Recovery

You cannot overtrain, only under recover.

Amongst the rules for training this one stands out because it not only highlights a critical ingredient of training - recovery - but also because it presents recovery from a different perspective in that it's not how much you train, but how much you recover that's the critical thing. As with most things about endurance sports, finding the balance between training and recovering is an art which oscillates from day-to-day and week-to-week, not to mention from person-to-person. An artful balance will allow the progressive overload that is crucial for development and improvement, from beginners to experienced.

Over time there have been all kinds of guidelines and rules for how to manage progressive overload, from taking morning HR to the 10% rule and 2-3 weeks hard / 1 week recovery, each of which is founded on worthy merit but at the same time is not perfect...which is true for most generalisations anyway!!

I don't subscribe to any of these rules or guidelines because I think they are too "broad brush" in style and application, robotic, limiting of development and out-dated...somewhat like using HR monitors to train by. I think that managing recovery should be a lot more flexible, based on a mix of recovery on demand and recovery around races, and take into account the profile of individual athletes.

The reason I don't follow a fixed cycle of recovery (eg, 2:1 or 3:1) is that very often the benefit of stringing together a number of good weeks of training is better than the stop-start routine of a fixed recovery week. That is, unless the athlete needs some down time - hence the recovery on demand - where they may only need a few days down time to get their mojo back. The key is being in tune with how each athlete is coping and feeling, and responding and adapting accordingly...hence why the best opening question for any coach is "how are you feeling", or something to that effect. A warm-up may even include a simple baseline test to determine how prepared an athlete is for a session.

Face-to-face coaching has this huge advantage over correspondance programming, as do smaller athlete groups where the coach can actually interact with each athlete - I find that up to about 15-17 athletes at a session is close to the limit for being effective as a coach in this way.

A monthly training program should be seen as idealistic, with the understanding it may - and probably should - change according to circumstances. Such a program really just sets out the progression for the month, where the details of how that is actually achieved can vary. Recovery on demand can mean any length of time, for example, post IM when the demand for recovery is high, so you cater for it accordingly. Similarly if an athlete has other life stresses, which take a toll including on ability to train.

In essence, a recovery week when an athlete is not in need of recovery is a lost opportunity to train and thus improve. Consistency is what we're after, and where there is a routine recovery week can lead to pushing too hard just before the recovery week, and than taking a few days to get going again after the recovery week.

Athletes are not very often building up volume, so the theory of stepping up weekly volume - the 10% rule - then cutting back in a recovery week doesn't apply. Consistency of training, with variations in intensity and sometimes frequency and volume, are the best variables to use.

The other time for recovery is around races, which an efficient and effective time for recovery because it allows an athlete to rest up and recover, which also helps race performance. This also includes recovery time afterwards. Of course where training is building up to a key, 'A' race then a taper would be included, but this is not appropriate for every race.

The key is to manage workload in an on-going manner, adapting to how each athlete is feeling and responding to training. General rules are safe for a mass-market approach, and do have their place, but reaching your potential requires thinking outside that square and being adaptive in your approach to training and recovery.