Welcome to the Empirical Cycling Podcast. I'm your host, Kolie Moore, and today we are joined by two of our Empirical Cycling coaches, Rory and Megan. And I want to thank everybody for listening to the podcast. If you're new here, consider subscribing. And if you're coming back, we love having you back. And you can always support the show by giving us a great rating wherever you listen to podcasts. A glowing review goes a long way too. If you want to kick us a couple bucks because we are ad-free, empiricalcycling.com slash donate. And if you would like to reach out for... coaching or consultation. Now's a good time to do that, especially if you are having a rough time managing fitness mid-season. It's pretty common. And yeah, feel free to reach out starting coaching, especially if you're considering doing it this fall. Get ahead of the fall rush. And if you want to keep coaching yourself, that's what consultations are for. Again, shoot me an email, empiricalcycling at gmail.com. up on Instagram if you would like to ask questions for the podcast or just participate in the weekend AMAs. I do a weekend training Q&A up there. And so if you want to participate in that, go give me a follow. And today we are not going to be taking listener questions because I wanted to keep this one a little more short and concise because today we are talking about one of the more interesting subjects around training, which is when to not train. And so we have Megan and Rory here. And of all of our coaches, I would consider them our sommeliers of rest, our connoisseurs of rest. And so whenever I think about rest, I think about Rory and Megan because they are probably, in my estimation, the best in the world at knowing when somebody should rest, themselves and their clients. And so today... I've decided to have a, we're going to have a showdown on why rest is so scary. And because Rory and Megan are also great philosophers of rest. And so I really wanted to, to go down the rabbit hole of why rest seems so scary for a lot of people. And so we've each come up with a list of a couple of reasons. I'm sure we are going to have a little overlap and I think we should fight over. who's more right with our interpretation of the same thing. Or not, maybe we'll just agree, who knows. So who would like to go first while I'm hosting, so how about me? Okay, so Rory, I don't know if you know this, you just pointed at somebody and there's nobody on that side on my screen. Yeah, you're in the direction I was pointing, but incidentally so is Megan. I'm trying to pass the buck. All right, all right, consider the buck pass. All right, sure. I think my number one reason, Okay, in no particular order, my number one reason is that I think rest is unfamiliar for people in terms of habits. Like we're always thinking about how much should we eat on the bike? How do I time my nutrition before my ride, after my ride? Where's my protein? How much sleep do I need? And like, you know, how do I execute these intervals? We're always thinking about how to optimize the actual training. But when it comes to resting, I feel like it's a very unfamiliar territory for a lot of people. And so those habits that we have during training, I think are, you know, it's scary to go into that when you are resting because I need food. I clearly need food. How much food do I need? I don't need as much as when I'm training. But maybe like one or two rest days after my big training block, maybe I do. I'm really hungry. Shouldn't I eat? Like how much should I sleep? Is it okay to – where do I – should I sleep in and skip my recovery ride on like a Tuesday or Wednesday or should I get up and do the spin anyway? Like these kinds of habits I think are scary for a lot of people when it comes to balancing. Like maybe off-bike activity. How much is okay for me to walk around with my family? How much is okay for me to, maybe you've got an active job, like should I try to sit more? So the rest week habits and the rest day habits I think are unfamiliar for a lot of people and they don't really get a lot of scrutiny. So what does everybody think about that one? And who else had it on their list? Yeah, I kind of had that, not exactly, but. I said people are scared to take rest because they haven't really rested before or they don't do it often enough. And I think it's easy, like, when you do something new to, like, blame that as the reason why, you know, your race or your next workout didn't go as planned. But, like, all those factors you said, like, you know, well, you had the rest week. But were you also eating enough during that? Were you sleeping enough? Were you more stressed? Some people take the rest week and they just start doing more work or whatever else and then it just kind of like unbalances itself out. Yeah, and then, you know, you didn't really actually get rest and so, yeah, I think, I don't know, it's scary to try those new things and, you know, you see that it seems like it didn't work once so you're just like, I'll never do it again. Oh, I had a rest week off the bike, so I went to a couple kettlebell classes instead. Yeah. I got into CrossFit five days a week since I wasn't on the bike. I don't know why I feel so bad. Rory, what do you think? This kind of segues into one of mine, which is that people find they're in the middle of like really productive training and they're really seeing the benefits. And the last thing they want to do is hit the pause button. An awful lot of people that obviously want to devote time to training and cycling up to the point where they might be paying someone to do it, they're there to try and keep that games ball rolling as fast down the hill as they can possibly manage and the mistake is not thinking it can't crash land at the end of that if you're not being careful and I think a lot of people struggle with Trusting that if they take that pause, if they take that opportunity to just consolidate a bit, that the good feelings and the good vibes they're having are going to continue after that point. Yeah, well, I think, because one of the things that happens when you're training for a lot of people is that you can see the fitness improvements, like, you know, workout to workout sometimes, which is super, super motivating. You also have the fatigue that accumulates simultaneously. And so you can get to a place where you are performing really, really well, but also like something's a little off. Like I can do these intervals, but man, I don't feel great. So, you know, and at that point, I think a lot of the time, what I see most commonly, and I've seen this since before I started coaching people, and I was still telling people, hey, maybe you should take a rest. where somebody, instead of seeing that fatigue mounting, and then, of course, you're going to crest that hill and your performance is actually going to start to drop because the fatigue accumulated is too great, people will double down on their training. Or they'll be like, well, you know, maybe my power is going down, but you know what I need to do is lose weight. And so I'm going to start reducing my food intake. And that really just like compounds your problem. It probably doesn't double it. 4X is your problem. So, yeah, is that sound familiar? I think you can also land with a lot of people that, like, say, like, they're coming into, like, spring-summer, their ability to go out and do a lot more riding than they were over winter has improved, and they maybe see some improvement in terms of, like, whatever metric they want to look at, but then in the middle of the summer, that stops, and They might still be able to do what they've been able to do up to that point, but their ability to actually improve on it, even if they're doing all the right things in training, like it's kind of the work you're putting in is disconnected from the actual output that you're trying to achieve. And I think that's often quite a good sign that people are needing to take that moment to, again, back off and then go again, as it were. Yeah. What about... What about like recognizing signs to take a rest week? Because I think this is one of the ultimate debates