November 26, 2025 • 21 mins
OVERVIEW
We all know recovery takes time, but how much time and what is going on internally while "recovery" is happening? How do factors like the duration and intensity of a workout affect the recovery process? What about nutrition and hydration during and after training, and finally, what about those fancy recovery tools and gadgets? Coach Adam Pulford breaks down the science of recovery, what's going on in your body that constitutes "recovery", and how long it's going to take based on your fitness level, the specifics of your workout, and more.
TOPICS COVERED
- Acute vs. Long-Term Recovery
- Timeline for post-workout recovery (Zero to 72 hours)
- Effects of intensity, duration, and frequency on recovery timeline
- Role of nutrition in recovery
- Hydration requirements during recovery
- Protein for acute recovery
- Keys to long-term recovery (weeks and months)
RESOURCES
- Science of Recovery & Timelines:
- Role of Carbohydrates in Recovery Timelines:
- Two-a-Day Training:
- DOMs:
ASK A QUESTION FOR A FUTURE PODCAST
HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:06):
From the team at CTS, this is the Time Crunch
Cyclist Podcast, our showdedicated to answering your
training questions and providingactionable advice to help you
improve your performance, evenif you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, Coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches who makeup the team at CTS.
(00:27):
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
other coaches, and experts inthe field to provide you with
the practical ways to get themost out of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now, on to our show.
(00:48):
What's the science behindrecovery after a hard training
session?
Like what happens within thebody to make you recovered?
And is it the same process aftera long ride?
Finally, how does that factorinto the best training advice
out there?
Welcome back, Time Crunch fans.
I'm your host, Coach AdamPulford.
(01:08):
Today we'll dive into thenitty-gritty of how your body
actually recovers betweentraining sessions, what happens
under the hood of the enduranceengine during the recovery
process, and how you should plantraining around it.
To do this best, we need somegrounding of what recovery
actually is.
And I'll admit, this can be realconfusing because the fitness
(01:31):
training and athlete industriesout there, everyone seems to
have a recovery product, pill,potion, or method that claims it
promotes the best recovery.
And so it's gotten pretty murkyout there.
So straight into the point,recovery is the restoration of
performance capacity.
Plain and simple.
(01:53):
In endurance training andracing, this can happen
relatively quickly.
In as little as four to sixhours with good recovery habits,
you can recover enough to dosome high-quality training
again.
Or in 24 to 48 hours, most willhave full recovered performance
capacity.
(02:13):
And this is what we call acuterecovery.
This is what most of us aretalking about when we refer to
recovery after a trainingsession.
Longer-term recovery stillshould have performance
restoration as the objective,but it has longer timelines
associated as well as somecognitive aspects like staleness
(02:35):
or burnout, and will have somedifferent physiological
implications.
So to make it simple, I want allof us to think about recovery in
two ways (02:42):
long term and short term, or chronic recovery and
acute recovery.
The goal of acute recovery is tobring your body back into a
state of performing at normalcapacities for future training
sessions at really anyintensity, or at least the
intensity for the next plannedsession.
(03:04):
And this is usually the type ofrecovery most of us are
referring to or trying toachieve in a weekly training
cycle.
Acute recovery is what we'llprimarily focus on today, though
we'll touch on some longer-termscales as well.
So let's talk about the timelineof acute recovery.
What I'm going to do is walk youthrough what happens inside your
(03:27):
body, starting from when youstop exercising and start the
recovery process, going hour tohour of sorts until full
recovery is attained.
I'm going to focus primarily ontraining sessions and races that
last one to four hours, as thatcovers most of what all of you,
our listeners, are coming acrosson a daily basis.
(03:49):
I'll speak to both low and highintensity training and sprinkle
in some implications for bigdays, really hard races, and
some strength training too.
So let's begin.
Zero to one hours.
This is where recovery starts,and it's measurable.
Heart rate, ventilation, rate ofperceived effort all should
(04:09):
start coming down.
You can track that with heartrate monitor, you can track that
with new ventilatorymeasurements and rate of
perceived effort.
Ask yourself, uh, are they goingdown?
