So I broke down and got a coach for the first time. He has me doing a 1 hour recovery ride a few times a week. They consist of droning along at <150 watts. I pretty much hate doing them and my past experience is that I don’t feel any different than if I had just taken the day off. Is there any solid evidence that these are beneficial?
“my past experience is that I don’t feel any different than if I had just taken the day off.”
Seems like you get the benefit of a day off but you at least are burning some calories. My experience is if it doesn’t negatively affect your workout the next day, being active is always better than sitting on my butt doing nothing. I tend to get bored and eat in those situations.
Did you miss this thread?
I’d suggest you trust the coach for now. My advice on being coached in general is give a coach a full 6 months where you buy into their system completely, without “resisting” parts of it. After that, then assess where you are. That’s not to say you can’t question what the coach is having you do, either with the coach or others, just that you should make an honest effort to buy fully into the system even if parts of it seem uncomfortable to you.
Remember, you are either gaining fitness while training, or losing fitness & recovering. The goal is to lose as little fitness as possible while recovering.
However, for the time crunched, it can be better to just take the day off from that discipline, or swim instead. I don’t have any active recovery during my earlier base phases 10-18 weeks out, but I’m doing mostly zone 2 & 3 work on the bike so I don’t need it. When I go into my build and add more threshold work, I’ll need a few recovery rides here and there to maintain fitness but recover so I can do more specific higher intensity workouts to prepare me for race day. I do have active recovery in earlier phases 18-22 weeks out coming out of the off season.
So I broke down and got a coach for the first time. He has me doing a 1 hour recovery ride a few times a week. They consist of droning along at <150 watts. I pretty much hate doing them and my past experience is that I don’t feel any different than if I had just taken the day off. Is there any solid evidence that these are beneficial?
Time to start ramping up your volume too, is the ONLY thing you have on a given day is a 1 hour recovery ride a couple times a week. Maybe you’re time crunched, but hell, at least toss a swim session in there or add a recovery run. What are you doing like 8 workouts a week?
(Wow, I’m becoming a real Slowtwitch snob… if your not doing at least 15 workouts sessions or 15-20 hours a week, your not trying hard enough)
To add to that however, I don’t see the point in active recovery unless you doing at least 12-18 workouts sessions and you’re doing double or triple sessions (or even quadruple… sometimes you fit in what you can in small slots) in a day, 4-5 times a week.
http://bjsportmed.com/content/38/4/436.full
Data for the recommendation to have days in Z1? I have not seen any.
I am certainly not qualified to question your coach, but did i read (or did you write) this correctly??
“He has me doing a 1 hour recovery ride a few times a week.” How many rides per week are you doing that you have a “few” (which I presume means 2-3) recovery rides per week?
Note: Before I get hounded on the polarized training video shown above… I haven’t seen this yet, I’ll look at it
As for recovery days and kind of my own personal philosophy on this
2 recovery rides a week at I’ll say 13-15mph equates to about 105 miles per month extra than if you just took the day off
105x 12 months gives you an additional 1,000+ miles than if you took these days completely off
My theory here is that riding your bike even if in z1 for an additional 1000 miles is going to have some affect on bike handling, and even possibly help stimulate mitochondria within the muscles…
- This isn’t to say you are going to get HUGE benefits out of it… but over time, it does add up
- For those into TSS… essentially at the end of the year it will probably equate to somewhere around 700-900 additional Tss over the year… This is a good week for many… In my eyes, its a free week
For the 2 recovery rides a week, As long as you are pushing the efforts and your body needs the rest, this is absolutely fine in my opinion. I’ve had GREAT results with multiple recovery rides a week. Allows for better rides overall in general.
Edit: pushing efforts means TSS… not solely intensity. so, back to back long z2 days could require a recovery day… or a hard v02 day could require a recovery day… Essentially, it all depends on your fitness and how everything works together… That is the art of structuring a week.
Did you miss this thread?
I’d suggest you trust the coach for now. My advice on being coached in general is give a coach a full 6 months where you buy into their system completely, without “resisting” parts of it. After that, then assess where you are. That’s not to say you can’t question what the coach is having you do, either with the coach or others, just that you should make an honest effort to buy fully into the system even if parts of it seem uncomfortable to you.