in terms of like, when should we rest? You know, so let's start with you on this one, Megan. Should it be preemptive? Or should it be like, you see the signs and like, you know, we got to pull the chute now or it's going to be really bad? I always go for preemptive because usually when you see the signs and you gotta like pull all the stops like right now it's usually like you need like a full week or two off the bike and nobody's happy about that but yeah and you just you know why go through all those weeks of slogging workouts when you could just be preemptively resting and consistently feeling pretty good you know month to month like it doesn't make much sense to me and I don't think that's a better way to make progress. Yeah, Rory? I think it's best to be preventative but that doesn't prevent you from being reactive to whatever your body or an athlete is telling you with regards to how they feel. Because, you know, most people are going to follow something like a three-week-on, one-week-off sort of structure expecting, you know, you've got your built-in rest periods to try and make sure that, you know, six blocks in, you're feeling as good as you hopefully can. But the rest that you take within, you know, that every fourth week isn't guaranteed to get you to the end of that six block. set of workouts. You need to be able to reconfigure what you're actually doing to how you're actually feeling in order to ensure that the amount of rest you're actually experiencing is sufficient for what you're trying to do. Like this week, at the start of the week, I gave someone a day off and from memory, their comment was, oh, I'm so grateful for the day off. And it's like, okay. If there's some signs there that you were wanting a little bit more rest sooner, then definitely give them to me. I'm glad you're appreciating the day off. But there's an opportunity there to have been more reactive earlier, ahead of where the planned rest actually was. This is something that, you know, whenever we do something like VO2 work, usually you're thinking in terms of three weeks. and I usually tell people at the start of that third week there's probably going to be a workout where you just decide you've had enough and that could be interval number one of the first workout you do that week and that's the point where you call it we're not just going to suffer through the final week because that's what was in the plan we'll react to how you actually feel so yeah kind of both I definitely agree with Megan that planning it in in advance is probably the best way to go around in terms of making sure that in the long term it doesn't get too bad But yeah, make sure you're reacting on the fly to how you actually feel because you don't want to force yourself down the drain. Yeah, actually, this reminds me of something else that I didn't have on my list, but let's talk about it anyway while we're here. I think one of the things that sometimes get to people when they're working with a coach is that, and I've experienced this quite a bit, where somebody thinks that the coach and the plan is... It's beyond reproach in a way where, okay, you know, coaches thought about this. And so I think this is going to be like the perfect thing. Like, you know, they thought about my recovery and everything. It's like, so if you've got a three-week VO2 block, you get to work out number one and things aren't going well. You know, if you don't know that you can call it, you have the agency to do that, and that you can say to your coach, like, I'm cooked, like, we're done here. Time for a rest. I'm looking forward to it, and I'm looking forward to being more fit after my rest. Like, you know, that's going to be great, but like you've, I think some people expect that it's more one-sided than it is in reality, where we actually need a lot of feedback from our clients. Megan? Yeah, I just actually had an athlete recently, like, comment, like, I don't really want to do these anaerobic workouts or intervals. And I was like, thanks for letting me know, like, we don't have to do these. Like, if you're that tired, like, you know, that makes sense. Like, I have some athletes that just seem always fired up, ready to go for that kind of thing. But I think one of those big signs is, like, you don't really want to push, like, hard to all out. and, you know, swapping it with, like, a chiller workout might not even be the best idea, like, maybe just taking some rest would be better, but yeah, all those things, those little comments, I think, help, especially if you can see them continually in training peaks, like someone saying, like, oh, I was, like, really tired on my endurance ride today and, like, feeling off on my sweet spot workout and then all of a sudden they don't want to do any hard intervals, like, it's time to pull the plug. Yeah, actually, That's where I would always want to dig deep a little bit with something like that, where it's like, do you not want to do these because they're going to hurt? Or do you not want to do these because you're tired and you're not motivated for hard work right now? Yeah, there's definitely a difference. I feel like I've worked with both of those types. But yeah, I mean, if it's following a bunch of like hard races and hard workouts and all that, like kind of leads. Yeah, we can read between the lines. Yeah. the same experience this week where I had an athlete that was meant to be doing some anaerobics on Tuesday and he had a mechanical so he shuffled them into Wednesday I can't remember what happened on Wednesday but he shuffled them into Thursday His mechanical was he trashed his bike I think his chain snapped but then on Thursday he was just like I'm not motivated to do this at all. It's like, okay, good. Let's change the plan for the week. Don't do these. Chill out this weekend. I look in his idea of chilling out as he's done a five and a half hour ride, which I'm happy that he was motivated to do that. But yeah, like, again, that's one of those reactive things, as you were suggesting that, you know, plans, what's the phrase? No plan survives contact with the enemy. And that's very much the same thing in cycling. the enemy is unfortunately your own ability to recover. Yeah, what's that Tyson quote? Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Yeah, intervals a lot of time are like getting punched in the mouth. All right, I guess I'll go next on my list. I think, I think, okay, I'll stay away from the obvious ones for a second. I think sometimes people – this is half in jest, by the way, and only half serious. So half in jest, I think sometimes people don't want to face the other things that they have going on in their life. Like, oh, if I've got a rest week, that means I'm going to have to spend more time and brain power on things blowing up at work. Or, you know, oh, I've been leaving the dishes in the sink for the last three weeks I've been training and I don't want to do them. Oh, God, I've really got to vacuum. That kind of stuff. Again, I'm half ingested here, but half serious because I've certainly noticed this in myself where if I'm deep in a cycle of training and I'm just like, especially if I'm on a diet too, just getting the mail is a lot for me. I have to walk, I don't know, 30 meters down a hill to the mailbox and I've got to walk back up. My glutes are on fire. My quads are tired. I don't want to do that. If I get back up, I better have a snack. I'll have a snack on the way out the door. So I think it's like the substitution of stressors can be intimidating. And especially for people like me who really like a routine, breaking out of that routine and then having to face like, oh God, I've got to do. Oh God, I've got to do the big pot. Oh, the big pot's got so much crap on the bottom of it from the last thing I cooked. It's going to take forever to scrub and I don't want to do that. So I don't know. What does everybody else think here? Or did I go too far on that one? Well, I feel like you just called my boyfriend out. He's not really a big cyclist, but yeah, I think like you just... You know, you realize how tired you are, too. And then it's like, you have all this stuff to do. And it's like, do you rest or do all this stuff? And I think a lot of people make the wrong move with it. You know, like I mentioned earlier, like, oh, I'll just do more work. And then you end up not recovered. But yeah, doing the dishes. Cannot get him to do those. Rory, how are you on doing the dishes? Pretty fucking appalling. I've gotten a lot better at it. But yeah, I, weirdly, I have the opposite problem there, where it's not that I neglect things like that when I'm riding, it's that I'm more likely to do it because of, let me pull up my notes again, consistent, this is one of, this is my second topic I was going to bring up, consistent riding closely tied to mental health. loss of consistency causes spirals, down periods, etc. My ability to do all the normal life stuff is closely tied to my routine just being what it normally is, which is riding my bike a lot, to the point where in the last few weeks I've been ill on and off, and I feel like my ability to do any of that stuff just completely fell apart. I was doing it at times, but it was, you know... Inconsistent, probably not doing a good job. So yeah, I agree with that one in principle, but I would note that it's the sort of thing where your mileage may vary in terms of whether or not rest is actually a good thing in that context. Yeah, I mean, that's why I said your off-bike habits are unfamiliar, and I guess that... goes well with your one here about your routine. All right, so that's two from you, Rory. Megan, what's your second one? Well, let's see here. Picking from a list of bangers, I'm sure. We'll go with this one. Reasons people are scared to rest, they think they will get fat. I think a lot of people... They put in this really hard training block and then they are like, oh, well, I'm not riding today or I'm doing a really easy recovery spin. I guess I will just eat my estimated BMR in calories and then call it a day. Yeah. And, you know, you can fuck around and find out and see if that, you know, goes over well. Most often times I just do not see it working well for people, especially after I give them a VO2 block. Like, I've had a couple folks, like, for the following week or two, they'll be like, I am non-stop hungry. Like, they'll be like, I had two or three dinners. Like, they just didn't realize while they were training that hard that they had, like, burned through that many calories. I think just their, like, hunger signals were off during all the hard riding. And then they're too, well, some people can be too afraid to, like, make up for this. lost calories, thinking that they'll just gain weight. One of the things I always try and instill in athletes from the intro call is whatever you're eating, just kind of plan for regardless of whatever kind of ride it is that you're going to eat to your fullest no matter what. Because if you're not eating for the workout that you're doing that day, you're probably eating for the one you did yesterday and the one you did tomorrow. Like I did... recovery in quotes that the listener can't see. Was that the hill climb that you won, Rory? No, I should know that hill climb was just between me and friends. But what was I saying? Fuck you. Oh, I did a recovery gravel ride this afternoon that was like 40 minutes long and I still ate like 55 grams of carbs during it. because it's easy to do. It's still relatively cheap. You know, you can save all your expensive nutrition for like the rides that matter most if you need. But I knew that the thing that's going to help me most is just to make sure that I don't come back and still feel like I'm hungry or I haven't had an opportunity to eat when I maybe felt like I should. And I think that's something that our athletes should stick to as much as possible because if you're like, if you're doing 12 hours a week, and you've got a recovery ride in there. You're probably still a little bit in a deficit, even for athletes with lower wattages, if you're coming off the back of three long and or hard days. Don't see the recovery ride as a day where those habits can be allowed to drop or can drop. I think it's more that those are the days where you really have to be on top of it. Yeah, for sure. And, like, shit, if you want to think about it, you know, an hour recovery ride at 100 watts is, like, what's that, like, over 200 kilojoules? So that's going to be something like 200 to 300, maybe a little more calories burned, depending on your efficiency there. And so, you know, that's an energetic deficit, like, no doubt. And, like, do you have stored glycogen for that? Oh, yeah, sure. Are you burning mostly fat for that? Yeah, probably. But energy is energy. And, you know, one of the things that I think I see on forums especially and, you know, the new training peaks like fueling beta that's going on is like estimating how many carbs and fats are you burning. Like, you still got to replace the fats too. I don't know if you know this, but energy is energy. And it's like, if you lose the fats, your body's going to be like, hey, we got these empty fat cells over here. Like, your glycogen may be replated, but, you know, there's empty storerooms and that's bad. Yeah, people don't seem to realize that just because it is a quote-unquote fat-burning ride, that that isn't free. Like, you get home and you're hungry. That's what's screaming out to be refilled. Yeah. And actually, the number of people I know who eat to a calculated BMR plus like cycling kilojoules, I mean, and they're going, man, I'm hungry. But I'm eating enough. Like, no, hunger is actually your body's signal to say, we have not eaten enough. Evolution has really decided to do us a solid on that one, I think. And actually, you know what? A lot of the time in a rest week also, when people start to eat to their hunger signals, like a couple other things can happen too. It's like you can retain water. from the stress of your training. And as that stress dissipates, that'll go away. So first couple of days, you can easily gain a kilo, two, depending on how big you are. If it were me, oh yeah, two kilos, no question. But also, if you're not that active, that can also affect your gut motility. And so if you don't take that big of crap, Sorry to be gross. One morning, because you haven't ridden or something like that, you've just got more stuff in you. And depending on what you eat on a rest day, that can affect things too. And your salt cravings as well. So if you're not sweating, you'll retain a little more sodium. That'll hold on to some water. Sure, there's a lot of reasons that you could retain a little weight. One of the things to know about rest weeks, and here's a good segue into my next one, it's that in the rest and the recovery cycle, I guess we could call it, a lot of the time, after like two or three days, people usually feel worse during a rest week. And this is actually normal. And I think It can, and I cannot tell you the number of people I've coached where their first thought is like, oh, I'm getting worse. Oh, shit. I need some hard workouts right now. I am losing fitness. And part of that's like, you know, maybe the CTL thing. But I think a lot of it's just that your body takes a minute to... decompress from the stress of the training. And then once it realizes what you've done to it, it's going to go, oh, yeah. And just like getting a mosquito bite or, well, maybe something a little worse. Mosquito bite's not going to keep you from doing something. Maybe you twist your ankle. And it's not broken. It's not strained. But you're going to be very ginger with it for a little bit. This is your body getting a twisted ankle, but the whole thing. And so it's going to be telling you, Hey, use me very gently right now. I'm not done recovering because I just realized what we just did and holy shit. So I think that that's something that a lot of people are genuinely not prepared for in a rest week, especially if they haven't rested a ton in the past or like a rest week has not looked what we would consider a good rest week. If it's been more like, you know, a training week that's moderate intensity instead of high intensity, you know what I mean? All right. Who wants to tell me I'm wrong on that one? Or maybe agree? I just want to say I always felt like absolute dog crap anytime someone would make me ride over like 60 watts on a recovery ride. Like my legs aren't ready yet. And I don't know, it just baffles me the amount of people that I see that don't take their recovery rides seriously and ride them like properly easy. If your FTP is 200 and you're riding them at 100 watts, I don't want to see it. I don't want that away. I don't think you're giving your body the rest that it truly needs when you're not riding properly easy. What do you get out of an extra 20, 30 watts? Genuinely nothing. You get a couple extra kilojoules burned. For some people, that's the goal. I don't want to get fat on my recovery week. I need to burn more kilojoules at recovery pace. Yeah. Good luck. Yeah. I have worked with a couple people who that is their goal is they're very kilojoule oriented. And I mean, like, especially people with really giant FTPs a lot of the time, this seems to happen if you're tipping the 350 Watson over. pretty easy to hit 1,000 kilojoules on a recovery ride if you go long enough. And I don't know why that's always the mark. I can count on more than one hand than a number of people I've coached where they want to hit more than 1,000 kilojoules on a recovery ride. And I'm like, please, you're going to burn out. And guess what happens? At some point, they go, wow, this is unsustainable. But sometimes, you know, you got to learn your own lesson once in a while, I guess. Rory? I had no comment. I agree with both of you in this. All right. It's like we've talked about it before in terms of 100-watt jail or sub-100-watt jail. Yeah. And that's like the nice idea. And as somebody with a 200-watt FTP, I can tell you my recovery rides are at 50 watts because I'm just pressing the pedals. Plus the 200 from the motor. Plus the 200 from the motor, depending on the mode. For sure. Yeah, and I mean, honestly, riding my e-bike on recovery days is so great. You're going fast, you get the extra breeze because you're moving, and I cannot stop smiling when I'm going fast without putting in any effort. I imagine that's sort of what it feels like to be genuinely fast. I was going to suggest maybe just get a motorcycle, but I'll keep that one to myself. I would do... things on the motorcycle that would either get me arrested or dead. Fair enough. Let's stick to cycling. Yeah. All right, Megan, what's your next one? Let's see. Seeing everyone else on socials not resting, so you're on the couch. eating your potato chips or whatnot and you're seeing people on Strava going out and smashing their workouts or their local group rides or their racing or like there's always somebody out there doing something and I think for a lot of folks that's like hard especially like for them it's like an argument like oh like you know so-and-so's like doing all this stuff like they're not resting this much like surely I don't need to rest that much then I don't know I think you can go down the rabbit hole with that kind of comparison. Oh yeah I mean that's why I've said it a long time, and smart people out there like Steve Magnus and Brad, I always want to say Brad Schoenfeld, but no, he does muscle research. Stahlberg, thank you. Do not want to confuse those two guys. Although I'm sure one of them would be flattered, at least. And they're always like, you cannot compare yourself to others. You have to just gauge your own progress against yourself. And, you know, like you can watch what other people do, but you need to experiment for yourself and see, does this work best for me? Does this not work best for me? What's, and like having objective criteria, like Rory, you and I did a podcast a while ago about like how to try new things. And, you know, the long and short of it was have a way to measure it, like know your expected outcomes and keep notes and, you know. figure out what you need to do. But yeah, the social media game, it's rough. And we should do better normalizing rest weeks, I think. I want to see pictures of hammocks. I want to see pictures of hanging out at the beach, ice cream, potato chips, coffee. I just saw something on Instagram pop up on my feed, uninvited. It was like... Something, something, we're just three rest days away from 2026, that's crazy. I'm like, no! No! We need more than that. I agree. Alright, Rory, you're up next. Sort of, again, on a very similar line of thinking. but perhaps mostly applicable to people in Scotland and Scandinavia and as of this year at Vermont. The weather is good and you spend six months a year waiting for it to be nice again so why wouldn't you be riding in it? Which is a feeling very close to my heart because ultimately when the weather's good I want to take advantage of it and when the weather's bad I feel bad if I haven't taken advantage of it. and that is something that I think for many people can feel like a barrier especially if they do live somewhere like Scotland where it's dreary and miserable 10 months of the year you can still do an element of reactive planning for rest where we had a horrible storm today well, we were meant to, it kind of just didn't happen as far as I can tell but for most people I think no one rode their bike during it and that's the sort of like opportunity you need to find but when the sun's out you want to be able to take advantage of it as much as possible. I think the trouble is maybe when you get like two or three months of solid good weather that you're not used to that the ability to take a rest gets somewhat impaired but I think there's a possibility that if you're willing to be more lax about Gains and productivity in terms of improving on the bike. You can make that work if it's three months on, one month off. You have to take into perspective what it is that's happening and how much you're allowing yourself to do. Again, we talk about a three-on, one-off structure in a lot of ways. Depending on how much you want to do in that on period, you can extend that on period as required. Just be realistic about how much you can reasonably extend it. Yeah, I think for something like that, being flexible in your planning makes a big difference. And I think for the way that we coach, you know that's pretty easy to do because we're in pretty regular contact with our clients and so if somebody's like hey I've got a stretch of a great weather coming up but also like we can see that in training peaks you know the weather forecast for the next week and I oftentimes will kind of look at that and think What would be a great ride for this person today? And I'll shift their week around if I know I can, just to take advantage of that kind of thing. And like, okay, it's pissing rain today and, you know, you're a mountain biker. All right, cool. Like you can do a recovery ride on the turbo and that'll be fine. And then tomorrow it'll be nice out. So when the trail's dry in the afternoon, you know, all right, now you go to your hot laps, that kind of thing. So I don't know, Megan, thoughts? Yeah, I agree with that. I think. I've had a fair bit of athletes say, like, oh, like, next week looks so nice, and, like, I have something coming up the following week anyways, like, can we push a rest week out? And I almost always, like, allow it, like, as long as they're not too, like, fatigued, but you could just, like, ride some easy endurance, just make use of the sunlight and stuff, like, you don't have to be pushing, like, you know, 100% intervals or anything. See, I don't know. I always really liked just like volume blocks, just endurance. Yeah, same. And actually that reminds me of, Fabiano's mentioned this on the podcast before, but if people don't remember the anecdote, Fabiano said that he had somebody do a VO2 block and then like this guy had some extra time to ride like the week after doing three weeks of VO2s. and he was like, can I do some extra riding? I was like, yeah, sure, let's just keep it easy endurance and watching his HRV, like his HRV actually kind of stayed in the tank during that extra endurance week and then when he finally started to rest, boom, popped right up. So, you know, just a quick example of like, yeah, you can actually properly delay recovery even if you're riding easy endurance because training is training. I think we've referenced that athlete every single time you and I have done a podcast. Oh, I don't even know who it is. Oh, nor do I. I remember Fabiano showing us the data and thinking, wow, it's a really good anecdote. Yeah, it is. Yeah, not every anecdote's that perfect and clean, but yeah, I agree. Rory, you're up next. What's your next one on the list? I think mine have all kind of been done at least tangentially, so you're going to have to skip me because I've basically had all four of mine stolen. All right, well then you're going to have to come up with another one. Okay. I guess I'm next. So one of the other reasons I think a lot of people think rest can be scary is that it can be overdone. But how do you know when you've overdone it? And I think people a lot of the time get to that point of feeling worse and thinking, oh, God, I have fucked everything up real bad. And in reality, like, no, you haven't. Like I said, This is your body realizing what you just did to it. And you will get past it. And a lot of the time, there's complicating factors too because all three of us and actually all of our coaches have coached people where during a rest week, other stresses go up substantially. Like I've got a couple people who are probably super, super stressed. three or four times a year for about three to four weeks straight. Almost entirely due to their job. Every once in a while, somebody's buying a house or there's a family tragedy and stuff like that. In which case, a lot of the time I tell them, look, don't expect to get any better. And if we were training right now, if we were pushing hard on the training, we're going to add fatigue and there's going to be no recovery because of the stress. When the stress goes up, even during a rest week, like a lot of the time you need more rest on the other side of that. Like Rory, one of the very first anecdotes you told on the podcast that I always think about, one of the reasons I think that you're a connoisseur of rest is that you started with somebody and he was sick for a week and he was due for a rest week. And then you were like, no, you're taking your rest week the week after you're sick also. So would you like to expound on that one? That was a while ago. But yeah, it went well. I guess the thing that you're looking for after a rest week is, is the training going on track? And my feeling at the time of him coming off of that illness was, if we just go straight back to what we were doing, which I think was like tail end of some threshold, it's probably not going to go the way that we expect it to. So let's just not risk it, let's just take the safe route and guarantee that you can do the work once you're back at it. The thing that was actually important there was after the sick week, the recovery week was mainly, let's get you consistent about riding again, let's just get you moving. The rest week we're talking about wasn't three hours of riding throughout the entire week, it was still like eight, but it was all really chill, couple of days off still in there. and that was the important part was for the reset but you probably still needed like that moment of just okay, I fought off the illness, the body might still need a little bit more to fight off whatever it had done in the preceding two, three weeks that it had. Yeah and I think that especially when you're looking at recovery weeks like that There's always the question of how much should I ride and how hard should I ride. I mean, how hard should you ride is pretty simple. It's like very, very, very easy for the most part until you're ready to get back into training. In which case, you know, most of us will, you know, put up, like, openers or an endurance ride, maybe some test efforts, like, let's see where the FTP feels like it's at, let's see where the sprint is, like, you know, all these kind of standard landmarks of physiology and fitness where, you know, if you are setting good sprint numbers at the end of a rest week and you say you're feeling strong and, like, you can really snap the pedals, like, great, you are most likely almost entirely recovered, if not fully recovered. Or if it's like, man, I feel sluggish. Okay, like maybe need more rest. Maybe we need to look at stressors. Maybe we need to look at your nutrition. How's your hydration? How's your sleep? And, you know, going through the list is really helpful. And so, yeah, like you said, like a rest week, I think a lot of people think a rest week is like a mid-season break. Like you shouldn't even look at a bike for seven days. And I certainly, at least, you know. 10 or 20 years ago. I know that some coaches were advocates of that. But I think these days, a lot of people not only just enjoy riding their bikes, but the benefits of active recovery are fairly substantial, I think. So I don't know. Where are we on that? Megan or Rory, give me what's your go-to rest week and how much does it really need to be individualized? Oh, gosh. I feel like I do, like, the Monday through Thursday, just recovery rides, Friday endurance, Saturday maybe a workout, and that's, like, the bare minimum. Like, people can definitely get more if they're, like, I'll sprinkle in more endurance rides between the next hard workout and the last hard workout if I feel like they need more recovery, especially after VO2 block, like. Most people after a week of like recovery and endurance riding are not quite ready to like go hard at threshold or above. So you can kind of cushion it, I think a little bit with some easy endurance. But yeah, it doesn't need to be like, you know, one to two weeks of just pure recovery ride death. I don't think so. Yeah, just sitting on the couch, like your legs are, oh, I guess walking to the fridge is a recovery ride now. Yeah, and I feel there's like a pretty big benefit to riding recovery versus just taking, you know, entirely off the bike. Like a lot of people don't feel that great getting on a bike after they didn't ride it for like four or five days or more. It just feels unnatural. Yeah, and your muscles get stiff if you're not moving around. Like I remember when I was doing carpentry, like if I was on a recovery week, I wouldn't ride because I was getting probably 15 to 25,000 steps a day. depending on what we were doing that day. I was walking for literally six to 10 hours sometimes straight, kneeling and all that other stuff. It can be a fairly active job. In that case, if I got home and I was like, okay, I'm not going to ride, I would get to that point where if I got on the bike, I was like, oh, this is weird. I don't understand how to do this. Rory, thoughts? Much the same in terms of that sort of really chill start to a week and then just coming back to endurance and hopefully, depending on what they've done previously, back to a workout by Saturday or Sunday maybe. But I agree entirely that one of the things people need to consider when they do a good quality recovery week is some openers at the end of it. because we normally think of openers as being like pre-race. But, you know, after you've recovered, you need to wake everything back up again. So, you know. Well, a lot of people do, sure. Some people are just like, I feel great right away. Let's do this. Not me. I think the openers, so you two might. have thoughts on this. The openers you do before a race I think can work well at the end of the recovery week but I think for many people openers at the end of a recovery week need to be slightly less intense and maybe a bit longer in the sense that you're maybe not going to be doing any sort of really hard efforts. as part of your post-recovery week one, but you might do maybe 15 minutes of sweet spot just to wake things back up and allow yourself to try and settle into something that you're doing. I think that's something people have to feel out and find what works for them because, you know, again, these things are very individual in terms of like what it takes for people to feel good before they