Rest week, when and how?

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iheartbianchi
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by iheartbianchi

onemanpeloton wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 10:47 am

That's interesting, I haven't come across that approach before.

My understanding that a gradual increase is training stress/stimulus is needed in order to drive adaptation. If that stimulus is lower and lower every week then I wonder how the adaptation might differ....

Agree with being flexible and listening to your body
I disagree with this characterization (although we may be saying the same thing, I think the way you worded it is very easy to misinterpret).

You're not supposed to be gradually increasing training stress/stimulus at all. You are supposed to getting faster and stronger over time naturally as a result of your training, not forcing it by increasing stress.

200 watts for 1 hour is 200 watts for 1 hour. As you get more fit, you will cover more ground in 1 hour at 200 watts, and you will be travelling faster. hat your message implies is, you should then push to 210 watts for 1 hour to "make it harder." That's not how it works.

Let's say 200 wats for 1 hour equals 140bpm HR. Ignore the watts . You look at the 140bpm. So once you are more fit, you stay constant at 140bpm, but now you are doing 210 watts for 1 hour but still at 140bpm. And eventually 250 wats for 1 hour at 140bpm. In other words, your exertion level is exactly the same. You are simply going faster and farther for the same amount of effort for the same amount of time. As Greg Lemond once said, "It never gets easier (or harder). You only go faster."

In other words, for each training zone, your respective effort or intensity level should remain a constant and not change over time.
Last edited by iheartbianchi on Wed Mar 24, 2021 6:39 am, edited 2 times in total.
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iheartbianchi
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by iheartbianchi

robbosmans wrote:
Mon Feb 15, 2021 4:05 pm
So I am new to structured training. I am using this application by a Dutch training centre called “Join”.

I hav so far done 3 weeks of their 3 month FTP builder plan.

Week 1: 424 TSS
Week 2: 262 TSS
Week 3: 479 TSS

I read everywhere that rest weeks are super important, and the plan doesn’t seem to give me a rest week atm.

Should I take a rest week? Should I just continue? What do I do in a rest week?
I know nothing about this training plan. But generally, there is no such as a "rest" week. If you take a week completely off, you are losing fitness and undoing your hard earned gains.

In a polarized program we build in an "easy" week every 3/4 weeks and an "easy" month every 3/4 months, and at the end of a season, a 1-2 month "easy" period where we remove most if not all high-intensity efforts.

The concept of "easy" and "hard" are highly misleading (as stated in my earlier post). Effort levels are static across zones. Z1 is always Z1, Z2 is always Z2, etc. So there are two ways to make an "easy" week "easy." Either reduce time in zone, or reduce the volume of the "hard" sessions. So in a classic 80/20 program involving say 10 hours of training, we can either do 9 hours easy 1 hour hard (compared to 8 hours easy 2 hours hard), or reduce the time in zone to 8-9 hours.

Typically we expect to see a 10-25% reduction in time in zone during the "easy" week. And an overall 10-25% reduction in time in zone during the "easy" month. You can keep the intensity prortion 80/20, or you can limit the reduction in time by reducing the proportion of the "20" portion in an 80/20 plan.

The point of "easy" is to give your body a chance to heal and recovery, to prevent injury and burnout. Training results in micro tears to muscle fibers, stress on tendons/ligaments which can result in swelling from overuse, can cause hormonal changes and depletion of your body's fuel stores. You get faster when you adapt to training, not by continually applying stress. You adapt to training by rest and recovery. But you lose fitness by resting and recovering too much. So the rest week/rest month is a compromise where you minimize your losses while giving your body a chance to heal and repair.
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onemanpeloton
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by onemanpeloton

iheartbianchi wrote:
Wed Mar 24, 2021 6:30 am
onemanpeloton wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 10:47 am

That's interesting, I haven't come across that approach before.

My understanding that a gradual increase is training stress/stimulus is needed in order to drive adaptation. If that stimulus is lower and lower every week then I wonder how the adaptation might differ....

Agree with being flexible and listening to your body
I disagree with this characterization (although we may be saying the same thing, I think the way you worded it is very easy to misinterpret).

You're not supposed to be gradually increasing training stress/stimulus at all. You are supposed to getting faster and stronger over time naturally as a result of your training, not forcing it by increasing stress.

200 watts for 1 hour is 200 watts for 1 hour. As you get more fit, you will cover more ground in 1 hour at 200 watts, and you will be travelling faster. hat your message implies is, you should then push to 210 watts for 1 hour to "make it harder." That's not how it works.

Let's say 200 wats for 1 hour equals 140bpm HR. Ignore the watts . You look at the 140bpm. So once you are more fit, you stay constant at 140bpm, but now you are doing 210 watts for 1 hour but still at 140bpm. And eventually 250 wats for 1 hour at 140bpm. In other words, your exertion level is exactly the same. You are simply going faster and farther for the same amount of effort for the same amount of time. As Greg Lemond once said, "It never gets easier (or harder). You only go faster."

