Let's Talk "Recovery Week"

Let's talk "Recovery Week"! I want to say up front, however, that I don't often write "recovery weeks". For most athletes I work for, life provides (either predictably or unpredictably) breaks in our 7, 10 or 14+ day training flow. For those that want something like that, I tend to do a 3-5 day of lower volume. Some athletes and coaches do write these weeks and that's just fine! :) So for those of you who use recovery weeks, here's my question: have you ever finished one more tired than when you started it? Or worse - finished it feeling great, then lost your legs the second real work showed back up?

That's where many of us can go wrong. We often think recovery week means "less." Just... less. Less swimming, less biking, less running, less everything, in whatever proportion feels good that day. Then we're surprised when the fitness we were protecting has gone anyway.

But why did we feel that way?

Volume decays slow. Frequency decays fast.

Cut our training volume in half for a week and our aerobic engine barely notices. The research on tapering (Mujika, Padilla, all the classic work) says the same thing over and over: we can drop volume 40-60% and hold fitness, sometimes even improve it, as long as two things stay intact: frequency, and a touch of intensity.

Drop frequency instead - go from five runs a week to two - and we start losing neuromuscular pattern faster than we're losing fitness. Our legs forget how to run before our heart forgets how to pump.

So if we're a recovery week athlete, protect the number of sessions and cut the size of them.

What might this look like in practice? Same three swims with less volume and time. Same four bikes - sixty minutes instead of ninety, watts a notch under normal. Same four runs. Easy pace, half the mileage, keep the stride short and quick - and don't hesitate to through in some walking. Our nervous system still gets the signal: this is what we do. The body just gets a smaller bill for it.

Where does the intensity piece fit?

One short block of race-pace or threshold work (not a session) keeps the top end of our engine warm. Think of it as a pilot light, not a burner. We're not training, we're reminding the system what fast feels like so it doesn't have to relearn it in three weeks.

Give me the numbers!

Well you know me and my philosophy: it's a big pool of athletes out there and we're all different. But what may work for many is something like total training hours down 40-50%, total sessions down maybe one, intensity touches still present in small doses. That ratio - big volume cut, small frequency cut, intensity preserved in miniature - is the whole trade.

Get the ratio backwards - keeping the volume, skipping the sessions - and we'll come out of recovery week rested and rusty.

If we get it right, we'll come out rested and ready.

Gratefully,

Mark

Team MPI