Are you doing any kind of testing during your recovery weeks - any kind of TT's? If so, test one sport on maybe Tuesday, another on Friday and again on Sunday. Otherwise fill in with easy sessions on the other days, and keep your nutrition on target. Stretch, eat well, and get your feet up for some rest when you can. Use the hours simply as a guide. Shorten or leave out a session if you are smoked at the beginning of the week. You'll come around as the week progresses. Do you also monitor your morning resting heart rate? How are you sleeping? Those are generally what tell me when I need to begin to back off.

Cut the volume by 65-75% but mantain intensity. You should feel recovered at the end of the recovery week, not at the begining. And distribute your training more at the begining of the week and less and less at the end. At the end of the week you should be doing more intensity and less volume.



Paulo

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"Yeah, no one likes a smartass, but we all like stars" - Thom Yorke


smartasscoach.tri-oeiras.com

Only you can answer that question. It is not necessarily the time your spending working out but the intensity. You need to decrease the intensity ( pace, speed ) of your workouts during recovery. This is important both for physical and psychological reasons. If your pushing yourself hard during the 3 weeks you need both a physical and mental break. If after 3 weeks of the " hard cycle" you feel neither physically nor mentally exhausted you may need to reevaluate the effort your putting in to your training. On the other hand if your running out of gas before 3 weeks is up you may need to throttle back so you can build up in intensity so that your 3rd week is the hardest then take whatever rest you may need during the 4th week. Norm

I'm still working this one out myself. A lot of folks say that you can keep up the volume, but I find that if I cut way back on volume(around 50%) I get to the point where nothing is sore, and when the next week comes, I am ready to go.

When I do maintain volume during recovery weeks, but cut intensity, I find that I am more or less flat. Never fast, sometimes slow, but not really progressing. This season I am trying to follow the TTB plan more closely, do the structured workouts, and rest when necessary. I want to do more than build my base, I want to get faster. Sometimes this means resting.

And as another poster mentioned, the mental break from the routine is nice.

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For me, that is way too much during a recovery period. Keep in mind that the 3 hard weeks tear your muscles up and the gains we all seek come when the muscles rebuild and become stronger. This happens during a recovery week. I personally cut back 50% during an easy week, including at least 2 days off, and I don't feel bad if it is 3 days off.

This is the time to skip the 5 am swim and stay in bed until 7:00, or to stay up past 9:30 and watch a DVD with the Mrs. Recovery weeks are critical and I think they should be taken so easy that by the last day of the easy week you're ready to go tear your legs off on the bike. Lance had a great line about most AG athletes "going too easy on their hard days and too hard on their easy days." Don't listen to me....listen to him!

In my training i rarely take a day off except during recovery weeks than i might take two. reduce volume but maintain some intensity to allow your body to recover, which happens to also be the way to taper. how much to trim depends upon your fitness, your events etc. if your doing an IM and are several months out (5-8) you might only reduce volume by 10-25%. If you close maybe by 30-40%.
play around with different reductions, if you come back feeling supercharged and raring to go there is your answer

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

"I am beginning to think that my recovery weeks might not be easy enough for me to fully recover."

There is your answer. You said it. You know you and you should listen to you...

and smartasscoach of course.

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customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.

Wow, I got a recomendation from Mr. Tibbs himself! *THE* slowtwitch.com personality!

I'm thinking I should put up a website and start charging people $350/month for a sheet of paper and one and a half calls or emails during that month...

Mr. Tibbs, can I put you on my testimonials page? That will be one less I have to invent... mean, quote... :-)



Paulo

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"Yeah, no one likes a smartass, but we all like stars" - Thom Yorke


smartasscoach.tri-oeiras.com