Add rest day "on the fly"

[Koral]

Hello everybody!
Recently I saw the Moffat's interview ("power is a quality thing") where he speaks about his training in the days. He says he was not used to have a 100% fixed training calendar but depending on the feeling (especially during warm up) he was choosing to push hard for an hi-intensity training or for a mild day.
I usually tend to strictly follow my planned calendar (as suggested in the manual) but on the other side I think could be useful in certain situations to listen to our bodies.
Especially in certain situation like the beginning of a new phase where the body has to get used again to the new kind of training.
Lets say that can easily happen that after the first HB or campus session after 2 days of rest you still feel definitely woody
Would not be useful depending on the feeling in this condition to add a rest day more and shift the whole plan? I'm wondering how many of you are doing something similar and how many simply don't care about

[MarkAnderson]

I will regularly throw in an extra rest day here and there, but primarily during performance phases. Usually this happens when my skin is in really bad shape, or if I've noticed my performance consistently declining. Over the years I've gotten pretty good at predicting what I can handle, so I try to build those days into my seasonal training plan from day one.

During the Strength Phase I tend to be on a very tight schedule that is backed out from my first performance day, such that if I spontaneously added an extra rest day it would delay the start of my outdoor season by a week. So I pretty much never do that anymore (when I was younger I didn't plan so far in advance, which gave me the illusion of greater flexibility).

While I agree that it may feel like you are more "worked" after the first couple workouts in a new phase, those workouts also tend to be relatively easy/low intensity since you aren't particularly fit yet, so you don't need to be at 100% to get through them (in other words, 3 days after my first HB workout, I may only be at 85%, but I can get through the 2nd HB workout at 80%, so it's not a problem. By workout #9, I am recovering much better, which is good because I need to be at 95% or better to get through workout #10).

I also found Moffat's comments interesting, especially the part about how he feels during the warmup, and how that might influence him to quit or go easy on that day. Each person is different I suppose, but I completely disagree with that approach. Countless times I've had terrible warmups, contemplated cutting the workout/climbing day short, decided to persevere, and had awesome results. For me, the quality of my warmup is a terrible predictor of my performance*. (*though sometimes it's a sign that I need to be more patient and spend more time warming up).

[Koral]

Question: do you generally think that the perception of a quick recovery translates usually with the proximity of a plateau or they are unrelated?

[MarkAnderson]

That's an interesting question--I've never thought about it before. I could see how they could be related. The more accustomed you are to the training, the more quickly you recover from it, but also, the less your body responds to it. That lack of response is what we think causes the plateau. I think there is a sweet spot in the middle, though, where you recovery well, but still respond well to the training, so I'm not inclined to say that as soon as you start recovering quickly it's time to move on (to a different training phase). However, it may be that there is a somewhat predictable lag period between those to events, and if you knew what that was, you might be able to predict the onset of a plateau. I think it would just be easier and more reliable to wait for the plateau to actually arrive, or predict the onset of the plateau based on the results of prior seasons.

[Lundy]

So one thing I try to keep in mind here is that the training program that Mark and Mike have pulled together from their 20 years of experience is what they have learned works best for THEM. The fact that they've shared this with all of us is INCREDIBLY generous so we don't have to go through all that learning, but it doesn't mean it's also what's best for other individuals. So while we might have jumped 20 years of learning because of their efforts, it doesn't mean that the training protocols they've dialed in for themselves are perfectly dialed in for me, too.

All that to say, through my experimentation with their protocols for the last two years, I've seen a consistent pattern that if I do the program to the T, my body gets beat down and I end up sick or hurting in a big way. So I've adapted the program to systematically add a bit more rest in. Like Mark, once it's programmed, I'm sticking with it, so I haven't used the idea of floating rest days, but if you're feeling like you're not getting enough rest, think about how you might systematically program more rest into your next training cycle.