Week 3: Recovery Week: Time to consolidate and recuperate
I can’t overestimate the importance of recovery. It’s as much a part of athlete progression as the training itself. I schedule recovery efforts into my training each week, Specifically on week 3 of my training block to absorb the build weeks and increase my performance.
This week I’m sharing my recovery week, and why it’s so important to find ways to ‘deload before the reload’.
As well as consolidating high end race power, a recovery week leading into a race allows for any adverse physiological responses of a high intensity overload week training to settle.
A recovery week sometimes includes a whole day off the bike, but for me it just means shorter, easier sessions, as personally I find more benefit in keeping the circulation flowing. Days off tend to only be when I am too busy traveling or just generally need one.
A typical recovery session ranges from spinning around 50-60% of FTP watching a Netflix movie to a more focused session, sitting between zone 1 and 2; (efforts ranging between 52% to 72% of FTP).
Ironically, this week as a one off towards the end of my deload, I’m racing number 5 of the Zwift Grand Prix, a team racing league in which all the Elite Zwift teams compete throughout the winter. It has a prize pot of £15,000 shared amongst the highest scoring teams. As it is a high profile race, a ZADA verification process has to be undergone in order to compete. This means verifying the accuracy of your turbo trainer and power meter with dual recording (recording the power shown on both pedals and smart trainer) as well as submitting your best outdoor efforts from a range of 15 seconds to 8 minutes.
Subsequently, a weigh-in video has to be sent in within 2 hours of the race. This is me weighing myself on the scales, then weighing a gym weight, and then weighing myself holding the gym weight, followed by lifting the scales up and showing the underneath. It’s pretty brutal; but helps to regulate the accuracy of our racing which just keeps it all legitimate.
This weigh-in process, however tedious, is a really important aspect of my racing, because during overload weeks although burning a load of energy, athletes can tend to weigh more because of water retention, due to a variety of factors caused by stress; such as the inflammatory process for recovery, as well as how much extra energy you have to consume to maintain performance.
Despite my recovery weeks being relatively easy, typically I always include 1 x session of Microburst intervals of very short duration; such as 15 seconds of roughly 140% FTP spinning right up at 120 – 130rpm to fire up the muscles and improve the neuromuscular adaptation without causing significant training stress on the muscles. This helps prevent me feeling sluggish and actually helps me reinforce the benefits of the supercompensation response for next week.
I will finish the week with some fun social outdoor miles on the winter bike while I mentally and physically ready myself for the next phase which will see me into training camp, in Calpe, Spain.
Watch this space on Thursdays, as I keep you up to date with my commitment to my progress ahead of the UCI Indoor World Champs..