Body Performance - Part Five

Recovery Cycles, Adapting, Tapering, Peaking

You can access the full series here.

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Kicking Back in Palm Desert, CA

If you catch yourself thinking that you can’t wait until your rest day… then back off immediately.

At the start, preemptively resting is a leap of faith. Once you learn it’s better to back off early, it gets easier.

Today, I want to discuss unloading and tapering.

• As a new athlete, these terms meant “rest.”

• As a coach, I learned a better way to view them.

Let’s bring back Clas:

We did so many things right, but one important thing we missed was recovery days and easier weeks. We could have been a lot better if we had put in more recovery days let say every 4^th week.

It would have helped me focus more on the training weeks if I knew there was an easier week coming.

Looking back, I trained too hard for too long. When I cut back on the training after 3-4 month of continuous hard training, I just got tired.

I think it’s important in a longer training period to have blocks of easier days to let the body recover. The idea being not to be deep down when going into the taper for a race.

Like last time, there’s a lot to unpack in Clas’ observations.

• Recovery Cycles

• Mental Components of Fatigue

• Illness In Unloading

• Freshness In Peaking

The #1 point I’d like to make.

If you’re not feeling better when you back off, then you have too much stress in your life.

Stress being a mixture of training load, mental freshness and everything else you have going on.

Long before your A-race, you are going to have opportunities to test recovery and tapering strategies.

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Recovery Cycles

There are all kinds of loading strategies available:

• Low-standard deviation training

• 5:2 Swedish Loading (5 Days On, 2 Days Off)

• 5:2 Friel Loading (5 Days Easy, 2 Days Hard)

• 80:20 Polarized Loading

• Pyramidal Loading

• 2:1, 3:1, 4:1 Weekly Loading (X Weeks On, 1 Week Light)

When you dig into what successful athletes actually do… you may find their training logs differ from their training strategies.

The best example of this is in the appendix of Nils van der Poel’s book. Nils was following a 5:2 loading strategy, which would be expected to yield ~9 easy days a month.

Gordo Byrn @feelthebyrn1

Total workload was not radical - the results from the work, however, were superior 7 days off March, 108 hr 11 DO April, 122 hr 16 DO May, 124 hr 13 DO June, 147 hr 16 DO July, 89 hr 41% days off End of Base... >25,000 KJ in 5 days end July 2021

Here is a World and Olympic Champion resting more than “his” protocol.

Two things of note:

1. Some of the strategies appear to be the opposite of each other.

   1. 5:2 can mean either 5 loading days or 5 easy days.

2. All of the strategies work.

How can all the strategies work if they are so different?

It’s not the strategy.

Well then, what is it?

I propose three mechanisms.

• Load Over Time

• Scheduled Recovery

• Observation & Iteration

Let’s break these down for you.

You think you’re searching for the optimal loading strategy. What you need is to Understand Your Recovery Cycle.

Your recovery cycle is your ability to adapt to stress.

What makes it difficult to optimize recovery is the feedback we are going to notice is “not working” feedback.

• Sickness

• Illness

• Injury

• Niggles

• Mood Swings

• Staleness

When our plan is working, drama is absent.

We are doing our Basic Week, adapting and getting on with our lives.

When we get “not working” feedback, we need to reduce load before we interrupt the benefits of compounding.

So, pick your loading strategy and remember… what you are seeking to optimize is your recovery cycle.

• Your Loading Strategy Comes With A Recovery Cycle

• The Recovery Cycle Is The MINIMUM

• Take Extra Recovery As Indicated By:

  • “Not Working” Feedback

  • Heart Rate Metrics

  • Mood & Soreness

  • Emotional Stability

  • Binges & Cravings

Optimizing the recovery cycle is tough to do. As Clas notes, it’s the key to Becoming Even Better.

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The Mental Component of Fatigue

Racing fast requires mental reserves. Don’t tap these reserves before race day. If you find you really-need-to-rest, you’ve taken yourself too far.

Scheduled recovery, with permission for additional easy days, reduces the mental burden on the athlete.

As an elite, I noticed…

Every thought I have slows my recovery.

If you struggle with backing off then I recommend two mindsets.

• Adapting, Not Resting

• Peaking, Not Tapering

Many athletes “don’t like to rest.” Part of this mechanism may be an addiction to the feelings of exercise, and the hormonal shifts that result from training.

Reframe the situation to one of adaptation & improvement.

Make a list of active recovery strategies so the athlete has something “to do” while they back off their loading.

• Mobility & Floor-Based Yoga

• Walking

• Short Easy Spin or Swim

• Non-Training Projects¹

Incorporate these activities every single week.

Being able to switch off, and settle down, is a skill that will transfer to better race performances.

Train the ability to switch off and settle down.

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Illness In Unloading

A bit of tough love:

• The blown taper doesn’t exist.

• If your metrics crash when you back off, then you are not tolerating your program.

• If you get sick in your taper, then your build was too stressful.

• Unloading doesn’t make us sick.

You will see fatigue & recovery patterns well before your A-race.

1. Build Your Recovery Cycle

2. Learn To Switch Off & Settle Down

Everyone makes mistakes.

Far fewer learn from them.

• Make Mistakes Visible

• Create Systems To Avoid Repeating Mistakes²

Loading Is The Easy Part.

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Freshness In Peaking

Above, I wrote…

Freshness, In Peaking

This is a much more effective way to view the taper.

• Freshness

• Peaking

• Preparing To Race

We are not tapering down towards the end of the season. When I read that sentence, I see a vehicle slowing towards a stop sign.

We are freshening towards a peak racing performance. We are going to race smart, finish strong and blow through the finish line.

Across this freshening period, we want to feel our specific capacity rising.

Saving our best for race day.

1. I use writing to balance my drive to exercise.

2. The Dynamic Loading section will lay out my system.