If your body is not very fatigued when going into a recovery week, it will not have any positive effect on performance.
This will then be regarded as a week wasted, writes Waterford Institute of Technology exercise physiologist Stephen Barrett.
The former Irish international rider, above, has also excelled at hurling, triathlon, squash and most recently, CrossFit.
Along with his day job as a coach and his post at Waterford IT, the Cork man recently established his own nutrition consultancy business.
He’s worked with a number of professional athletes across a range of sports and is currently in the middle of his PhD, studying Analytical Chemistry and Nutrition.
Here, he’s written an interesting article on fatigue, tiredness, recovery weeks and how to maximise your training.
Sleeping and resting is vital. But if you are not training like a pro, you don't need to deload like one.
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Rest days, active recovery sessions, activation workouts and recovery/rest weeks; these are all very prominent features in any athlete’s training program.
It’s a widely accepted that you need to recover or deload after a certain number of training days or weeks.
How many people have a microcycle of, for example, three days on, one day off, two days on and one day off? Or a mesocycle looking like the standard three weeks training followed by one week’s recovery?
Related reading - Seven signs of overtraining and how to avoid it
These patterns are based on coaches peaking elite athletes for certain races or competitions, especially for endurance athletes. They originated in the sport of swimming.
Closer to competition, athletes would be put through a closely monitored two weeks of intensive training leading to a transient (short-term) state of overtraining.
They would then “deload” for seven to ten days where training volume would be significantly reduced with intensity remaining high.
Barrett says a lot of the patterns of day-to-day and week-to-week training principals were devised in swimming before spreading to other codes, including cycling.
Following this deloading/recovery/supercompensation phase, performance would significantly improve above baseline. It means that come competition time the athletes would be at their peak.
From swimming, the pattern was adapted by coaches across a large number of sports.
A normal week using this method would look something like
- Week 1 – Introductory loading (deloading week following the shock and test weeks)
- Week 2 – Base loading (increase volume)
- Week 3 – Shock loading (very high volume and intensity)
- Week 4 – Test (max intensity, moderate volume)
- Week 5 – Start another block
Even though this is a proven way to increase performance I believe it’s still not an optimal way for everyone to train.
The theory is based on the peaking strategy of elite athletes using a massive workload for a short period of time.
Swimmers would spend six-eight hours a day in the pool doing huge volumes of training.
Deloading only works when it is preceded by a period of short term overtraining.
If your body is not very fatigued when going into a recovery week, it will not have any positive effect on performance.
The fact is, recreational athletes and even very serious athletes seldom do enough training to justify deloading after only three weeks of training.
Rarely would they accumulate enough systemic fatigue and stress to need to recover, making that week a waste of valuable time.
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People who don't have the time to be able to train as a professional don’t need to recover like a professional.
A lot of cyclists who train for the love of it or have sportive rather than racing goals still go at it very hard. And it is much better to err on the side of caution when the training-resting ratio is calculated. But you need to get the balance right. If you are taking too much rest, you are missing training that would make you stronger. And the effect of your resting is minimal.
It makes sense for professional athletes to deload after a specific number of weeks of training.
This allows them peak a number of times during the year.
But for the recreational athlete looking to get faster or stronger, there really is no need to “peak” after a set number of weeks.
As I mentioned earlier, recovery weeks only work when you’re in an overreached state; that is, when accumulated fatigue is high.
I’m not talking about being fatigued from one hard interval session, but when fatigue stays with you day in and day out for about a week.
If you’re not in this state then this buzz word of ‘supercompensation’ which many people throw around will not happen.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against recovery weeks.
However, I’m strongly opposed to athletes being given their training plans up to a month in advance with pre-planned recovery days and rest weeks scheduled.
You can deload by simply pulling back on hard efforts, such as on the turbo, rather than doing anything more drastic that may undermine your physical condition.
I am a strong believer in getting the greatest improvements for the least amount of work; not just for people working a day job but for professionals also.
If you deload before you need to; you will simply throw away a week of valuable training time.
When I schedule recovery weeks I use one of three strategies
1. Deload by performing only neuromuscular workouts.
A good example for a cyclist would be very high cadence short efforts on the rollers, but with low power or muscular stress for five to seven days.
I do this when the fatigue is mental or neural but the physique is still fine; for example, lack of motivation, constant fatigue, no drive, but no muscle tightness or joint pain.
2. Deload by performing only very easy low stress training for five to seven days.
I do this when the fatigue is mostly muscular but not neural; when an athlete is still highly motivated to train, has no mood swings but has stiff and tender muscles and/or joint pain.
3. Deload by continuing regular training.
I’ll keep the frequency the same, but I reduce volume by performing less intervals and/or hours.
For example if I normally do 5 x 5 minute efforts at 450-500w on the turbo, instead I'll do of 2-3 x 5 minute efforts at the same power.
Train hard and recover harder, but only when you need to.
- You can follow Stephen Barrett on Twitter - @spbarrett9 - or contact him by email on [email protected]
