Here is a great response (IMO) to a question from a 'winning' coach. I really advocate for myself knowing my body well and responding to it. Powermeters (and the like) are great, but they must be taken in context as to their function as a tool. Recently I stopped listening to my body, as some of you witnessed, and I really payed the price. This compromised my training quality, consistency, and frequency. People always think I am 'going hard all the time' and say to me; 'Oh, I can't train like you, since you go hard all the time'. This couldn't be farther from the truth, but I suppose if you look at my workouts as individual events and not as an overall scheme, it may seem this way to some. What I DO do is try to elicit a training response from every session. Joel reiterates this below:
Slowtwitch: What are your feelings about rest days and how they should be incorporated?
Joel: I recommend that athletes only rarely take complete days off, at least deliberately. I don’t prescribe traditional work-rest cycles within micro cycles or across training blocks such as the classic 3/1 or 2/1 build/rest weeks. For the level of athletes I work with a light day will still have one, two or even three training sessions, but even for working age groupers I still prefer to spread the workload over the full week rather than have one or more complete rest or recovery days. By varying the energy systems worked each day an athlete can accomplish some quality every day and still be able to recover well. For this approach to be most effective, athletes have to be well tuned into their body’s responses, so if they are feeling like the quality is not going to happen on that day they can shift the focus of the workout to something they can accomplish in that session. This is a flexible approach to recovery, that allows for more quality training to be accomplished over time, compared to a more rigid, scheduled rest, whether you really need it or not approach.
1 comment:
Joel's comment is great. People always used to question me on my schedule and the fact that I never took a day off. Still don't at the ripe age of 46. What is important for athletes to understand is that a couple of easy days where you are working below a Max HR of 65% is vital. In fact, it speeds up the recovery process and builds the number of red blood cells (oxygen carrying blood cell). When I run or bike easy, I do it on my own. My run pace is slow i.e. 8:00 to 8:30 miles and my bike is all about high cadence at nothing more than 27 km per hr. This concept is a major success factor in top athletes. Another key is to do strides regularly or high reps on the bike at the end of every easy workout. Five to six of these does the trick and allows the body to recall this turnover (muscle memory).
My two cents.
Sandra
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