The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS

Rest Day vs Recovery Ride: Making Smart Recovery Choices (#251)

• CTS • Season 5 • Episode 251

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OVERVIEW
Is there a real benefit to a recovery ride or would you be better off just taking the day off completely? Both recovery rides and complete rest are beneficial, but the choice between the two depends on how fatigued you are, your mood, and what else you have going on in your life. Sports science says they accomplish the same thing and are essentially interchangeable. But there are absolutely times when Coach Adam Pulford recommends active recovery (easy ride, walking, yoga, etc.) and other times when he advocates for complete rest. Learn to make the right choice when it really matters in Episode 251 of "The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast".

TOPICS COVERED

  • Active vs. Passive Recovery
  • When to choose complete rest or passive recovery
  • When to choose a recovery ride or active recovery
  • Off-the-bike active recovery
  • Research on active vs. passive recovery effectiveness

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HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Speaker 1:

From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now on to our show. Welcome back, time Crunch fans. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford.

Speaker 1:

Today, we'll explore the value of the recovery ride. Many coaches and programs call for it. Many athletes do it, or think they're doing it, or attempt to do it. But are they doing it right? How do you get it wrong and when should you choose the easy ride or to ride the couch? We'll talk about all this and more on today's podcast which, by the way, is inspired by you, our audience. As you know, if you're a longtime listener, you can write in with any question you wish around all things endurance, training, racing, fueling, recovery equipment, etc. And we'll do our best to answer it on a future episode. Just head over to trainratecom backslash podcast and click on ask a training question, fill it out, send it over. We'd love to hear from all of you. So today's question comes from a listener in Colorado and she writes this hey, coach, adam, love the shows, keep them coming, thank you.

Speaker 1:

My question is on recovery rides. I'm a time crunched athlete riding only six to eight hours per week, and I feel like I'm wasting my time going easy for one hour recovery rides. So do we even need them? What's the value of recovery rides and does it matter versus rest days? Thanks, megan. So this is a really good question and I will give you the million dollar answer no, you do not need recovery rides.

Speaker 1:

If your goal is rest and deep recovery, you can skip the recovery ride. If your goal is to be fully restored, a full rest day is the better option, especially if you're a time crunched athlete. Why is that? Well, if you're training six to eight hours a week, I'm sorry, this is the truth, but we typically don't carry a ton of residual fatigue over from training. Yes, you can go hard, yes, you can do high intensity. Yes, you will get tired from training. But if you're sleeping well and you're eating well and all this all the good athlete habit things that we talk about on this podcast the fatigue is actually coming from more life stuff and under recovery, and that's usually a very deeper thing. So a pure rest day is way better to do and just know that the legs should be there for you when you hit the bike again if you take that rest day.

Speaker 1:

So then the question is this why do so many people coaches included prescribed recovery rides? Well, let's talk about active versus passive recovery. We'll talk about benefits of each and then we'll get into some scenarios on when you would choose active or recovery ride or passive ride the couch. So, both in research and in practice, if you have deep fatigue meaning TSB is low, legs are thick and heavy, I am tired is is, is the mood right, passive recovery or no writing at all?

Speaker 1:

No training is the best thing for recovery. Glycogen stores can fully replenish hydration of plasma volume, can top off your autonomic nervous system can stay in that rest and digest mode all day, as well as all the other very complicated things in our physiology that occur when rest is had. Rest day is a rest day and this means no training. Just do your work that you're doing, do your chores, do the family stuff, normal human behavior. Okay, active recovery is a good option when you have mild fatigue, let's call it that, and you just need an easy day on the bike before hitting it hard the next day, okay.

Speaker 1:

And so if you have some efforts to do the next day, or you want your legs to perhaps feel better for the workout or the race, whatever the efforts are, uh, some zone one, easy spinning, which, by the way, is going to be below 60% of FTP. That's that zone one that we're talking about when I typically prescribe it. It's going to be a 40 to 59%, something like that. So that's the type of intensity that we're talking about when we say zone one, uh, uh, intensity. So spinning like that for 45 to 60 minutes, uh, can help in that feeling or the sensation of my legs being a little bit lighter and maybe that that carries over to the next day. But just know that a full rest day will do the exact same thing, if not better results, when it comes to actual recovery. Also, there's a whole host of cognitive benefits from having just an easy session versus always hammering or always having some performance objective to achieve. Simply riding your bike easy is really relaxing and I fully endorse that.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so if you're disciplined enough to keep to that zone one easy spinning on the recovery day and let the brain unwind and you have time to do this and and and it's relaxing to you go ahead and do that spin. Like I said, 45 to 60 minutes, that's about the limit that I prescribed for my time. Crunched athletes and any longer than that, yeah, you'll probably be wasting your time. But 45, 60 minute easy spin, all good. So when should you choose passive versus active recovery? Let's first start with passive.

Speaker 1:

And here's here's a couple uh, just like scenarios that I see with myself, with my athletes, and kind of like tease out of some of the research as well. So if you have deep fatigue, meaning you wake up and you're tired, the mood is low, you don't want to train, right and you just had something big over the weekend, take a day off, you need a day off. Okay, way better than an easy spin. Now there's scenarios is maybe there's a recovery ride scheduled, but it's the end of the day, it's Monday, you had a huge day at work. It's like eight o'clock at night, coach is calling for a recovery spin. But you know what? You're better off getting some food, going to bed, getting more sleep, passive recovery. Now, if you typically and in our, thinking of and stressing about all the other things you could be doing on this recovery, uh ride and you actually do the recovery ride and you're like, oh God, I could be doing this, I could be doing that. Oh my God, I have to go pick up the kids and you're like jamming to get it in. Just take a rest day, Cause I think that there's no way for us to quantify that. Uh, but it's there and you're better off just getting some shit done versus going zone one on your bike.

