Adding volume to high volume recovery weeks

[Sarah]

Hello all, I did a search for this and didn’t find quite what I was looking for, but please forgive me if I missed it. I wanted to know about adding volume to SSBHV1 on the recovery week. I just finished the 5th week of the plan with what I’m pretty sure will be a decent little bump in FTP (based on interval attainment, HR and RPE) and was definitely ready for a little recovery. I took the entire rest day prescribed yesterday and am ready to get back on the bike today. I would like to add a little more TSS to the week without compromising the recovery (counterintuitive I know) but I was wondering if there is any data to support or discourage simply protracting the endurance workouts to a longer duration. Whether it is finding a longer variant or adding 30 minutes of warm up/cool down, is there an adverse effect in doing this? To be clear, I’m not looking to increase fitness this week, rather just maintain with the requisite daily TSS that the prescribed workouts fall just a touch short of.
Thanks in advance

[bhrylski]

Hi Sarah,
Awesome job doing an HV plan, there is a thread dedicated to HV plans you should check out.

High Volume Training Plan Mega-Thread

As someone new to HV plans I thought it would be nice to have a place where people can share their strategies for attacking those long trainer rides and tough weeks. Feel free to share: Entertainment choices Nutrition strategies Recovery optimizations How you cope when life gets in the way of your training plan Anything else that you have found useful in your experience

The whole point of rest weeks is to allow your body a break from training stress and allow for a process called super-compensation or adaptation.

@Sarah

To be clear, I’m not looking to increase fitness this week

So that’s exactly it, your body is adapting and getting faster on this rest week. By adding extra volume, no matter how low intensity, you are adding more stress to the equation. Considering that this is the base phase and you are working to improve endurance (aerobic) you won’t be losing anything by backing off for one week. If you really want to add volume you could do it by adding Z2 after sweetspot intervals.

I just asked a question related to this on a thread about Traditional Base vs. Sweet Spot Base.

@bhrylski

Question for anyone who has done TB->SSB progression (HV in my case):

• Did you skip ahead in SSB1 at all? If so, how many weeks?
• Did you add any Z2 (endurance) hours after the SS intervals to up the volume?
  or
• Did you replace any SS days with Endurance or Tempo to create a more smooth transition from TB / get a more polarized or pyramidal training distribution?

In my case, there are many months before racing begins and I am attempting a double base period. I am thinking about trimming the SSB portion of my cycle to allow for more of a build period and probably foregoing the specialty period in favor of racing.

[jdman]

The recovery week is about mental recovery as well as physical - if you do SSBHV2 you are looking at lots of midweek 2hr SS rides in the week probably after work…take the rest - nobody ever got less fit in a week and you’ll be grateful for the mental break when you are grinding out those 2hr sessions in a months time - I know I did it last year!

[rdt]

Hi Sarah, great job at the HV. Keep up the good work
I’m new on TR and been doing SSB HV since mid December. It’s though, really.
On week 1-3 i tried to add a z1 ride on the evening almost everyday (except friday and sunday). It’s kinda promising at first. My legs always feels fresh after the session, and sleep’s feeling better. But it backfired at week 3 as i thought maybe i add some unnecesary workout that made my leg not feeling fresh as the week goes on. So i have to take forced 2 week rest because at week 4, i failed my workout repeatedly.
It’a just my n=1 but i think HV has it’s load programmed so well that adding more workout will do more harm.
Cheers