Rehydration starts to occur ifyou're drinking water and taking
in fluids.
Lactate levels start to decreaseif you put in some high
intensity in that session, andmuscle acidity will start to
(04:31):
diminish.
The recovery window is open andis most important in that first
hour post-training when you wantto speed up glycogen
replenishment and rehydration asquickly as possible.
If you're doing two days or youhave a hard session coming up in
the next 24 hours, definitelytake in carbs and fluids here.
If not, you don't really need toworry about it as much.
(04:54):
Next, from one to six hours,this is where metabolic recovery
starts.
Glycogen resynthesis is startingto take place.
Hormone levels start tostabilize after aerobic
training, but you could stillhave some uh elevated after high
intensity.
Electrolytes are being absorbed,inflammation, part of the
(05:16):
healing process, by the way,likely is increasing if you had
a hard interval session or youwere doing some near to failure
efforts in the gym.
From 6 to 12 hours, electrolyteand hydration levels are nearly
fully restored after anendurance ride.
Hormone levels like cortisolstart to stabilize if you kept
it aerobic.
Now, if you had a hard sessionin this after about six to
(05:40):
twelve hours, hydration levelsstill could be compromised, so a
little low, and cortisol levelscould be elevated along with
inflammation.
So for most people with goodhabits, four to six hours of
recovery is what I wouldconsider the minimum timeline of
recovery before you train again,such as in two days.
(06:02):
This could be a cycling workoutin the morning, strength
training session in theafternoon, or vice versa, or you
have two bike workouts in thesame day.
Ideally, they are four to sixhours apart, though.
You're trying to hit a sessionagain when recovery is full
enough to make sense, but not100% to keep the training stress
(06:23):
building for future adaptations.
Now let's assume you're aone-a-day training session type
of athlete like me, and we'regoing to keep the recovery
process going.
Let's talk about 12 to 24 hours.
At this point, muscle glycogenlevels can be nearly fully
restored if you had goodnutrition habits even after an
endurance ride that may havetaken up to four hours.
(06:45):
If you did hard intervals, zonefour and above is what I'm
referring to there, glycogenlevels may not be totally full,
but maybe like 80%-ish fullafter 12 hours and getting close
to full at 24 hours.
Hormone levels should restore,especially after an aerobic
ride.
But again, depending on howintense or how deep you went,
(07:06):
cortisol levels could still beslightly elevated at this point.
24 to 48 hours, full recoveryshould be in place unless the
session was super long or superstressful.
However, this does depend onmany factors, primarily good
recovery habits, genetics,current fitness levels, and how
(07:28):
long you've been trainingseriously, meaning years and
years of training, or if youjust started training seriously
this year.
A more fit person will recoverfaster than a less fit person,
but your own recovery processhas its own timeline.
I'll speak to that more here ina minute.
But now finally, I it'd say 48to 72 hours after something hard
(07:52):
or long, but performance abilityshould be back to pretty much
full capacity for normal,healthy athletes with good
recovery habits for nearly anyand all sessions.
So at that point, you shouldhave full acute recovery.
And again, we're to we'retalking, you know, a couple days
here, uh, but still in the grandscheme of things, that is acute
(08:14):
recovery in a nutshell.
Now let's talk about sometraining implications given all
of that.
As you can see, full recoveryfor most sessions should occur
after 24 hours of good recoveryhabits, and you can train again
the next day.
With high intensity training, itmay take up to 48 hours.
Aging can slow the recoveryprocess down.
(08:35):
So for my older athletes, Irarely have them go back-to-back
days with high intensity.
For younger athletes, this isfine, but based on the amount of
life stress, you'll need to usetrial and error to see if that
works best for you.
Two a days are fine.
And even for the time-crunchedathlete, this is an effective
way to increase volume ortraining stress if you're
(08:57):
limited on time per session.
And if you have those windows oftime for multiple sessions in
the same day, use two a days asa strategy.
Just know that nutrition andhydration habits are the most
important for you when doing aquick turn and burn to another
session.
So let's talk about the role ofnutrition in recovery and what I
(09:18):
mean by good habits.
First of all, carbohydrate isking.
