lyotard said:
Ti,
do you advocate, during block training, to make each workout progressively harder, or to treat these like straight sets and just duplicate the previous day's workout?
also, your summations of recovery, these are very interesting to anyone dying to progress. can you expand on what you mean by "the body using it's resources to recover then get stronger" please? and expanding on the "golden fleece" of recovery in any way...
i am sure this seem self explanatory to you perhaps, but i am interested on your take on this!
I do not recommend that you block train progressively harder each day of the block....why?.....because you are getting more and more fatigued as the block progresses and you don't want to "kill" yourself off physically and mentally. You want to train hard and damn hard but not nuts.
Now if you are juicing you could do it but not as a natural.
Ideally when you block train any one given energy system you want to make each successive day in the block a bit easier. You can keep the volume the same and just reduce interval length or you can both reduce total volume and interval length. ie: I have one of my top riders doing an hour of sprints in the am on day 1, and then 3 X 30 at threshold on his trainer in the pm, followed by 60 minutes on the road at Tempo.....then day two he does 2 X 30 and then 60 minutes on the road with 30 at tempo, and then day 3 he does 3 X 20 and then 60 on the road with 30 at tempo on the road. He follows that up with 2 full days of recovery but he recovers and adapts fast, most guys would need three days of easy recovery riding BELOW endurance zone for 30-60 minutes a day or days off.
Regarding recovery, adaptation and making progress. Most riders, even at a very high level , and even many coaches, under prescribe recovery time. They simply do not understand just how intense intense training can be and how hard it can be for the body to recover let alone adapt. It is way better to slightly under train than to slightly over train....and many many guys are always slightly over trained and then they wonder why they don't progress very well. In fact many guys stay the same, or almost so, year after year after year because of this.
Many riders don't factor in their own personal recovery equations....ie: the fact that they work, and sometimes at a physical job, and that they do other sports, have a girl friend, kids etc etc etc. All these things impact ones ability to recover and adapt.
Also, many coaches and riders look way too much at what the pro's are doing and they try to mirror them or almost so. Coaches let pro training methodology filter down to the coaching of lesser riders. This is a huge mistake because the pro's have genetically superior recovery ability, no job,no schooling, most don't even have a wife and they can get 10 hours of sleep a night and nap every day. Not only that but they have access to and use recovery enhancing agents like scrotal testosterone patches.
After hard training the body will direct all available energy to recovery....all that is left over from the basic activities of daily living that is. Once the body has recovered form the training stress, then, and ONLY THEN, can it get stronger. It can only get stronger if the body has the energy to do so AND the time to do so.
From a HARD three day block you may be able to recover in 24 hours if you are young, have few stressors in your life and have all your "ducks in a row" but very few will have enough time to supercompensate and get stronger unless you use drugs. So you often need 2 ad often 3 days to fully recovered and supercompensate. If makes no sense at all to train hard again UNTIL you have recovered AND supercompensated. If you do you are simply banging your head against a wall and you WILL overtrain...or at the very least fail to progress.
Now if you are NOT block training hard three days in a row then one day can be okay...but each day needs to be quite a bit easier and the third day should be no more than an endurance ride ie: day one might be sprints and then some VO2 work, day two might be threshold work and day three might be a longish endurance ride. However, even here many men would be best served with two full days of recovery here.
How do you know when you are ready to train again???.....by monitoring your waking resting heart rate, before you move around in bed, and by "feel". You do not train again until you have that desire to train...NEVER force yourself on the bike(unless you know you are being lazy of course). How many times have you(reader) forced yourself to ride after one day off and you really didn't want to ride?!
After 3-4 weeks or so the body needs more of a break to adapt properly as the increasing load is getting to be too much and 2-3 days off just cannot properly do the job any more, so you have to work in a recovery week of 5-7 days. Here again guys mess up and they make their recovery weeks too hard....the recovery week is for recovery and not to stimulate.
Sounds like you made a good call to rest today.
