Recovery On Demand for the Advanced Athlete

I’m at a camp in Switzerland this week with a group of first-time Ironman triathletes. When I do these with Tridynamic,  who manages the camps, we bring in local experts to add depth what may even be differing points of view from the staff's. This week Ronnie Schildknecht, the four-time winner of Ironman Switzerland, not only spoke to the group but also took us on a guided tour of the bike course. A great experience. And we had Darren Smith (read an interview with Darren here) talk one evening.

Daren has been a friend of mine for many years. He’s a triathlon coach from Australia who works with elite ITU athletes. He’s produced several World Champs including Lisa Norden who accompanied him to the talk.

Darren is a sharp guy and always says things that set my mind to working for days after. As usual, he had several gems on Monday evening when he spoke. One of them was something he calls “recovery on demand.”

Instead of scheduling recovery periods into his athletes’ training plans he remains quite flexible and includes it when he sees signs of excessive fatigue. This is quite logical and the way most advanced athletes should actually do it. It’s hard to predict with accuracy when one will need a couple of days to rest up. But for the less-experienced athlete it’s probably best to schedule it at given intervals, such as every third or fourth week.

Advanced athletes should be able to not only recognize the need for rest but be willing to also “take their medicine.” If self-coached, advanced athletes are unwilling to back off despite several signs of extensive overreaching, or if they can't easily recognize excessive fatigue, then scheduling R&R must be the norm.

Recovery on demand is more difficult for the coach to do than it is for the athlete. Few coaches have daily, face-to-face contact with their athletes. Darren does. His athletes live and train in the same town for several weeks out of the year. He sees each every morning and has a brief conversation with them. From this he can determine what their readiness-to-train status is. The long-distance coach can ask questions by email with forms and even by phone, but this is much less effective than seeing and talking personally as Darren does.

The bottom line here is that periodization does not have to be rigid and inflexible as many, for some unknown reason, believe is the case. It can be quite flexible—and must be, not only in terms of rest but also with regards to workouts.

Comments

[Tristan Bergh]

Interesting to find in writing what I am finding in my own training. I went through a coached phase of rigidly structured HR-based training, with the bulk being 3 hr 60-75% of max HR rides and scheduled rest/recovery rides. I increasingly found myself riding longer than specified while adhering to the recovery schedule. Now I find myself naturally following the 'recovery on demand' cycles. These are converging on a light few days (coffee rides) for a 4 day cycle, while watching my body's sleep responses, waking HR and tellingly, my body's responses to my iron and B-12 supplements.

I would say that as I moved to elite level (I race in a Cat 1 team in South Africa) I have been training my ability to read my body and hence the ability to manage my recovery.

[Matt]

While still a novice, I concur with Tristan and had to insert some recovery just this week (scheduled as Build 1, week 3) after a race on Sunday taxed me more than I anticipated. So I'll resume higher intensity training when the legs feel better and augment next week's regularly scheduled R&R as needed.

Like Joe says, don't fill out your ATP in pen because it will undoubtedly change.

[Pieter]

but how to know - without mistake - one needs to shedule a rest ???

It seems that this is the holy grail to training, if one could only rest when it is necessary and train (with the right dose) when possible, hmmm...

Is it not for that that one is using a certain sheme of periodisation, as that holy grail is so difficult to find ???

[Rob]

Hi Joe,
Nice topic! I work with a small group of athletes that I see 3-4xweek and have on occasion instructed them to take extra rest not in the training plan. They kind of hum and haw not sure if they should but when they do they say how much better they feel after resting. Now, question is; how do you get the really motivated athletes to actually listen to their bodies or you the coach? Or is it just a case of continuously educating them about the importance of rest and this recovery on demand?

[Joe Friel]

Rob--Yes, some athletes are resistant to training. Some are also resistant to coaching. If unsuccessful in changing their minds then it is probably best to part company since it would appear they are in reality self-coached.

[Joe Friel]

Pieter--It comes down to experience. There is no formula that works for everyone the same way. That's why this is primarily recommended for advanced/experienced athletes.

[T_Akers]

We did this all the time in swimming, pretty classic model for the larger clubs where we would have 60+ athletes in the pool at once.

You simply have your fast lanes and slow lanes. Once we noticed an athlete in the faster lane physically breakdown from the workload, they were moved over to the slower lanes to recover for a few days.

If you know your athletes well the signs that fatigue is kicking in are all pretty obvious (which isnt always easy with online based coaching). The harder part is taming the competitive juices and actually having athletes take true recovery. That was my biggest adjustment to the bike, learning what a true recovery workout actually is.