For cycling performance, havingenough glycogen on your human
before you train is important.
During a ride, we consumecarbohydrates to keep the energy
high.
And after, we need to consumecarbohydrates to replenish
glycogen stores during therecovery process so that we can
(09:40):
come back and train the nextday.
If you train once every two tothree days and you're only doing
short, like 45 to 75 minutesessions, carbohydrate ingestion
may not be as crucial from atiming standpoint.
But if you train five to sixdays per week with high
intensity, maybe two to threetimes per week, or you do a long
(10:03):
ride as well on top of all that,and you live a busy life and are
challenged to get ideal sleep,you need carbs.
With adequate carbohydrateingestion and increased
training, you can depleteglycogen stores over time,
meaning over the over a weektime period or a month time
period, and thus you maydecrease performance per
(10:25):
session, not allowing for fulltraining effects to occur.
Then training quality goes down.
Therefore, carbs are king whenit comes to the performance
world, even during recovery.
Hydration.
Hydration is crucial.
You can eat all you want, butdigestion will slow down if
you're dehydrated.
(10:46):
This is another way how you canslow down the recovery process
is by being dehydrated.
You should aim to replace 150%of fluid weight that you lost in
a training session to ensureproper hydration for recovery.
And you want to drink this backover the time course of six
hours.
You don't want to just guzzle, Idon't know, three pounds of
(11:07):
water in uh in one hour becausethat doesn't lead to hydration.
You need to titrate it out, letyour body absorb it over time,
otherwise, it'll dump it allout.
For more details on this, likehow to how to quantify it and
how to stay hydrated after uhtraining sessions.
Uh go check out an article Ihave from Oscar Zhucendrup in
(11:28):
the uh landing page for this,and I'll make sure it's clear
where it's at.
But that that's a great sourceto make sure that you're
hydrated between sessions.
Finally, protein.
Protein in the long term, aswell as some of the short term,
okay.
DOMS.
Many people know about delayedonset muscle soreness, and this
(11:49):
can what that means is uh yourmuscles are sore.
Legs hurt after a trainingsession, okay?
And this can start to occur inas little as 12 hours after a
training session, but it usuallypeaks in the way of the maximum
soreness about 24 to 48 hoursafter a session.
That's why they call it delayedonset muscle soreness.
(12:12):
It takes place uh many hoursafter you did the session.
This is caused by microtrauma inthe muscles from stress, usually
from strength training, running,or eccentric muscle actions.
But this can also happen fromreally high intensity training
on the bike.
So taking in 20 to 30 grams ofprotein in that recovery window,
(12:33):
so from zero to one hour afterthe hard bike session, that's
gonna provide your body with uhenough of the uh amino acids and
building blocks to build yourmuscles back better.
But again, you need to spreadprotein out throughout the day,
and usually 20 to 30 gramdosages spread over 24 hours.
(12:55):
That's gonna provide your bodywith really good nourishment uh
from the pro from the proteinstandpoint of building the
muscles back.
Now I'm gonna make a boldstatement here.
So hear me out.
You can't speed up recovery, butyou can slow it down.
Many may argue with me on thisone, but what I mean is that
(13:16):
once you have these good habitsdialed for fueling before,
during, and after training, youreduce life stress so that you
can recover best.
You sleep seven to nine hoursper night, you eat a clean diet,
all these good, boring things.
This is the point where you needto allow your body to simply do
its thing.
Rest and let time heal alltraining fatigue.
(13:41):
Now, a few minutes ago, I didsay that a more fit person will
recover faster.
And it's true.
If you have a higher aerobiccapacity and you have higher
fitness levels, you will youwill recover from training at
all levels more quickly.
And good genetics play a rolehere, as I said.
But at the individual level andcurrent moment in time, the rate
(14:02):
of recovery is fixed for theindividual athlete.
There are limits to the speed ofrecovery within the body, and
you need to accept this.
From Tata Pagaccha all the waydown to Joe Schmo, you all have
your own recovery timeline setin place that in the moment you
won't be able to speed that up.
(14:23):
Higher intensities and biggerstresses will take longer to
recover for all athletes, butit's higher intensity and stress
relative to the individual.
