You don't need recovery weeks. If you need one, your training during the week is too much. Scaling back overall w/o recovery weeks = more fitness gained than 2 hard/1 easy or 3 hard/1 easy.

More on this on the main forum if you search.

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

so says someone who is..what....20 years old? :)

you do need a recovery week. don't listen to tigerchik on this. she is in her 20s and young.

I am 52 and have been doing tri's for 11 years. I have gone to a recovery week every third week versus every fourth like you have laid out. I found out that my third week was more of a struggle when I was doing a four week plan. This way I am able to do high quality workouts for two weeks and feel like I have more energy. As I have gotten older I have had to rethink rest and recovery and be very planful in incorporating them into my schedule. I just don't bounce back like I use to. I have also had to look at how I plan my individual weeks in that I no longer can do two intense workouts in a row. I can't give you any idea of how this will translate into race performance, I limped through last year with injuries but am on the road to recovery and hoping that racing will go better this season. It sure can't go any worse!

I agree with the two on, one recovery!

Some really good coaches will back me up on this. From two people older and more treacherous...

Check out desert dude's post (#18) here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ery%20weeks;#2236182

And this Paulo blog entry:

http://thetriathlonbook.blogspot.com/...d-no-rest-weeks.html

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

I have done every third week for the past year and was injury free for the first time in my triathlon career. I feel this works best for training for 70.3 and IM races.

What I like about the two on, one off approach is that it gives you time in that rest week to make sure the rest of your life isn't falling to pieces - that closets are getting cleaned out, that yardwork is getting done, etc etc. Not necessarily the most glamorous stuff but if you have a home, kids, etc then there are responsibilities that take up your time and energy outside simply working out.

No offense to Tigerchik cause I think she's a great girl, but there's something drastically different about trying to balance school and training (I've been there with grad school so I get that it's not necessarily easy) and trying to balance adult life (work, family obligations, home, etc) and training. Having every third week be a rest week and using it to make sure that house and home maintain some semblance of normalcy helps me mentally stay in the game with undoubtably helps my training.

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http://smallfoodbiz.com
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I don't really take a rest week. But like someone said, I'm finding that I can't go super hard two days in a row during the week with work and everything else. Racing two days on the weekend doesn't seem to be a problem since it's race, eat, rest. Bike racing is shorter (generally) and a lot more intense so I don't know if it's age, or if it's a different training.

That said, I really don't like to take one day off per week, but my coach now wants me to. When I was doing IM, my coach then and I found that if I scheduled a day off, it made me backslide on the day after. I did take days off as they came along, due to work or travel or the alarm turning itself off in the middle of the night and I slept in. That's when I knew I needed a day off. Though that didn't really happen a lot.

clm

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

I don't coach multisport athletes. So, perhaps there's something about that training load I am unaware of. However, I do coach people and I am a stay at home dad as well.

Tigerchik is right, you really don't need scheduled off weeks. If you do your training load (or increase in training load, more likely) is too steep. Personally I do about the same load every week and you still see an increase in overall load just doing 8 hours every week (or whatever number you choose. CTL for those you who know what that is).

That said, if something comes up or you need some time, don't feel bad about it. My feeling is if you're being consistent on a weekly basis then some time off is fine when you need it and is probably a good thing in your training. But I don't see the point in scheduling it since you might need it elsewhere to accommodate your life schedule.

And the 4:1 or 3:1 stuff pretty much comes from Eastern Europe and that schedule was devised to accommodate kids who were taken from their parents (one week home). It's not proven in any way.

And the 4:1 or 3:1 stuff pretty much comes from Eastern Europe and that schedule was devised to accommodate kids who were taken from their parents (one week home). It's not proven in any way.
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I love people, and this isn't directed at you per se, but I love people who say 3:1 or 4:1 is the way to design your training. What I love more though is the fact that these cycles were designed for drug doping cycles in training and not because they elicited better adaptation or physiological results. But they did make taking drugs easier. So if your goal is to do drugs, then yes, 3:1 or 4:1 is the normal protocal. But if your goal is designed to maximize your training then building rest days into your schedule and designing overloads into your schedule is the smarter way to go. YOu could design a 21 or 28d schedule, but I know of very few lay people who could do that successfully. In fact, I think more people chimed in that 3:1 or 4:1 is the way to go then coaches I know who have successfully designed a 21 -28d cycles that isn't based upon a weekly pattern. But then I only know about 75 coaches.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

I love people and you too...and I think people WAY over think things in tri. I train hard when I can and don't train as hard when I can't....due to fatigue, life, responsibilities, etc. There is no formula do what you can do and do the best at it.

 
Wait, I lost track -- how many votes is it for throwing the Joe Friel "Bible" out the window?

better to go hard day, easy, easy, hard.. or 3 easy if needed.
In my 40s one or two easy was enough, heading into 50s I find three is more like it.
With all the other demands on time and energy that come from being a middleaged parent, I take hard days when I can, rather than on a specific schedule. During the build for a race I do hard days on the schedule but not yet sure that's optimal.

I've never used recovery weeks in the forty years I've been training (swimming, then running, then tri), nor had I heard of them before starting tri. desert dude's take on it is interesting, didn't realize it was a doping strategy. Hm.

DD is smart :-)

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD