Hi!
Despite my plan being set as high volume, is normal that no rest day is scheduled for at least 3 weeks?
Of course, I do delete any workout scheduled on days(my usual off day) but I thought is was unusual for a plan to not include rest days for at least 3 consecutives weeks. And since I have great respect of the process, I would prefer not to intervene by deleting session but I always take Mondays off to give my body a chance to repair itself.
Thanks!
Hi Patrick. Thanks for raising this.
There's a few colliding principles we need to appreciate, and every user needs to take responsibility for piloting their own situation.
First principle is that good training = workout + recovery. Therefore prioritizing your recovery, and taking the Monday off as you are doing, is indeed best practice when you know you need it.
For very well trained athletes, that arrive at Athletica with already high performance capacity (i.e., able to run their 5k in under 18 min), they have usually developed very high resiliency to the run training stress, and therefore an easy aerobic run is in fact recovery for them (see above equation). This strategy (running on the Monday instead of taking it off) winds up being the better road to Rome, because the second principle is training consistency, and repeated cell signalling to tell your body to adapt. These athletes get a further kick in adaptation by just having an easy training day.
Importantly however, if your body is telling you to rest and recover on Monday (or any day of the week), then you most certainly should listen to it. Delete the session and do recovery (consider Workout Wizard options) etc.
Always remember: the most important session is the next session...
Hope that helps,
Paul
Makes total sense. In fact, it may inspire one of those Mondays where I don't feel so sluggish and may entertain something like a recovery run insetad of rest!
Thank you!