Take, for example, in AndyCoggin and Hunter Allen's book,
Training and Racing with a PowerMeter, they claim that around
350 TSS you will have uhdegradation of performance
(14:48):
decreases the next day.
Now, let's just say that 350 TSScomes from all intensity levels,
and the athlete is gonna be uhin a state of malperformance,
meaning their FTP is gonna godown, their power at VO2 may go
down, and their sprint abilitymay go down.
That's what they're talkingabout there.
(15:09):
However, I have some athleteswho are gonna crack and have
performance mal, and they'regonna have malperformance
implications after 200 TSS thenext day.
This is where we come again tothe individual level of things,
and there's a spectrum ofrecovery ability that occurs
(15:31):
with fitness level, all theseaspects that I have been talking
about on the podcast so far.
But my main point to all of thisis at the physiological level,
there are limited times where ortime lines where your body will
just need to need time in orderto recover from what you did.
(15:54):
Okay, elite athletes typicallydo this better because of the
fitness and the genetics and thetime that they have, but
everybody has a time-limitedaspect to full recovery.
Okay.
And now you may be thinking,well, what about all these
gadgets and devices out there?
Well, very few recoverymodalities or gadgets actually
(16:18):
speed up recovery.
Now you can listen to any one ofmy three podcasts with Christia
Schwanden, who wrote the book onall things recovery, for more
detail on that.
We discuss coal plunges,infrared saunas, tart cherry
juice, and a ton of other thingsout there, mostly gimmicks.
Real recovery is real boring.
(16:39):
Hydrate, eat according to yourtraining demands, sleep well,
limit cognitive stress, andyou'll be on the fast track to
recovery.
However, there is no magic wandor pill that puts you on any
faster than the fast track.
That's my point.
Now, longer-term recovery isstill needed.
(17:00):
Fatigue can build up in thesystem through longer training
blocks.
This is when recovery weeks orblocks are needed to bring down
the built-up chronic fatigue sothe body can come back to this
normal uh performance ability.
Use this chronic recovery tobattle the chronic fatigue, and
(17:20):
you'll be successful.
I usually have a longer-termrecovery block for my
time-crunched athletes everythree weeks or so.
And that block may be like fivedays total.
So two days rest, three dayseasy.
And this should shed most ofthat chronic fatigue.
For higher volume athletes,longer recovery time periods are
(17:41):
needed, two weeks or perhapseven up to four weeks, depending
on the level of chronic fatigueor goals that we have for that
phase.
Peaking and tapering is a wholeother topic, but uh longer
timelines with specific goalsessions of volume and
intensities to bring out asupercompensation effect is
really what we're talking aboutduring a tapering and peaking
(18:05):
time period.
That means a specific way torecover and train to get really
fast for a certain time, ofwhich then that those
adaptations diminish.
This, along with how the bodyactually adapts or makes gains,
like I said, it's it's a wholeother topic, okay, and a long
one at that.
In the coming weeks, you'll hearseveral episodes about this and
(18:30):
primarily about adaptation.
Okay.
We still need to do a peakingand tapering uh episode phase,
and you'll you'll get thathopefully in 2026.
But the main point here is tosay that recovery is not the
same as adaptation.
However, you need to recoverfrom training to get the desired
adaptation you're training for.
Recovery has shorter timelinesand brings you back to a
(18:53):
baseline, whereas adaptationshave longer time periods and
make you stronger than before.
So, in summary, the best way tothink of acute recovery is the
restoration of performancecapacity.
Many aspects of this restorationcan occur in four to six hours
if nutrition, hydration, andrelaxation are done properly.
(19:15):
So that's the minimum recoveryduration for a two-day training
strategy.
Acute recovery can be fullyrestored in 24 hours for most
people after most trainingsituations with these good
habits.
For high intensity sessions orbigger TSS days, aim for at
least 48 hours for fullrecovery.
If you're really going big orhave chronic fatigue built up in
(19:38):
the system, give yourself ablock of five to seven days easy
with a few rest days in there,and you should be good to go for
another block of training.
That's it.
That's our show for today.
Thanks again to Jonathan forwriting in and asking some
really great questions on thetotal science of recovery for
cycling.
The goal of this episode was togive you that information of
(20:00):
what happens in the body forrecovery so that you understand
why the timelines of trainingsessions throughout the week
need to occur.
Hopefully, I was able to do thatfor all of you to understand in
a simple way.
This sets the stage for nearly amonth of episodes coming up
where we look at how timelinesof adaptations to occur for
(20:24):
things like increasing FTP orVO2 max and the role of recovery
plays throughout.
Be sure to come back each weekfor those and don't forget to
share it with a friend or atraining partner.
Thanks again for listening, andwe'll see you back here again
next week.
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist Podcast.
(20:45):
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even more actionabletraining advice, head over to
trainwright.com backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast that'll help you take
your training to the next level.
That's all for now.
(21:06):
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
From the team at CTS, this is the Time Crunch
Cyclist Podcast, our showdedicated to answering your
training questions and providingactionable advice to help you
improve your performance, evenif you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, Coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches who makeup the team at CTS.
(00:27):
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
other coaches, and experts inthe field to provide you with
the practical ways to get themost out of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now, on to our show.
(00:48):
What's the science behindrecovery after a hard training
session?
Like what happens within thebody to make you recovered?
And is it the same process aftera long ride?
Finally, how does that factorinto the best training advice
out there?
Welcome back, Time Crunch fans.
I'm your host, Coach AdamPulford.
(01:08):
Today we'll dive into thenitty-gritty of how your body
actually recovers betweentraining sessions, what happens
under the hood of the enduranceengine during the recovery
process, and how you should plantraining around it.
To do this best, we need somegrounding of what recovery
actually is.
And I'll admit, this can be realconfusing because the fitness
(01:31):
training and athlete industriesout there, everyone seems to
have a recovery product, pill,potion, or method that claims it
promotes the best recovery.
And so it's gotten pretty murkyout there.
So straight into the point,recovery is the restoration of
performance capacity.
Plain and simple.
(01:53):
In endurance training andracing, this can happen
relatively quickly.
In as little as four to sixhours with good recovery habits,
you can recover enough to dosome high-quality training
again.
Or in 24 to 48 hours, most willhave full recovered performance
capacity.
(02:13):
And this is what we call acuterecovery.
This is what most of us aretalking about when we refer to
recovery after a trainingsession.
Longer-term recovery stillshould have performance
restoration as the objective,but it has longer timelines
associated as well as somecognitive aspects like staleness
(02:35):
or burnout, and will have somedifferent physiological
implications.
So to make it simple, I want allof us to think about recovery in
two ways (02:42):
long term and short term, or chronic recovery and
acute recovery.
The goal of acute recovery is tobring your body back into a
state of performing at normalcapacities for future training
sessions at really anyintensity, or at least the
intensity for the next plannedsession.
(03:04):
And this is usually the type ofrecovery most of us are
referring to or trying toachieve in a weekly training
cycle.
Acute recovery is what we'llprimarily focus on today, though
we'll touch on some longer-termscales as well.
So let's talk about the timelineof acute recovery.
What I'm going to do is walk youthrough what happens inside your
(03:27):
body, starting from when youstop exercising and start the
recovery process, going hour tohour of sorts until full
recovery is attained.
I'm going to focus primarily ontraining sessions and races that
last one to four hours, as thatcovers most of what all of you,
our listeners, are coming acrosson a daily basis.
(03:49):
I'll speak to both low and highintensity training and sprinkle
in some implications for bigdays, really hard races, and
some strength training too.
So let's begin.
Zero to one hours.
This is where recovery starts,and it's measurable.
Heart rate, ventilation, rate ofperceived effort all should
(04:09):
start coming down.
You can track that with heartrate monitor, you can track that
with new ventilatorymeasurements and rate of
perceived effort.
Ask yourself, uh, are they goingdown?
Rehydration starts to occur ifyou're drinking water and taking
in fluids.
Lactate levels start to decreaseif you put in some high
intensity in that session, andmuscle acidity will start to
(04:31):
diminish.
The recovery window is open andis most important in that first
hour post-training when you wantto speed up glycogen
replenishment and rehydration asquickly as possible.
If you're doing two days or youhave a hard session coming up in
the next 24 hours, definitelytake in carbs and fluids here.
If not, you don't really need toworry about it as much.
(04:54):
Next, from one to six hours,this is where metabolic recovery
starts.
Glycogen resynthesis is startingto take place.
Hormone levels start tostabilize after aerobic
training, but you could stillhave some uh elevated after high
intensity.
Electrolytes are being absorbed,inflammation, part of the
(05:16):
healing process, by the way,likely is increasing if you had
a hard interval session or youwere doing some near to failure
efforts in the gym.
From 6 to 12 hours, electrolyteand hydration levels are nearly
fully restored after anendurance ride.
Hormone levels like cortisolstart to stabilize if you kept
it aerobic.
Now, if you had a hard sessionin this after about six to
(05:40):
twelve hours, hydration levelsstill could be compromised, so a
little low, and cortisol levelscould be elevated along with
inflammation.
So for most people with goodhabits, four to six hours of
recovery is what I wouldconsider the minimum timeline of
recovery before you train again,such as in two days.
(06:02):
This could be a cycling workoutin the morning, strength
training session in theafternoon, or vice versa, or you
have two bike workouts in thesame day.
Ideally, they are four to sixhours apart, though.
You're trying to hit a sessionagain when recovery is full
enough to make sense, but not100% to keep the training stress
(06:23):
building for future adaptations.
Now let's assume you're aone-a-day training session type
of athlete like me, and we'regoing to keep the recovery
process going.
Let's talk about 12 to 24 hours.
At this point, muscle glycogenlevels can be nearly fully
restored if you had goodnutrition habits even after an
endurance ride that may havetaken up to four hours.
(06:45):
If you did hard intervals, zonefour and above is what I'm
referring to there, glycogenlevels may not be totally full,
but maybe like 80%-ish fullafter 12 hours and getting close
to full at 24 hours.
Hormone levels should restore,especially after an aerobic
ride.
But again, depending on howintense or how deep you went,
(07:06):
cortisol levels could still beslightly elevated at this point.
24 to 48 hours, full recoveryshould be in place unless the
session was super long or superstressful.
However, this does depend onmany factors, primarily good
recovery habits, genetics,current fitness levels, and how
(07:28):
long you've been trainingseriously, meaning years and
years of training, or if youjust started training seriously
this year.
A more fit person will recoverfaster than a less fit person,
but your own recovery processhas its own timeline.
I'll speak to that more here ina minute.
But now finally, I it'd say 48to 72 hours after something hard
(07:52):
or long, but performance abilityshould be back to pretty much
full capacity for normal,healthy athletes with good
recovery habits for nearly anyand all sessions.
So at that point, you shouldhave full acute recovery.
And again, we're to we'retalking, you know, a couple days
here, uh, but still in the grandscheme of things, that is acute
(08:14):
recovery in a nutshell.
Now let's talk about sometraining implications given all
of that.
As you can see, full recoveryfor most sessions should occur
after 24 hours of good recoveryhabits, and you can train again
the next day.
With high intensity training, itmay take up to 48 hours.
Aging can slow the recoveryprocess down.
(08:35):
So for my older athletes, Irarely have them go back-to-back
days with high intensity.
For younger athletes, this isfine, but based on the amount of
life stress, you'll need to usetrial and error to see if that
works best for you.
Two a days are fine.
And even for the time-crunchedathlete, this is an effective
way to increase volume ortraining stress if you're
(08:57):
limited on time per session.
And if you have those windows oftime for multiple sessions in
the same day, use two a days asa strategy.
Just know that nutrition andhydration habits are the most
important for you when doing aquick turn and burn to another
session.
So let's talk about the role ofnutrition in recovery and what I
(09:18):
mean by good habits.
First of all, carbohydrate isking.
For cycling performance, havingenough glycogen on your human
before you train is important.
During a ride, we consumecarbohydrates to keep the energy
high.
