Recovery weeks

[Dominic]

What is the consensus about recovery weeks? Is it a reduction in volume and intensity, or just volume or just intensity? Does it make much difference if the week is every 3rd or 4th week?

One last question, seeing as I am trying to fit in 3 sports can I reduce training around two (cycling/running) and keep training the same for the other (swimming)?

Cheers

[Paul H]

Depends on how much training you are doing. There are not many in ACC who do enough to justify a light week.

Personaly, I just play it by ear with how I feel and have my rest weeks when something crops up at work or at home.

[nick de meyer]

i would recommend a reduction in volume and intensity in the 3rd or 4th week, with hours down to 60%, depending on the athlete and amount of volume their currently doing, and what phase of training they are in, with some testing towards the end of the recovery week, and no strength training during a recovery week. this is the time that your body gets stronger and needs down time to recover from the previous 2-3 weeks if you've trained properly, ie increasing volume and / or intensity over the 2-3 weeks
if you don't have recovery weeks you will burnout, get injured, hit a plateau, become one paced, maybe become ill, maybe overtrained, and worse still end up with chronic fatigue, and then pneumonia, so its a good idea in my book..
hope that helps

[Dominic]

Thanks for that both of you. I take what you mean about training volume Paul. I am finding that fitting in more sports, I am doing more hours, around 12 at the moment, than I ever was when cycling. It is taking a while for my body to get used to it and am finding myself increasingly tired at the end of the week. I am also looking long term with the the main focus being July.

I will try a recovery week and then obviously if things are working as they should then when I resume proper training I should be able to handle more volume/intensity.