Why Recovery Days?

I recently answered this question for a German magazine. It's an issue that is seldom discussed and often taken for granted--recovery.

Question: Why are recovery days so essential? What happens to the body on a recovery day? What’s the best way to plan a recovery day?

Answer: I tell athletes that the hard training days only create the potential for fitness. They don’t result in fitness improvements unless there is rest. For it’s during short-term rest that the body adapts to the stresses of exercise. Muscle strength and endurance improves. The heart’s stroke volume (amount of blood pumped per beat) increases. Capillary beds in muscles grow allowing the heart to deliver more oxygen. Aerobic enzymes increase. Blood volume increases further enhancing oxygen delivery. Glycogen stores are restocked allowing for harder workouts in the following days. And these are only some of the physical changes that result from recovery.

Recovery days come in two forms: days of complete rest ("passive" recovery) and days with light exercise ("active" recovery). Passive recovery is generally best for novices. If they take the day off from exercise the day after a workout they will improve greatly. For the pure novice any form of training may very well be too stressful. As fitness improves, the recovery days are better spent doing some very light exercise. For the novice this could be light cross training in a sport such as swimming or cycling. Novice runners should never run on a recovery day. It's simply too stressful even for somewhat advanced novices.

The advanced, experienced athlete is best advised to train lightly on a recovery day as this maintains some of the most basic gains made in previous, harder sessions, especially economy of movement and aerobic endurance. Given the advanced athlete's high level of fitness, such a light training session is not stressful. But it must be easy. Making these sessions too hard is the most common mistake in training at this level. 

Regardless of one’s level of experience or fitness, the harder the hard workouts, the easier one’s recovery days should be.

Comments

[tribaby]

Good post - basic stuff but important. On a more general note but still related to this post, I'd be interested in some of your thoughts on novice vs experienced athletes. I'm struggling somewhere in between. I used to be in the experienced category but no longer have the time to train like that. I get frustrated with program planning because most of what's out there for my training availability assumes 'novice' and little or no background in sport..

[Derek Alvarado]

I've definitely noticed that after a hard or long day of training my body will feel better if I ride to work the next day (3 miles easy) than if I drive. The stiffness of the ancillary muscles subsides and general fatigue of the body mind lessens.

That said, I'm still discovering what constitutes a "hard" day. Lately I've been finding that I can train at a moderately hard level for several days (i.e. Tempo day, threshold day, tempo day, threshold day) for several days before needing rest. This goes along with some Performance Manager Chart case studies that you've posted in the past. When viewing those case studies it looked like fatigue was ramping up incredibly fast, faster than I could handle, but I've only been at this for 2 years. Perhaps now it's time to start pushing the envelope.

Could you share any methods or indicators you use to decide when you need a rest day?

[Nick]

Hi Joe,

I'm a competitive age grouper (sprint) and basing my training from the program in you book 'Your Best Triathlon'. I'm finding it a huge improvement on how I used to train. However, I'm not quite sure how to interpret the programs with respect to rest days; they seem to have a bold-faced excercise on every day, with additional optional recovery sets. Should I treat any of these days as recovery days or push through to the recovery week?

[Matt]

Hi Joe-

Great article and very timely. For the experienced athlete, setting intensity for active recovery is straightforward- 45-50% FTP. What about duration/TSS? Is 60 min/20-25 TSS appropriate?

Thanks
Matt

[Joe Friel]

Matt--Sure. Just depends on the athlete and the situation.

[Joe Friel]

Nick--Use recovery days to recover. It's just that some people can handle more sass than others and still recover.

[Joe Friel]

Derek--When one should recover and by how much is a very individualized matter. It really comes down to when it feels like it's time. Search my blog for _Recovery on Demand_.

[SteveL]

Joe: What are your thoughts in regard to HRV in determining easy days vs out right rest days? I've started using the application ithlete and it sure seems to track my need for rest days but I also find it frustrating. I'm 54 and seem to need more rest days for full recovery than I ever have!

[Rider]

Another important aspect about recovery that I learned from your book/blog is that by taking some recovery time prior to a hard workout allows you to work that much harder - in terms of intensity and/or duration - thus resulting in greater gains down the road. We all know athletes who carry a high training volume but who don't structure their training to have recovery days followed by specific, hard workouts, and so they don't make nearly the gains they might if they added more structure to all those weekly training hours.

[Shannon - Healthiful Balance]

Thank you for this! I think rest days are so important, too.

A link to this post will be in the HLB Newsletter. :)