In other words, for each training zone, your respective effort or intensity level should remain a constant and not change over time.
Let's not go down this road again......... there's plenty of discussion about power vs HR in other threads.
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jekyll man
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by jekyll man

Quite a few things in ^^ that don't make sense at all to me.

Adaptation will make your 200w example feel easier (rpe) but unless you change aeroness or weather conditions, you're never going going to get faster at the same power.

At some point you either have to increase intensity or duration. Whether that's weekly or monthly is a different debate.

Rest weeks are a bit of a fallacy as if your body responds to a 4 week calendar.
Build shallower and take an easier day or two as needed.

Polarised training is very misunderstood. They like to think it's a binary system, on or off.
People seem to think "easy" is like a recovery intensity and just pootle.
Most times it's z2 which is relatively easy, but requires focus to not push too hard, or slack off. "Hard" has multiple options depending on what you are wanting to achieve with that particular session. Doesn't need to be eyeballs out, but can be strength driven, or v02max to anaerobic capacity.
And the grey area in between that the purests say avoid? Well I get given a fair amount of that to do, as that's what drives the aerobic side of things, but if you looked at my breakdown in golden cheetah/ tp etc, it still looks very much like I do a polarised plan.
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iheartbianchi
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by iheartbianchi

jekyll man wrote:
Wed Mar 24, 2021 11:44 am
Quite a few things in ^^ that don't make sense at all to me.

Adaptation will make your 200w example feel easier (rpe) but unless you change aeroness or weather conditions, you're never going going to get faster at the same power.

At some point you either have to increase intensity or duration. Whether that's weekly or monthly is a different debate.
That's the problem. You are essentially saying, "at some point you're going to have to guess when and by how much to increase intensity or duration." And what do most people do? They are impatient, they want to get better faster, so they guess too much in the hard direction. Let's all be honest with ourselves. How many times have we looked at our Strava average power for a ride in despair, to see that your average power decreased by 20 watts for the same ride compared to last week, and you decide you need to push it next time to save yourself the anguish and disappointment to convince yourself that you're not getting slower? Or push a PR for a segment just so you can mentally convince yourself that your training is working and you are improving? And that leads to burnout or injury. In the case of a non-workout (not high intensity) day, if you're feeling tired after a ride, feeling like you need to take a nap, or sore/tired the next morning, I'm sorry but you're doing it wrong and it won't be sustainable.

(Also, we have numerous research now that shows that most physiological aerobic adaptations to training occur by the 45 minute mark and by the 90 minute mark. Long rides past 90 minutes serve a different function altogether, but the evidence is there to support frequency of stimulus over concentrated durations, so I challenge the notion that we have to always consider "increasing intensity or duration" at some point.)

The real question is, if you're going to guess, why do you buy online coaching or training programs which essentially force you to guess?

I guarantee you, absent some underlying medical condition, if you pedal at 130-150bpm for 45-60 minutes a day every day, you will see your power and speed naturally increase gradually every day. And you will feel very good, recovered, rested and not a single bit of pain anywhere. The problem is, you'll need to do this for 3-4 years to build a solid foundation, and nobody wants to wait that long.
Last edited by iheartbianchi on Thu Mar 25, 2021 4:19 am, edited 2 times in total.
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TheRich
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by TheRich

jekyll man wrote:
Wed Mar 24, 2021 11:44 am
Rest weeks are a bit of a fallacy as if your body responds to a 4 week calendar.
Build shallower and take an easier day or two as needed.
Crazy idea: Take some time to take it easy when you feel like it. Your "coach" most likely isn't following you around and monitoring your sleep or mental stress.

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by jlok

iheartbianchi wrote:
Thu Mar 25, 2021 3:58 am
I guarantee you, absent some underlying medical condition, if you pedal at 130-150bpm for 45-60 minutes a day every day, you will see your power and speed naturally increase gradually every day. And you will feel very good, recovered, rested and not a single bit of pain anywhere. The problem is, you'll need to do this for 3-4 years to build a solid foundation, and nobody wants to wait that long.
Exactly this.
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Mcdeez
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by Mcdeez

iheartbianchi wrote:
onemanpeloton wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 10:47 am

That's interesting, I haven't come across that approach before.

My understanding that a gradual increase is training stress/stimulus is needed in order to drive adaptation. If that stimulus is lower and lower every week then I wonder how the adaptation might differ....

Agree with being flexible and listening to your body
I disagree with this characterization (although we may be saying the same thing, I think the way you worded it is very easy to misinterpret).

You're not supposed to be gradually increasing training stress/stimulus at all. You are supposed to getting faster and stronger over time naturally as a result of your training, not forcing it by increasing stress.