Speaker 1:

Another one is when you went bigger than planned. No athlete ever does that, but you went bigger than planned on the weekend, like you just added on many hours more. The TSS was bigger and maybe coach gives you the option. I give this to my athletes Sometimes on Monday. I just say, hey, rest day with options, your choice, you can do, you know no training. You can spin light, you can go for a walk, is something like that. Give the athlete some options and you went bigger than planned. Then go easier than planned. Take a full rest day. Use passive recovery to hit the reset button before you get into the week's training.

Speaker 1:

Now, finally, if you're one of those riders who just can't help themselves to go hard up the hill or throw in a few openers on your recovery rides, my advice to you is just rest, don't ride your bike. You're definitely not helping your recovery case by going hard on these easy days, no matter how good you feel at the end. And then you want to sprint. It's just silly, okay. So let's run through some scenarios where you choose active recovery or the recovery guide. Now an easy spin between hard days, do it all the time. Perfect Zone one easy. Then go hard the next day when you've had that big weekend maybe that I was just talking about and you've taken a rest day already, but you just want to get the legs spinning and going again before you hit some hard intervals midweek. That's when you do an active recovery spin, when your work and life schedule are balanced and you have some extra time and you don't have to cram to get it in.

Speaker 1:

So in that scenario where I was saying, hey, choose passive rest If he's just like the end of the day and coach is calling for a, an easy ride. It's, it's the opposite, right, it's like oh, I don't have anything until two o'clock, it's it's about noon. Yeah, I'll do that easy spin. And again, just like, no performance goals, just go pedal your bike and enjoy it. Another one is when the legs are still tired from the weekend and the program calls for intervals on Tuesday. And it's Tuesday and you're like, this ain't going to go good. I tell my athletes ride easy, self-determine that and choose to go easy on that day. We can just move the intervals down a day, no big deal. So that's when, another way or another reason why you choose active recovery.

Speaker 1:

Now, finally, quick word about off the bike, active recovery. So if you're like me and your rest days are mostly just sitting in front of the computer and there's not a lot of natural movement going on in your everyday life, taking some movement breaks are a great thing. So maybe that's a light 20 minute yoga flow in the morning or before lunch and that just brings some blood flow to the muscles, wakes up the mind, it just like gets your mind off of work and it's a very good thing to do to incorporate that in walking your dog or taking a light walk, you know, 20 minutes around the neighborhood. Great way to just break it up. Okay, I walk a lot when I'm on phone calls. So instead of sitting at my computer while I'm talking to my athletes, if I'm not looking at training peaks or something like that, that adds in some steps and just kind of gets me moving and increases blood flow again, like I said, and all of that is just normal human movement. It's not uh, it's not training, so no need to put it on training peaks.

Speaker 1:

If you do a 20 minute super light yoga flow and you quantify it as three or four or five TSS, like they ain't going to move the needle, that's doing nothing for your training but it's doing wonders for your health. That's great, do it. But just don't stress about logging it. Okay, now, not moving hits the reset button. Well for recovery as an athlete. But we do want to stay healthy as humans and that's where general movement is good.

Speaker 1:

Uh, here's something that I tell my athletes often recovery rides are more for the head than the legs, and that's a true statement. Much of the data suggests that if you have 24 hours to recover and one group of athletes does zone one active recovery for 60 minutes or less and the other just lays on the couch, there will likely be no significant changes in performance the next day for either group, unless the athletes are in a heavy training phase, meaning they have deep fatigue. They have deep fatigue, then passive recovery that passive recovery group will always win the recovery game because they get more restoration. So, finally, my last word here is rest is resting, okay. What would I say is you know, in order to do your best, rest, you just need to rest, okay.

Speaker 1:

Actually, doing recovery is doing nothing at all, and there's a great book about this. It's called good to go and it's by Christy Ashwandan. Ironically, she is doing a presentation, um, uh, or she's giving a presentation to CTS tomorrow and also, ironically, this, this question that Megan posed here, uh, comes at a time, uh, where recovery is kind of on everybody's mind right now, which is good. But Christie was actually my, uh, my third interview of this podcast ever. So if you, if you want to listen to my interview with her, go all the way back to episode number three for that one, and or you could just get her book and read about how all these different recovery modalities out there, anything from cold plunges to infrared saunas, squeezy boots, as she likes to call them, theraguns, and stuff like that. She talks about all the recovery modalities out there and what they actually do versus what they're trying to achieve what they actually do versus what they're trying to achieve. Overall, her main emphasis is to keep it really simple, which is why I love this book and recommend it to all my athletes. Okay, so, and now I'm recommending it to all of you.

Speaker 1:

So, to bring this thing home and, in summary, if you want true deep recovery, rest day and not writing, is your best option. Now, if you have time, you want to get out and move a bit. Get some fresh air. Spin easy yeah, do a recovery ride, have some active recovery. You can also stay off the bike and do some active recovery, but don't get tempted into doing any sprints, hill climbs or hard efforts. Just stick with the plan, stick with zone one recovery and allow your body to rest. So that's it.

Speaker 1:

That's our show for today. If you liked what you heard, please share it with a friend or a training partner. If you have any questions on your own, don't forget to submit those over to me and the team, and also if you want more information on active versus passive recovery. I've linked to all the research that I've talked about here in today's episode on our show notes and landing page on Apple Podcasts, as well as trainrightcom, and go to podcasting and you'll find it there. I also included a link to Christy's book, and that's a great resource to help quiet the noise on all this recovery stuff.

Speaker 1:

Just remember, keep it simple and when in doubt, rest it out. Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainrightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.

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Adam Pulford

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