How much recovery do you need?
In this latest article, coach Kevin looks at how much recovery you need – how you can track recovery and some of the important skills you can develop as an athlete that goes far beyond just training.
In a previous blog article, I explored the idea of whether recovery tools work and some different options you may wish to explore. If these recovery methods seem to work for you, then the next question you may have would be how much recovery do I need, and when?
There are two different ways to approach this question – either looking for a subjective (opinion-based) or objective (evidence-based solution). You may already know which method you might prefer to use – do you like to measure, track, dig into the numbers, or do you go more off perception & feel? Of course, there is no right or wrong way; the better way to choose might be to think, “Which method will I be most likely to stick with”? The least useful tool is the one that gets left to one side, unused. So that said, let’s start with a subjective method.
How do I feel today?
Ok, it seems obvious, but one method is just to consider how you feel. You can do this each morning after you’ve given yourself a chance to wake up, and it should give you an idea of your readiness for the next training session. Think about fatigue levels, any tightness or soreness, even your motivation levels if you like. It should, however, be consistent – perhaps write down the areas you will consider, then give yourself a score out of 10 (this doesn’t have to be for each area you are considering, an overall score will do). The key is to write it down – subjective assessments like this can be a very accurate measure once you have a little practice. Experienced athletes are often very good at understanding how their bodies feel and can usually track very closely to objective, measured methods. If you are relatively new to endurance sports, you may have to work up to be good at this by occasionally re-visiting your scores and perhaps ‘recalibrating’ your scale now and then. What a 7 means to you, for example, may change over time if your training is exploring your limits. It’s also important to try and use the full range of the scale – if you end up with a list of 5s and 6s, you won’t get much out of it.
Once you have a record of how you have been feeling each morning, you can start to look for trends. Does it move up and down based on how hard the training is each week? Are you consistently getting low scores at a particular stage? Have you learnt that if you get down to a 2 or 3, you often seem to get ill afterwards? Individual scores are not important – we all have days when we are more tired than others, but if you consistently score low, think about what this may mean. Perhaps 3 has been your lowest score to date, popping up once a month or so. If you are scoring yourself 3, 3, 4, 3 in a week, this is a sign that you really need to ease off the training load, increase recovery, or both! (please note these numbers are an illustration – find out what your own ‘red flag’ level is!)
Once you have got into a habit of scoring accurately, using the full range, and are reviewing scores now and again, you can use this type of tool to quickly assess if you need to focus on recovery more than usual or if your current practices are doing just fine.
Training Load Models
Our first ‘objective’ measure of required recovery is created by calculating a ‘score’ for your fatigue level using a training load model such as TSS (Training Stress Score – Coggan, Training Peaks). The idea is that by defining and then monitoring your training load each day (a function of exercise intensity and duration), you can understand how the effect of cumulative days of training is building up. Through some clever maths, your short term training load (ATL – acute training load) is compared to your long term training load (CTL – chronic training load), and the difference between the two is then defined as your fatigue level.
The logic to this is based on the theory of homeostasis – over time, the body will adapt to the conditions it is placed under. So over the longer duration, your body gets used to a particular training load (CTL), and then if you ask more of it in the short term (ATL), it will increase fatigue, or alternatively, if you ask less, it will recover. High fatigue scores mean you need to back off training and allow more recovery than you have been doing, and the reverse suggests that you are likely ready to do some racing or high-intensity training.
There are alternative methods than TSS to determine training load out there – TRIMP relies on heart rate (there are a few variations of this method), and ‘session RPE’ relies on your rate of perceived exertion score. This study compares the three and found all of them suitable, with the TSS method slightly better at predicting actual performance changes.
HRV methods
Another objective way to measure fatigue is through heart rate variability. There are several apps and devices available that will track your HRV and then use this to determine your level of fatigue, or often the inverse – your ‘readiness’ to train. HRV works by measuring the variation of the time between individual heartbeats. The more variation between beats, the more your body is in a ‘parasympathetic’ or rested state. Less variation means you are in a more stressed or ‘fight and flight’ type of response. Daily HRV measurements can be used in the same way that daily training load can be monitored over time to assess your fatigue levels.
A little like for the training load methods, a fair bit of mathematics/modelling goes on behind the HRV based readiness score to turn the raw data into something useful or easy to interpret. Not all systems do this in the same way, so be aware that despite being all based on HRV, they might not give the same result. The advice from the experts is to use systems that rely more on the trends of the raw data and show this, rather than a ‘score’ where this final number is generated is unclear.
Advantages and disadvantages
Taking each method in turn, what are the advantages and disadvantages of each one?
For the subjective self-assessment method, a key advantage is its simplicity. No special equipment is required; it’s quick and easy to do and has the benefit of forcing you to really consider how your body is feeling – an essential skill for any athlete. Also, as you have to choose the scores, you will understand precisely what a string of 3’s feels like for you – unlike the objective methods, personalisation is built in! For no investment, it may well be a very accurate way to determine your fatigue levels and, therefore, what amount of recovery you need. The flip side is that if you are not good at making these assessments and/or don’t do them regularly, then the opposite is true – it won’t be accurate at all!
The training load models take this reliance on your ability and consistency away – devices and accounts can be linked to upload data whenever you work out automatically. This method also ties in the most closely with performance improvements. The downside is that the final result is still just a number – while there are guidelines, you could possibly tolerate a fatigue number that could cause someone else to be on the verge of overtraining – interpretation and a degree of learning over time is still required to get an accurate picture for the individual. There is also the fact that it only considers training load – life stresses will also create a load and are not considered.
The HRV method lies somewhere in-between these previous two – while it’s still objective, it still requires a little ‘personal interpretation’. The advantage over the training load model is that it directly measures your body’s response to training (and also takes into account life stress – your body just sees the sum of all stress inputs!). Again, it needs to be taken correctly and consistently, and beware of any other interpretation by software or apps. Still, I believe that this method offers the best way to determine how much recovery you need.
Kevin opened a B&B for cyclists in France in 2014, & then a year later decided to start a cycle coaching (level 3) qualification. This was mainly in order to be able to better support his guests (but also to make his own training more effective too). At the B&B he runs the odd training camp for cyclists but mainly offers coaching advice while guiding guests. An engineer by background, he happy diving into all sorts of training data, but also understanding that coaching is about much more than just the numbers!
After being introduced to triathlon by a good friend & then taking part in races for a couple of years he decided that a level 2 coaching course with British Triathlon was the way forward, completing this in 2019.
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