replace higher intensity workouts with recovery workouts, rather than taking extra days off (maybe every other day) and keep up the intensity for the days you aren’t resting. Does this approach apply to IM distance is well as Oly? SAC was saying “Getting rest days instead of recovery workouts will delay adaptation.” Can someone explain this to me a bit more? Thanks!
When you are on the edge of overtraining, tell me why the more preferred approach to avoid it is to…
Excellent question!!!
Although SAC said that (don’t know where & when) he sometimes give us a break on the SWIM, allowing us to skip some hard tasks with a recovery drill in replace.
Anyway, I’ll tell you what I think from an athlete’s point of view:
If I were on the edge of overtraining I would feel much better with a recovery workout than with a rest day and this I mean most mentally and just a little physical. Why you may ask. Imagine you are on a built period and you’re feeling overtrainned. So you skip one day. On the next day not only you will be feeling bad with yourself cause you skipped yesterday but it will be harder to start that day. Thoughts like “oh damn… I most have lost some fit yesterday” or “I’m not feeling how I expected after the day off” will get to you heavy.
I am no scientist but Lance’s book says that easy cycling stimulates blood flow into the muscles which helps rid them of lingering lactic acid and the extra blood accelerates the healing of the muscle fibers in a way that just taking the day off does not. Maybe the same thing holds for running?
… because recovery workouts promote recovery better than just resting. The elevated HR permits a better delivery of nutrients to the muscles, while the elevated metabolism after exercise promotes glycogen replacement better than just restind. These are the main reasons, although there are lots more.
What Klep said is a bit different, but goes to the same. If I’m at the pool and I see that a particular athlete is overly tired, I might substitute a hard set with an easier one, usually of the same lenght, done at recovery pace, thus looking for the effects I talked about above.
And yes, it’s a “basic” rule of training, so applies to OD, IM, etc.