I thing having other hobbies would be a benefit and this would afford you some time to enjoy that “other” hobby. I have no problems chill’n. I realize the benefit of relaxing every now and again from just the experience of living life over 53 years. I love wildlife photography (i.e. my other hobby), so I would just spend time out in the woods capturing images of wildlife and that relaxes me. However, if your world only revolves around cycling and you have no other outlet, you will probably struggle to relax.
I love recovery week because I know that my numbers will increase at the end of the week.
Recovery week allow my body to get rid of all the training stress and fatigue and start fresh again the new training block
This week is a recovery. Which includes DD. But I find it so hard to go “easy” for 60-90mins. My HR feels uncomfortable or I do at such a low intensity.
My other Hobby is fishing…which i take too seriously and it’s more a competition than sitting and enjoying the outside. I must catch a fish within 6 casts or I’m moving. I must look after my gear. I must have more gear. A new rod. Reels. Braid. It’s just like bikes…
just remind yourself that it isn’t the workouts that are making you stronger…those break you down. It’s the rest that actually makes you come back stronger. Use the rest week to mentally get ready to attack what is next! It will be harder and you’ll need the well rested body to crush those workouts!
4-5 days should be plenty IMO, but really needs to be restful days
It seems that the thread is using recovery week and rest week interchangeably when they are both different and serve different purposes from what I have recently learned. Here is the way I understand the difference. Recovery weeks are still training weeks where the workout intensity is below threshold (say below 75%) but not so low that it drops below 50% threshold. Think of recovery weeks as priming the adaptation pump from your workout block and expanding your fat burning/endurance capabilities. Rest weeks are doing nothing on the bike whatsoever and avoiding anything else that can tax you mentally or physically in any way. Think of rest weeks as the time you take off from everything including bike after your A race, IM, Leadville, mega long events, end of season, in between seasons, motivation all time low, etc. where you have gone past your limits and know that if you don’t rest, then you will die a death of a thousand cuts trying to train anyway. TR Coaches explain the difference here: Rest & Recovery, Motorpacing, Short Zone 2 Workouts & More – Ask a Cycling Coach 196 - YouTube
I assume after reading the thread, most are talking about recovery weeks. I will be honest and say recovery weeks used to be my hardest/worst weeks until I embraced the above paragraph. I changed my thinking from recovery week being a rest week where it will be easy to a recovery week is a training week where I am priming my adaptation and expanding my endurance/fatburning. I used to say to myself that the recovery week is easy and in the process would lose focus and make it hard mentally. Now I tell myself, the recovery week is still going to hurt but in a different way than what I am used to with intensity high. Embrace the new pain and realize I am getting stronger as I adapt during this recovery week - training adpatation. I began to look past recovery workouts focusing on the coming ramp test knowing I am going to be stronger. Ultimately, for me - most of my issues with recovery weeks was psychological. Once my mindset was right = recovery week feels similar to the rest of the training weeks.
One last nugget that has helped is nutrition during recovery weeks. I used to try to reduce calories on receovery weeks which back fired for me. Everyone is different so you need to find what works for you. For me, I ride the recovery weeks fasted since the intensity is lower. Off the bike, I eat like for a normal workout week NOT cutting calories. Shifting from LCHF to Endurance Diet has been game changer even for recovery weeks following this protocol for me. I actually lost weight my last recovery week following fasted rides and endurance diet, not cutting calories. Previous recovery weeks, I just wasn’t getting enough nutrition trying to match calories to the recovery week. Bottom line - I needed more whole foods during recovery week to assist priming the adaptation pump. Your results may vary, but I would definitely look at not cutting calories during recovery week and see how you feel.
Just sharing what I have learned - Hope this helps!
I wouldn’t say silly, they provide a recovery benefit if done properly ie < 50% FTP max, (not average, max) but I do think that for time crunched athletes it’s the easiest and best workout to drop out of a week if needed. I also think that for me, personally, I agree with you in that I respond better to complete time off the bike usually. After some tough VO2 Max and higher zone training I find doing a recovery ride to be beneficial. For this time of year when most of us are in base, it’s just not needed for me and I do tend to cut those out unless I really feel like I need to pedal.
Over the long term? Very. Recovery and rest perios are the crucial time periods when you allow your body to get stronger. Because during that time period your body can expend the allocated energy not on exercise, but on healing the damaged tissue and making adaptations that allow you to become a stronger cyclist.
By not resting your are short-changing yourself and you limit your performance.
Resurrecting this because recovery weeks are something with which I’ve always struggled! I think I finally stumbled upon what works for me and might be helpful to others…
When we reach a recovery week we hopefully have vastly better fitness than our previous ramp test and the FTP we’re using to establish our recovery week rides. This has tended to make them excruciatingly easy (oxymoron)! Just noodling along at what was 50-75% FTP (taken from a test 3-5 weeks prior) is probably closer to 40-60% of your new, yet to be tested, FTP.
My personal solution, sprinkle in some sprints and cadence work!
Aerobic/sprint fun:
Things like “West Vidette +1”, “Pettit +1”, and “Bays” are excellent for adding just a bit of spice and excitement to an otherwise very boring week. And the added stress is so short in duration it’s unlikely to do much harm and actually more likely to add some pep to your step (or pedal).
For the cadence:
I love the “Baxter” series! Just pick a gear switch to standard or resistance mode and use only your cadence to adjust the power. It makes an aerobic ride WAY more engaging and enjoyable! “West Vidette” (mentioned above), though not intended for this purpose, mirrors Baxter very well… you can kill two birds with one stone if you do the “+1” version and really have 45 minutes fly by. Birch is another good one…
Sorry for the long winded reply to an oldish post, but I feel like I finally found a way to enjoy recovery and thought I should share! Fingers crossed my ramp test goes well this coming Monday!!!
Rest week is where your body repairs itself stronger than it was before, so if you skip them, you are short changing yourself and all the work you put in.
He seems to be tossing in a few short sprints and choosing some more interesting easy rides (via cadence variation versions) to avoid the boring and monotonous versions that are just plain flat.
Done with a level of restraint, as seems to be stated and considered here, I don’t see a problem here. This might not work for everyone, but it makes sense that it can work for some.
As with any part of the TR plans, the recovery weeks can be altered to suit the needs of each rider.
My post wasn’t really directed necessarily to the original topic starter. A lot of my friends can’t stand to take rest weeks and skip them. I do go easy for my entire rest week and that works best for me.
I’m sort of the opposite here… personally by the end of SSBMV2 I was so cooked I needed the easy week. I managed to complete every workout but was so exhausted by the end, I’m not sure I could have handled another hard week. The first couple of workouts in the easy week my HR was well into tempo territory… Much better after the easy week and bumped my FTP from 363 to 374 with the ramp test at the start of the build phase.
So for me the rest week was perfect to allow my body to catch up with the stress and go again. Not sure if that means the strain of the work was just right or too high given a lot of others are saying they don’t need the rest week. This plan is my first experience of structured training so that probably contributes to the fatigue.
Next week is my recovery week and I’m looking forward to some well earned easy work. Fatigue accumulates and I really need the rest before SSBMV2 starts. Heavy legs and being physically drained is the usual feeling for me entering the final workouts before recovery week.