200 watts for 1 hour is 200 watts for 1 hour. As you get more fit, you will cover more ground in 1 hour at 200 watts, and you will be travelling faster. hat your message implies is, you should then push to 210 watts for 1 hour to "make it harder." That's not how it works.

Let's say 200 wats for 1 hour equals 140bpm HR. Ignore the watts . You look at the 140bpm. So once you are more fit, you stay constant at 140bpm, but now you are doing 210 watts for 1 hour but still at 140bpm. And eventually 250 wats for 1 hour at 140bpm. In other words, your exertion level is exactly the same. You are simply going faster and farther for the same amount of effort for the same amount of time. As Greg Lemond once said, "It never gets easier (or harder). You only go faster."

In other words, for each training zone, your respective effort or intensity level should remain a constant and not change over time.
But the thing is that your heart rate can vary from day to day depends of your condition,etc. That's why they say not to workout 100% with heart rate

iheartbianchi
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by iheartbianchi

Mcdeez wrote:
Tue May 11, 2021 3:23 pm
But the thing is that your heart rate can vary from day to day depends of your condition,etc. That's why they say not to workout 100% with heart rate
Who says that? The variation of heart rate is completely overblown - oddly enough, thousands of elite endurance athletes in other sports rely 100% on heart rate every day, but somehow cyclists have significant daily variations in heart rate?

Unless you are doing something terrible to your body (like too much sugar, caffeine, smoking, drinking), or are overtrained/burnt out/injured, your heart rate day to day is more or less stable and consistent.
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by maxim809

I'm curious to know what other's perspectives are, but lately I have been of the opinion that if you are going to self-coach using HR, then it takes a good 3~4 years of observing your own heart rate to truly get a great handle on understanding how to read it.

And over those years the monitoring needs to be deliberate and with critical thinking. Such that you are considering all the external factors that could have influenced your HR, so that you can extract just the information you need as it pertains solely in the context of just exercise and recovery.

To be clear, I'm not trying to discourage training with HR. In fact quite the opposite because the sooner you do it the faster you can learn about yourself.

My real point is that, yes, indeed there are many factors that influence your daily HR: sleep, nutrition, heat/cold, stress, anxiety, fatigue, exercise intensity, breathing technique -- and I believe it takes several seasons of focused, daily monitoring in order to pry these variables apart.

It is a tactic skill that cannot easily be given to you as a formula or a 10-step tutorial. It takes years of consciously remembering everything you do or is happening around you, both on-and-off the bike. Do this long enough, and one day you will wake up and find you can read the factors that are influencing your HR. With pretty great though never perfect accuracy. And once you reach this point, it becomes a powerful training metric alongside Watts & RPE.

I think HR simply has a steeper learning curve than Watts, and with the advent of more affordable power meters, it has temporarily fallen out of favor in the cycling community. It is not as cool to talk about HR, tho you are considered rad, modern and hip for training with power.

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by DirtiousDirte

From personal experience I use power, hr and how I'm feeling to determine a rest week. This recently led me to switch from a 3 on 1 off 4 week cycle to a 2 on 1 off 3 week cycle.

Obviously power is the goal and declines when I'm accumulating fatigue. Resting HR generally goes up and I can't get my performing HR as high when I'm feeling tired. RPE creeps up leading up to a rest week. All three combined point towards a rest week for me. That being said, I have made some recent changes to things recently as I found I was kind of trapped in the mindset of following the formula rather than listening to these signs.

The reason I did the rest week on the the 4th week was simply I just thought that is what you did. However, I have always found the 3rd week felt like I was scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of fitness. Power would be down, HR would be less responsive, RPE would be up, and I felt obligated to stick it out rather than motivated to do the work. I also found on that 3rd week I would become a grump around the house and not necessarily the most patient father or partner. I started wondering if maybe I was going too deep in that 3rd week and not really recovering properly in the 4th week.

Watching one of Sieler's videos where he discusses his daughter's training and they talk about the switch from a 7 day cycle to a 9 day cycle. It opened my mind to different cycles based on how I respond. I had already switched to polarized and increased the number of Sieler Z1 days but still that 3rd week had me feeling hollow. So I decided to follow the signs rather than the formula and switched to 2 on, 1 off.

The switch to polarized and this new cycle initially felt like I wasn't going hard enough which tempted me back to my old ways. However, as I started feeling fresher overall I was hitting higher heartrates on my hard days and then the PBs in power started coming. I felt like I was able to go harder and noticed on my powermetre that in fact I was.