And after, we need to consumecarbohydrates to replenish
glycogen stores during therecovery process so that we can
(09:40):
come back and train the nextday.
If you train once every two tothree days and you're only doing
short, like 45 to 75 minutesessions, carbohydrate ingestion
may not be as crucial from atiming standpoint.
But if you train five to sixdays per week with high
intensity, maybe two to threetimes per week, or you do a long
(10:03):
ride as well on top of all that,and you live a busy life and are
challenged to get ideal sleep,you need carbs.
With adequate carbohydrateingestion and increased
training, you can depleteglycogen stores over time,
meaning over the over a weektime period or a month time
period, and thus you maydecrease performance per
(10:25):
session, not allowing for fulltraining effects to occur.
Then training quality goes down.
Therefore, carbs are king whenit comes to the performance
world, even during recovery.
Hydration.
Hydration is crucial.
You can eat all you want, butdigestion will slow down if
you're dehydrated.
(10:46):
This is another way how you canslow down the recovery process
is by being dehydrated.
You should aim to replace 150%of fluid weight that you lost in
a training session to ensureproper hydration for recovery.
And you want to drink this backover the time course of six
hours.
You don't want to just guzzle, Idon't know, three pounds of
(11:07):
water in uh in one hour becausethat doesn't lead to hydration.
You need to titrate it out, letyour body absorb it over time,
otherwise, it'll dump it allout.
For more details on this, likehow to how to quantify it and
how to stay hydrated after uhtraining sessions.
Uh go check out an article Ihave from Oscar Zhucendrup in
(11:28):
the uh landing page for this,and I'll make sure it's clear
where it's at.
But that that's a great sourceto make sure that you're
hydrated between sessions.
Finally, protein.
Protein in the long term, aswell as some of the short term,
okay.
DOMS.
Many people know about delayedonset muscle soreness, and this
(11:49):
can what that means is uh yourmuscles are sore.
Legs hurt after a trainingsession, okay?
And this can start to occur inas little as 12 hours after a
training session, but it usuallypeaks in the way of the maximum
soreness about 24 to 48 hoursafter a session.
That's why they call it delayedonset muscle soreness.
(12:12):
It takes place uh many hoursafter you did the session.
This is caused by microtrauma inthe muscles from stress, usually
from strength training, running,or eccentric muscle actions.
But this can also happen fromreally high intensity training
on the bike.
So taking in 20 to 30 grams ofprotein in that recovery window,
(12:33):
so from zero to one hour afterthe hard bike session, that's
gonna provide your body with uhenough of the uh amino acids and
building blocks to build yourmuscles back better.
But again, you need to spreadprotein out throughout the day,
and usually 20 to 30 gramdosages spread over 24 hours.
(12:55):
That's gonna provide your bodywith really good nourishment uh
from the pro from the proteinstandpoint of building the
muscles back.
Now I'm gonna make a boldstatement here.
So hear me out.
You can't speed up recovery, butyou can slow it down.
Many may argue with me on thisone, but what I mean is that
(13:16):
once you have these good habitsdialed for fueling before,
during, and after training, youreduce life stress so that you
can recover best.
You sleep seven to nine hoursper night, you eat a clean diet,
all these good, boring things.
This is the point where you needto allow your body to simply do
its thing.
Rest and let time heal alltraining fatigue.
(13:41):
Now, a few minutes ago, I didsay that a more fit person will
recover faster.
And it's true.
If you have a higher aerobiccapacity and you have higher
fitness levels, you will youwill recover from training at
all levels more quickly.
And good genetics play a rolehere, as I said.
But at the individual level andcurrent moment in time, the rate
(14:02):
of recovery is fixed for theindividual athlete.
There are limits to the speed ofrecovery within the body, and
you need to accept this.
From Tata Pagaccha all the waydown to Joe Schmo, you all have
your own recovery timeline setin place that in the moment you
won't be able to speed that up.
(14:23):
Higher intensities and biggerstresses will take longer to
recover for all athletes, butit's higher intensity and stress
relative to the individual.
Take, for example, in AndyCoggin and Hunter Allen's book,
Training and Racing with a PowerMeter, they claim that around
350 TSS you will have uhdegradation of performance
(14:48):
decreases the next day.