I agree with following "the plan’, but I was asking because I really struggle to get the hours in and the recovery stuff is the easiest to drop. I also would rather gouge my eye out with a screw driver then noodle around town at 14 mph 
had a friend (PhD) who did a concerted lit review on the evidence for recovery a while back. he found that there was very little for saunas, compression, etc etc. the one thing he found was consistently good for recovery, if memory serves, was light aerobic exercise. i don’t know if an hour’s necessary but i’d say go with coach on this one.
it’s a shame, because i really love a sauna. on the plus, even if you break even in terms of recovery time, you at least rack up another few miles, which is always good, and get some modest exercise effect.
-mike
There’s a lot of evidence, like iron_mike & others pointed out. Also, a lot of what distinguishes pro vs. AG training is the sheer volume pros do–even for shorter events like rowing or running relative to IM triathlon. It’s a shit ton of volume at very low intensity. Recovery rides will feed into overall volume, in addition to helping with recovery.
I went to seminar where this topic was covered and the idea put forth was:- if you sat on the trainer and did an easy spin every day for 1hr that equates to 365hrs of additional volume per year (albeit Z1).
Question then is: is 365hrs per year significant? Hells yes.
I go against the grain here a bit. I have read over and over how recovery rides are helpful for others and I have no doubt this is true, but for me, I have found no difference in how I feel the next day. If anything, I seem to feel a little better with complete rest. In addition, as I am time crunched, this is an additional couple of hours a week I can spend with the family. I just think its a better use of my time.
Note - to be clear, my complete rest days do typically contain a 10-15 minute really easy spin on the trainer just to get the blood moving a bit, but I wouldn’t even call it a recovery ride. They are even easier than that…and shorter.
I go against the grain here a bit. I have read over and over how recovery rides are helpful for others and I have no doubt this is true, but for me, I have found no difference in how I feel the next day. If anything, I seem to feel a little better with complete rest. In addition, as I am time crunched, this is an additional couple of hours a week I can spend with the family. I just think its a better use of my time.
Note - to be clear, my complete rest days do typically contain a 10-15 minute really easy spin on the trainer just to get the blood moving a bit, but I wouldn’t even call it a recovery ride. They are even easier than that…and shorter.
I think what you missing, is that there’s a opportunity to get some training load AND get recovery at the same time. Doing nothing doesn’t make you recover significantly faster (except mentally), but there’s no training stimulus.
I think what you missing, is that there’s a opportunity to get some training load AND get recovery at the same time. Doing nothing doesn’t make you recover significantly faster (except mentally), but there’s no training stimulus.
I hear you and that is a valid point…but I guess the question is if that additional training stimulus is worth it from a time management standpoint. By the time I kit up, ride, shower, etc., that is valuable time I can use trying to maintain my life a bit. It’s definitely something to consider.
Remember, you are either gaining fitness while training, or losing fitness & recovering. The goal is to lose as little fitness as possible while recovering.Um. Isn’t it exactly the opposite of this? You essentially wreck yourself training, and your body rebuilds itself slightly better during recovery. You start losing fitness once recovery is complete.
In addition, as I am time crunched, this is an additional couple of hours a week I can spend with the family. I just think its a better use of my time.
I do think easy rides have some recovery benefit but from a time utilization standpoint I agree with the above. Who has time to ride an easy hour and still get in all the other quality sessions? Except for days off work I only have an hour a day and I’m not going to spend it on a Z1 bike ride. I plan my schedule so that when I’m hammered from a hard ride or run I’m swimming and that’s my recovery.
But we are not talking about recovery rides in polarized training necessarily.
I think a distinction needs to be made between a barely leg moving recovery ride that the OP is talking about, and accumulating volume at low intensity below your LTP or similar. So around top end of coggan 2 or as I understand it.
That is different from a recovery ride done at zone 1, at 150w.
So I broke down and got a coach for the first time. He has me doing a 1 hour recovery ride a few times a week. They consist of droning along at <150 watts. I pretty much hate doing them and my past experience is that I don’t feel any different than if I had just taken the day off. Is there any solid evidence that these are beneficial?
When I was using a coach, he had me do a recovery ride generally only after a hard week of training and it was one day. I would spin and think my own thoughts. It was a mental break. It also made the legs feel great the next day and I found it really beneficial. It rid the lactic build up and the feeling of fatigue.
One of the biggest things I took away from coaching was I didn’t train slow enough, or hard enough. It was too much at 80% prior to coaching.
Your body is yours. You should know better than anyone. Why ask?