more endurance workouts, so even with a reduction, they maintain a higher percentage of their normal workload. This means that in a rest week, TSS drops more dramatically on low-volume plans.

@Pbase

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.

Great point! Rest weeks provide an important opportunity to mentally reset by giving you “permission” to step away to spend time with family or doing other things that often get neglected. Mental fatigue is often overlooked as a contributor to burnout and rest weeks can be just as important for refreshing motivation as they are for physiological adaptation.

Many of us endurance athletes love training so much that it’s an easy first choice over other activities. But being encouraged to take a step back can help re-establish some much needed balance, which ultimately supports long-term consistency and performance.

[robcow]

I didn’t have a choice. Got Norovirus off of store sushi, and spent the last 5 days, so far, trying to survive. If you’ve never had it, don’t. I haven’t been that sick in a long time. So forced recovery and a loss of mojo. Hope I’ll be faster coming back.

[theKOMhunter]

I’m on a low volume Masters plan and my cycling TSS goes from around 250 to 200 on the recovery week. Your drop off seems extreme.

As for your question: Yes I do respect my recovery weeks (which are every 4th week). On top of the 3 days of bike training I go to the gym 2 days a week, and when that 4th week rolls around I am usually grateful for the three Z1/2 rides that week, meaning my body needed the rest. I am in my 50s, and we all respond differently, so maybe you can 4 weeks on, 1 off, or 3 weeks on 0.5 off, or some other combination. It might be nice if TR allowed you to customise this when setting up a plan.

[jlsazart]

Truthful: I’ve taken my rest weeks much more seriously this year and it has led to much bigger gains than past years. That said, my hard weeks are very hard, so serious rest is necessary. (Looking at TSS, which I never do, a rest week is apparently 1/3 to 1/2 what a typical ‘build’ week would be.)

[JoPage]

I aim to take out half the TSS (my actual TSS not the TR prescribed TSS) and take out all intensity.

Mistakes I have made recently that I am going to change

1. being out of sync with my strength recovery. I had been a bit inconsistent with it due to time/travel so it was hard to cut back further to tie in with a rest week. Now I have some consistency and the aching and gradual gains to go with it, I will also cut the strength work to conditioning only on a rest week. That way I keep the habit but loose the damage

2. group rides. Why do the best ones always seem to tie in with recovery week?

3. letting my Z2 slip into tempo too often. Ive a smaller chainring up front now and am DETERMINED not to ride my favourite hills on recovery week

4. thinking I’ll use recovery week to work on technical mtb skills. Mentally its still draining and physically I still have to ride up very steep hills to get to the top of the steep descents.

[JohnB]

Thanks Joe, Thats some great advice and to everyone else. Solid content there.

I just did the new check volume update and it turns out the rest week was too low. It actually fixed my plan much like you guys had suggested. I now go form about 350tss down to about 180 or so. Much more reasonable. I am very impressed the way trainerroad keeps updating and improving their product. I was doing what I call secret training and the plan has now updated in line with that.
The only issue now is that I have to commit to actually cycle that much every week!! DOing it when i feel like it and it being on the calendar are very difference things.

[nagletom]

Just finished a rest week, and despite a pretty intense desire to go longer and harder I kept the faith. Have to admit I feel rested and ready and all those silly numbers i track look great. Looking forward to those VO2max and TH intervals this week!

[Stevie_Dee]

I never ever follow it exactly. Most of the time, I’ll drop the volume and keep it at endurance for the week. I just finished a rest week last week, and I cut volume in half, but I also did an FTP test on Friday, which I had wanted to do on Sunday, but couldn’t. My personal philosophy is to back off the gas pedal and not do any intensity except at the end of the week if I want to test or get in a group ride or do something to get the feels going for the following week. I happen to feel pretty good Friday so I don’t think I ruined anything.