have to go and do something hard or go to a race or whatever it is. But I find that for many people, not everyone, but many people, what it takes to get back to normal after a period of relatively low activity is very different from what they'd get after a period of lower intensity, which is how I distinguish between the week leading up to an A-race versus coming off a recovery week. Yeah, so I think... Yeah, because like, because for openers and racing, you know, I think probably 50% of my people are opener people and 50% are not. But I'd say 100% of the time or damn near, I will give people some kind of test the legs efforts at the end of the rest week, you know, or maybe like group ride, something fun that's unstructured. and some people just want to get back to the structure right away and like okay sure we can do that but you know it's a great time to check the legs without really having much structure to it and that's a lot of the time a good way to do openers for me but otherwise like I'll just want somebody to like I said check their sprint, check their FTP you know do a couple random pushes here and there and if it feel great like Okay, sure, baby, it's the time we test like a one minute or a five minute. If you're feeling really fresh and you think you can put down some good numbers, like, yeah, go for it. At the end of a rest week, here's one of the coaching secrets we have is like, at the end of a rest week, if you're feeling pretty good but a little stiff, you can almost always crack out like a great one minute effort. And that's usually the time that a lot of people don't test their one minute. And so if you want like an easy win, test your one minute at the end of a rest week when you're feeling a little bit stiff because it's going to not only open you up really well, oftentimes you'll set some pretty good numbers. A lot of the time, it could be a lifetime PR. Who knows? Not me. No crystal ball over here. But I've seen it happen often enough. I was going to add that I definitely did do that after VO2 blocked. was a couple years ago, and I was in such disbelief, I went for another one minute and did the same exact hour, I was like, okay, yeah, let's go to a five. I am definitely the one in the category that doesn't need openers, at least I never felt like I did, like, I remember after Gila a couple years ago, you know, took like the four recovery days, and I think it was like, I did an endurance ride. after those four recovery days, and I was like, holy crap, I feel great, and just went for a five-minute effort and PR'd that, and that's, I don't know, I think I've always just felt better, fresher, so I always like people to kind of like feel out what works for them, plus I think a lot of the times people can just use more recovery going into a race rather than like the opener efforts, like I always like to say the little thing you say about, What? Openers are a privilege for the well-rested. That's a Nat Ward quote, yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good one, especially for people doing a lot of, like, you know, the weekend crits every weekend, and, like, they're not really, like, doing that many. You're not fresh yet. Yeah, so... I don't know. That's my two cents. No, especially if you're like topping up the training midweek, like, you know, touching on some threshold efforts, maybe, maybe, uh, kind of a moderate intensity lift or something like that. Um, or maybe you've got like group ride duties, like you're leading a ride or something like that. Um, you know, a lot of the time, you know, or it's like, you know, cause if you just race every weekend and then you rest all week, like that's also not a recipe for success. Um, so yeah, I think, um, Yeah, openers are privilege for the well-rested, you know, but also like, Megan, your two one-minute efforts. It's stupid, but I was just like, there's no way, like, that was so off. I think I might have like stopped and recalibrated too and redid it. I remember that. I remember your workout comment exactly, and you did, because I was sitting there going, I don't think I'm ever going to see anyone ever do this again. I did never do it again, that's for sure. I was feeling good. I had the same experience when Fabiano coached me, where after a VO2 block, I had a couple of days of rest. My first infraction was he put a recovery ride in, and I went and did a four-minute max test because I felt good. And then two days later, he intentionally asked me to do an anaerobic test and also did numbers, much like Megan, which I've never seen again. But my memory of that was just it breaking my WKO PD curve for 90 days and the whole thing just never made any sense for the summer. Yeah. Rest is magic. Rest is magic. If you can get through the challenging parts of rest. So I've got, I actually have two more things. One is actually kind of we already touched on, but I guess I'll go to my last one. Actually, Rory, have you thought of another one yet? We sort of... Okay, so someone over-rested once and it took a while to get back to where they were. And my thinking here is people who did way too little in a rest week and as a result they actually maybe lost a little fitness in the progress. So perhaps someone who's normally doing like an 18, 20 hour week and then they have a three hour rest week. for whatever reason. I saw one of those on a forum recently. Did you? Yeah. Yeah, I think the average training week was like 12 to 15 and like, oh yeah, we did like a four-hour rest week and I, yeah, I made some snarky comment. Oh yeah, there's a, I guess a minimum dose that people need to maintain throughout their training in terms of How do you guarantee that you're going to be able to continue to progress and not take too big a step back as a result of a recovery week? And it's definitely more than 25% of your normal volume. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the reasons that I think once we get to like, you know, on a rest week, we get to like Friday or Saturday, you know, it's like, yeah, well, not just even pick it back up, but just like start testing the legs, test the waters. You know, you gotta... You know, you're looking for a certain level of fitness or a certain level of recovery. It's like you don't know until you try. And so, you know, maintaining your minimum dose is pretty easy as long as, you know, as long as the duration doesn't go too long or, you know, you just keep on the pedals at an actually easy pace and let your body recover. Because one of the things that I think happens to a lot of coaches a lot of the time is when people are coaching themselves. Things are going great for a while. Then when things start to go off the rails, they go get a coach and it's like somebody shows up at your doorstep with a problem. And so, okay, cool. We're going to fix this problem. But depending on how long it's been, sometimes fixing that problem is going to take more than a week. Sometimes it can be like Two or Three Weeks. Sometimes it can be like two or three months, depending on how deep that hole got dug and where you want to get back to. And sometimes once somebody's properly rested, I mean, I've, one of my current clients, I remember when he came to me, I actually told him to take like, you know, two or three months off the bike. It was that bad. As I was like, there's nothing I can do for you right now. Take some proper, proper rest and get yourself into a point where you are feeling at least motivated. to ride again. And let me know. And things have been pretty great ever since. You know, not to say there haven't been ups and downs, but that is the kind of thing where, you know, as long as somebody's on the same page and willing to, you know, take that feedback and put it into action, or inaction, I guess as it were, you know, you can do some good there. But otherwise, like... Yeah, it can be tough when you start with somebody who's in a bad spot. We have certain things that we look for in the data that'll show drops in performance. And when we see that, when people start with us, it's like, all right, boy, this is going to be tough, especially if somebody's super motivated to get right to work. Rory, you look like you've got thoughts. No. Oh, okay. I guess you're playing video games or something on the side. All right, Megan. Am I sharing my thoughts or next? Take your pick. If you've got thoughts, please share them. I love to hear them. I, yeah, no, I definitely agree with that. I've got no notes on that one. Okay, cool. So all our coaches who listen, and there's a lot of you who do, shoot me a DM and tell me about these things. I want to hear more of these stories because I love hearing them, but also if we can help each other out on worthwhile strategies, that's great. Let's keep up on that. Anyway, Megan, next. So reasons people are scared to rest. They think they're a special exception. And a good example I would like to use for this one is like, oh, well, you know, I'm not a world tour pro. I don't ride 30-hour weeks. Like, I don't really need a rest week. Or like, you know, my workouts aren't that long or my long rides aren't that long. Like, you know, I think as an excuse to like do more hard workouts and take less rest. But everybody needs rest and recovery. Everyone gets sick and needs to rest. Everyone gets injured and needs to rest. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think if you're doing one hard ride a week and you're riding five hours, maybe a rest week is not for you. You could probably do that forever. Yeah, this is what I... listeners will not have seen me raise my hand to say is I think there's a subclass of rider for whom it is something they're very enthusiastic about but they don't actually do all that much of where you probably can get away with a lack of dedicated rest periods because you're not riding your bike three or four days a week already but I'm going to guess that's no one that listens to this podcast. No, we get a bunch of people like that listening to the podcast. But yeah, I mean, it's like, and sometimes people ask me questions like, you know, they'll consult with us or they'll, you know, send inquiry for coaching. And I mean, oftentimes, a lot of the time, somebody's writing like four hours a week, you know, they're like, well, hiring a coach doesn't make any sense for me. Because, you know, I've got so much else going on. If you're looking for a lot of improvements, like... You know, if going from four to eight hours is a hugely meaningful difference in training response, and eight to like 16 again. But yeah, but it also has a very meaningful difference in training stress. Like, I cannot tell you how often I loved having breaks when I was doing blue-collar work. like breaks between jobs like, oh, hey, we got, you know, we don't have any work for the next like week and then we're going to start this other big job. You know what I would do for that week? Absolutely nothing. It was glorious because, you know, even though it was just like, you know, a fairly high step count job and like lifting heavy things and, you know, high degree of focus, make sure nobody gets injured, where do we go for lunch? That was always a big topic. And so like, you know, there was a non-zero amount of stress and, you know. even though it's like normal levels of activity, you know, the stress, you know, even if you're doing like 16 hours of like endurance riding a week, at some point you will have to take a little, take a little break. Is that all you need to train and get better? No. Anyway, where do we start on this one? Why do we get off on this weird tangent? Um, I don't know. Uh, I guess I'll share my last one, I suppose. I think people are afraid of their CTL going down. Boo. Too easy a pick. Boo. I know. That's why I saved it for last. It's dumb. But, I mean, we did a – Kyle and I did a podcast episode on this, like, years ago. Like, you are not your CTL or some shit like that. And this is still a thing among people because CTL equals fitness, right? Hmm. Alright, so who wants to debunk CTL equals fitness? Rory? Well, as we revealed in the last podcast that I was on, I sometimes don't ride my gravel bike because it doesn't have power and it doesn't make the number go up. So in my case, when I do ride my gravel bike, fitness does go up, even if number did not go up. Yeah. like CTL's like a nice you know finger in the air measuring the wind in terms of like where fitness will be it's not telling you anything specific you can have someone who's doing very structured work with a low CTL who's being much more performative than they would be if they had a lot of unstructured work in a high CTL like that's that's kind of the issue is it's not really telling you anything overly useful. Like, I look back at my CTL charts, and my CTL now is about double what it was when I started riding seriously, oh god, 10 years ago. And I'm probably just a little bit fitter than I was then, in large part because I'm older. But, you know... The CTL being double is not an indicator that, oh, I should be more fit than I was back then. It's just an indicator that I do more than I did back then. And I understand why people don't want that to go down because it suggests, oh, something has degraded because unfortunately that's the way these charts work. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you... One of the things that I look for with people's peak performances and all the things that I have laid out with potential peak performances is that especially when I consult with somebody or I take on a new coaching client, I will look back and look at what is their CTL, ATL, and TSB all doing when they are hitting their best performances. And is that something that we can replicate? and also like what were they doing because not all TSS was created equal. You know, like an hour and a half of super high intensity intervals is not the physiologic equivalent of like three hours of endurance riding or whatever the equivalence is. Like pick your favorite TSS number and two equivalent workouts for TSS. Like so that matters a lot but also just like one of the things that I see more often than not is I see CTL peak. and then it'll dip a little bit and then stay flat, especially once somebody's race season starts and then we'll start seeing peak performances. And so like having that context of that history, what do we need to do to see somebody's peak performances happen? That matters a lot. And sometimes we'll see peak performances coincide with somebody's peak CTL, which is extremely rare, but certainly does happen. If that's the case, all right, we know what our strategy is going to be. And we know approximately what CTL somebody can maintain and what's too much. And how much intensity can we do? And so when you consider all those factors, it becomes a tool, but it's certainly not your fate. So, all right. Something I'd warn people of if they use WKO themselves is there's a WKO chart that I think was made by Tim that will identify where your peak performance, again, air quotes, happens within your natural season. The thing to watch out for, and again, why you have to be more studious than just letting an algorithm or the data decide for you is that the way that identifier works is it's basically just like what's your top 10% CTL and then it colors it in on the chart and that changes depending on the duration like the time duration for the data you're looking at so again like a lot of this is stuff that you have to go in and investigate a little bit more and try and find ways to basically preen data out in a way that would not be easy to do in any sort of automatic sense. Yeah. Yeah. So number go down bad. But sometimes good. Very, very, very good. Began, any thoughts on number go up down? Well, I was going to say, if you want big number, you could just start throwing in max sprints into your recovery rides. 