The other thing I noticed is my Sieler Z1 work got faster at the same HR. For efficiency/effectiveness I run on my Z1 days because I live in a rolling hilly area which causes the riding to be very stochastic and difficult to stay in a specific zone. Running makes it easier. Going easier more often and reducing the amount of intensity eventually led my pace per km almost a minute faster in Z2 HR (Sieler Z1). In terms of power and HR. I use Xert and my LTP has gone up. When I am around but under LTP my HR is in Z2 which confirms the increase power at the same HR. In other words I'm getting faster for the same cost.

Still, at the end of the second 'on' week power would decline, HR would be less responive, and RPE would increase. I take this as a sign to cut the intensity out but keep the volume consistent - I go easy on the usual hard days. During the rest week I'm careful to keep the power down and stay within the lower HR zones. I look to RPE as the indicator to how the week is going. I find RPE comes down throughout the week for the same efforts as the beginning and I started getting the itch to go hard again. The power targets are easier to hit, my HR becomes more responsive, and RPE feels easy.

What does this all mean? Breaking away from the formula to using power, HR, and RPE combined are the best ways to determine a rest week. You can also use these 3 factors to determine if your rest week is working, and when you're ready to reintroduce some intensity. This is all done under the umbrella of polarized training.

Granted this is all from one individual so I'd take it with a grain of salt. I only hope my experience helps someone out and speak solely from personal anecdotes as I'm a financial analyst, not a sports scientist ;)

*EDIT* One additional note: I have two young kids (oldest is 3) and don't get a lot of sleep. My HR relative to my pace is pretty consistent for my runs even with a bad night but my RPE can vary quite a bit. During the hard riding efforts that HR varies more depending on my sleep.

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by maxim809

^ Awesome anecdote and fun to read. Agreed that using the signals of Power+HR+RPE combined can help "triangulate" when to recover and when to go hard. The timing may vary slightly for everyone based on where they are at with their fitness and stage in life, but I like the general guideline of looking at power targets and HR responsiveness, baselined by the RPE you felt to achieve those targets & responsiveness...

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by AJS914

It's just not difficult at all to train by heart rate or RPE. It only seems difficult in light of unnecessary modern, trainer based, interval perscriptions.

If the prescription is 15 minutes at 52% of FTP, 2 minutes 75% of FTP, 3 minutes 50%, 15 minutes 97%, 5 minutes 50%, etc, etc. People look at that think that it's impossible to do this very "scientific" training by HR and without a power meter. They also think their coach is a genius for coming up with such specific percentages.

In reality if you are doing do a warmup and 3x15minutes at threshold, then you can just do that by feel. It's really not hard and if you are 5 or 10% off, it's not a big deal. If you are 10% above your threshold then you'll figure that out before you finish your 15 minute interval. If you were 10% low then, so what, you got mostly the same adaptations anyway.

VO2max - full gas for 3, 4, or 5 minutes. You don't need a fancy prescription. Tabatas? Full gas and then pedal easy, repeat.

iheartbianchi
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by iheartbianchi

maxim809 wrote:
Wed May 12, 2021 5:04 pm

I think HR simply has a steeper learning curve than Watts, and with the advent of more affordable power meters, it has temporarily fallen out of favor in the cycling community. It is not as cool to talk about HR, tho you are considered rad, modern and hip for training with power.
I know you want others' perspective, and I appologize for jumping in, but I think it's the opposite :) I personally think watts are even more difficult to interpret or utilize accurately. For example, if you live in rolling terrain, it's really hard to maintain a stable level of watts, and you can see fluctuations of 50 watts or more every 10 seconds. In fact, I would say the instant display of current power is a huge detriment in this scenario. For example, taking an extreme case, what happens when you are going downhill at 0 watts, but you just completed a climb at 300 watts and your HR is still at 170bpm? Are you getting any aerobic benefit or not? Are you still stressing your body even though you're not pedaling at all?

In a more realistic case, let's say you're at 250 watts, but you hit a slight downhill and you didn't shift gears so you find yourself at same cadence but now at 200 watts. But now you're at 20% less power, but your heart rate is the same. Does this mean you are exerting 20% less effort, and accumulating 20% less fatigue and exercise, during this time? Of course this scenario will only last 5-10 seconds or so assuming you shift gears appropriately, but these scenarios can accumulate to hundreds of similar instances in a single ride. This is why "normalized power" metrics were created, but that's just pure guesswork.

Is it the same effort and training stimulus to say pedal at 300 watts for 30 seconds followed by 100 watts for 30 seconds to average out at 200 watts for a minute, vs. 200 watts constantly for a minute?

If you're smashing your pedals at 600 watts and you feel your legs burning, what exactly is happening to your body? What if your HR is at 85% of max as opposed to 95% of max? What does this say about your fitness?
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by maxim809

iheartbianchi wrote:
Thu May 13, 2021 3:42 am
I know you want others' perspective, and I appologize for jumping in, but I think it's the opposite :)
Haha, I want to hear it from all sides and you are definitely included in that. I am after different people's opinions to help me view things in a better way.

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