The best part of cycling training is……

Cycling fatigue is like flu shot.  In order to effectively fight the flu, we first must be injected with a dose of it.  Our body adapts to it then is able to rebuff the flu when we’re exposed to it.

Similarly, we must expose ourselves to relatively high levels of exercise-induced stress to create fatigue.  Our body adapts to this level of fatigue, gets stronger and is able to absorb even more as our training progresses.

 But……and this is a “big” but……….we can only adapt and improve our resistance to fatigue if we rest and recover when our body screams for it.

As endurance athletes, we’re of the “bring it on” mindset.  “No pain, no gain” is our mantra.  It’s fine to feel this way, and working hard is the only way to improve.  And being mentally tough is a requirement to continual improvement as well.  We must be willing and able to suffer – mentally and physically.  And let’s face it; we love this aspect of the sport.  So we seek out and accept the hard work willingly and with a smile on our faces – right? 

 However, when we need to rest, we need to rest.  And at a certain point, we must either back off for several days or we’ll pay the price.  And we’ll pay by getting sick, by getting injured or by getting mentally burned out.

 How do know when we “need to” rest?  There are a couple schools of thought related to this question. 

 1.  First of all, we can simply plan recovery weeks in our schedule.  For example, many coaches advocate a 3:1 strategy.  In other words, build intensity and/or training duration for 3 weeks, then back way off on both training time and intensity for about 1 week before resuming again.

 Along this same thought process, many of these same coaches favor a 2:1 ratio for “older” athletes, typically those over 40, with the thought that master’s level athletes require more recovery.

 The athlete benefits by scheduling the rest week by theoretically always having enough rest to stay fresh, thereby rarely hitting a plateau in their training.  The athlete also knows that they can train hard, that they can really push themselves in training because recovery week is never too far away. 

2.  The other school of thought still believes in the concept of rest, but doesn’t formally schedule it until the athlete raises their hand and says that they need recovery.  This works fine in theory.  Not everyone needs a full recovery week after each 2 or 3 weeks, so by never getting to that “highly fatigued” state, the athlete misses some potential upside.

 The downside to waiting until “you really need” it is that many athletes are unwilling to admit they need rest.  There’s always another hammer fest group ride to join; there’s always another event or race to participate in. 

 So the athlete keeps going until he or she is forced to stop because of sickness, injury or mental fatigue.

 I advocate planning recovery weeks and plugging them into the training schedule.  Once athletes get used to planned recovery weeks, most quickly see the benefits and look forward to them.

 Contact me if you have questions about your own training or recovery.  Add your comments about your own personal experience with recovery (or lack thereof), then GET OUT AND RIDE!