recovery rides with sprints because sprints obviously only use the phosphocreatine system and so therefore they're not really energetically taxing like they're fucking work oh my god yeah please don't do recovery rides with sprints that is not recommended that is not an officially endorsed empirical cycling strategy if you've got a sprint ride go do some sprints if you get a recovery ride please recover Okay, I've got one more on my list that kind of dovetails with one of my previous points, but anybody have anything else on the list somewhere? Rory, you're out. Megan, you got one more? I was just going to throw out that what if I just perform really well fatigued? I don't want to rest because I just feel best when I'm smashed. All right, dig into that one a little bit. Don't make me do it. It's your point. Well, I feel like it goes back to like the chronic fatigue thing. Like you do kind of start to feel a little bit worse before you feel better once your body starts unraveling all of that fatigue. So a lot of the times I think, you know, you're not at your 100%. It's more like 80, 90 maybe. And your body is just like, Hanging on a bare thread and you're never really getting your full potential out of yourself by just like, you know, using that as an excuse. Like if you do need more hard openers, sure, like, you know, do one or two days openers before your big race, but still get in rest somewhere. Yeah, or maybe even sometimes like you need a week to get your legs back under you. Okay, well like we can give you a week of training that's like gonna get you there that's not actually that taxing. It's not that hard. Yeah, like just if you have an A event and you do feel like you do a little better once your legs are more under you instead of right after recovery week, you know, having the recovery week the week prior and then that following week, like you said, just doing more intervals. Yeah, or, you know, I've got like a, you know, there's a thousand ways you can taper into something like that where you dissipate the stress but also like keep the training up and keep your legs open. And so, you know, like You know, there's a lot of ways to approach it and trying something heading towards like a B event. That was another thing Rory and I did on that How to Try New Things podcast was like, try it out first and take really good notes. And I distinctly remember one of my favorite points from that episode is that if you are somebody who's not, who's only getting to events like infrequently, like once or twice a year. The number of times that you have to iterate on this process is very low. And so you've got to start coming up with other things in the meantime to try these strategies too. Like, all right, I'm going to go try to KOM or QOM this climb. Okay, cool. There we go. Now we've got something to aim at and we can practice. But my last point is actually similar, which is that the effects of stress keeping things open. So like, and people have very, very different physiologic responses to stress. Like, my favorite example is like when people are on a diet. Some people feel very groggy and grumpy, that's me. Some people feel amazing. And I've certainly worked with a couple people who are like, dude, I gotta lose like, I gotta lose like six or seven pounds and I think I can win this race. Like, okay, cool, let's get you in the gym, let's do this at the right point. and they're like, man, I feel so good on my diet. I'm like, okay, this is great, but you're still in an energy deficit and you're not recovering as well as you can. And a lot of the time also like in situations like this, this is like, you know, a genetic freak where, you know, you can gain fitness while you're doing this sometimes. And so it becomes very motivating to some people to keep going on that. But like, anyway, the point is people have different responses to stress. a lot of the time if you are not used to having rest a lot of the time what happens sorry sorry I keep saying that I'm gathering my thought my thought is when you don't rest that often training can fall into a pattern of not that hard but also not that easy so you get into this weird like middle intensity black hole you're never really going max you're never really going easy and Megan like you said you're at like you know 80 to 90 percent maybe a little less maybe a little more but you're never at a hundred percent and like uh one of the one of my favorite examples is like look at Matthew Vanderpool's classic seasons for the last two years you know when he shows up to something he's in shape and he's gonna win and I wouldn't you know because it's like you you are targeting something very specifically and you're resting sufficiently in between and it's not like I'm going to go to every race because you never know what can happen which I am not that big a fan of like if you're new and you need experience yeah go to every race or damn near whatever is reasonable get some experience but like once you are really trying to get results you know being a little more surgical about it makes sense and you've got to do the same thing in your training so this is another reason I think that and people who are used to this level of stress when they do take that rest week Sometimes you can feel bad for longer than a day or two. You get through Monday, Tuesday, okay, I feel good. Wednesday, oh, I feel crappy. Friday, oh, I feel bad. Saturday, I still feel bad. It can take a little while to dissipate that stress. Yeah, there's a difference in what we're talking about here between feeling like if you know that you go well off of a really hard ride the day or two before. That's very different from I've not rested going into this event. Essentially what we're talking about is some people want really brutal openers, but you still need the rest that comes prior to that. Yeah. I remember the most brutal openers I've ever had was starting on the back of a really aggressive crit and getting dropped like 15, 20 minutes in. and the next day feeling amazing. And I was like, where was I yesterday? And then somebody was like, dude, that's what openers are called, man. I'm like, I had never heard of openers at the time. I just thought I got my ass kicked. And I thought it was some sort of miracle that I was like better the next day. So like, yeah. And here's the thing also, like when you're looking at how well do you actually perform? One of the things I like to keep in mind also is like, what's a reasonable expectation for your best day ever, for an okay day, and for a bad day? Because quite honestly, for most people, the best day ever and a reasonable day are not that far apart. And a reasonable day versus a bad day, I mean, bad days can get really bad, but let's say your average bad day, they're also not that far apart. And so... When you're thinking about how much rest you actually need and what actually benefits your performance the most, sometimes the equation is easy to solve and sometimes it is an inscrutable theorem that only Anna Kiesenhofer could solve or something like that. So it's having data to back up your decision and also knowing how to try new things, especially when it comes to rest, is is genuinely difficult. And I'd say that from, I don't know, what do you two think? How often do we talk about rest internally among our coaches? It's probably not 50% of the time, but I'd say it's close. I would say not enough. I feel like most of the issues we see do kind of revolve around recovery in some way. at the end of the day anyways. Yeah, well, it's like your memes. The magic's not in the workhouse. The magic's in the rest. Yeah. So, alright. I'm at the end of my list. Who's got other thoughts before we wrap this up? I was too busy making memes for the podcast. Alright everybody, thank you so much for listening and if you would like to reach out for coaching, empiricalcycling at gmail.com if you'd like to work with either of these two or any of our very fine coaches who would know how to make you rest, how to figure out how much rest you actually need, etc, etc. If you want to keep coaching yourself, of course, we are happy to help you sort that out. will help you keep you with the tools to plan and adjust your own training. That's what the consults are for. And if you'd like to donate, empiricalcycling.com slash donate for all donations because we are ad-free. And if you want to follow me on Instagram over at empiricalcycling and ask questions for the podcast or the weekend AMAs, please head over for that. And we will see you all next time.