Now, let's just say that 350 TSScomes from all intensity levels,
and the athlete is gonna be uhin a state of malperformance,
meaning their FTP is gonna godown, their power at VO2 may go
down, and their sprint abilitymay go down.
That's what they're talkingabout there.
(15:09):
However, I have some athleteswho are gonna crack and have
performance mal, and they'regonna have malperformance
implications after 200 TSS thenext day.
This is where we come again tothe individual level of things,
and there's a spectrum ofrecovery ability that occurs
(15:31):
with fitness level, all theseaspects that I have been talking
about on the podcast so far.
But my main point to all of thisis at the physiological level,
there are limited times where ortime lines where your body will
just need to need time in orderto recover from what you did.
(15:54):
Okay, elite athletes typicallydo this better because of the
fitness and the genetics and thetime that they have, but
everybody has a time-limitedaspect to full recovery.
Okay.
And now you may be thinking,well, what about all these
gadgets and devices out there?
Well, very few recoverymodalities or gadgets actually
(16:18):
speed up recovery.
Now you can listen to any one ofmy three podcasts with Christia
Schwanden, who wrote the book onall things recovery, for more
detail on that.
We discuss coal plunges,infrared saunas, tart cherry
juice, and a ton of other thingsout there, mostly gimmicks.
Real recovery is real boring.
(16:39):
Hydrate, eat according to yourtraining demands, sleep well,
limit cognitive stress, andyou'll be on the fast track to
recovery.
However, there is no magic wandor pill that puts you on any
faster than the fast track.
That's my point.
Now, longer-term recovery isstill needed.
(17:00):
Fatigue can build up in thesystem through longer training
blocks.
This is when recovery weeks orblocks are needed to bring down
the built-up chronic fatigue sothe body can come back to this
normal uh performance ability.
Use this chronic recovery tobattle the chronic fatigue, and
(17:20):
you'll be successful.
I usually have a longer-termrecovery block for my
time-crunched athletes everythree weeks or so.
And that block may be like fivedays total.
So two days rest, three dayseasy.
And this should shed most ofthat chronic fatigue.
For higher volume athletes,longer recovery time periods are
(17:41):
needed, two weeks or perhapseven up to four weeks, depending
on the level of chronic fatigueor goals that we have for that
phase.
Peaking and tapering is a wholeother topic, but uh longer
timelines with specific goalsessions of volume and
intensities to bring out asupercompensation effect is
really what we're talking aboutduring a tapering and peaking
(18:05):
time period.
That means a specific way torecover and train to get really
fast for a certain time, ofwhich then that those
adaptations diminish.
This, along with how the bodyactually adapts or makes gains,
like I said, it's it's a wholeother topic, okay, and a long
one at that.
In the coming weeks, you'll hearseveral episodes about this and
(18:30):
primarily about adaptation.
Okay.
We still need to do a peakingand tapering uh episode phase,
and you'll you'll get thathopefully in 2026.
But the main point here is tosay that recovery is not the
same as adaptation.
However, you need to recoverfrom training to get the desired
adaptation you're training for.
Recovery has shorter timelinesand brings you back to a
(18:53):
baseline, whereas adaptationshave longer time periods and
make you stronger than before.
So, in summary, the best way tothink of acute recovery is the
restoration of performancecapacity.
Many aspects of this restorationcan occur in four to six hours
if nutrition, hydration, andrelaxation are done properly.
(19:15):
So that's the minimum recoveryduration for a two-day training
strategy.
Acute recovery can be fullyrestored in 24 hours for most
people after most trainingsituations with these good
habits.
For high intensity sessions orbigger TSS days, aim for at
least 48 hours for fullrecovery.
If you're really going big orhave chronic fatigue built up in
(19:38):
the system, give yourself ablock of five to seven days easy
with a few rest days in there,and you should be good to go for
another block of training.
That's it.
That's our show for today.
Thanks again to Jonathan forwriting in and asking some
really great questions on thetotal science of recovery for
cycling.
The goal of this episode was togive you that information of
(20:00):
what happens in the body forrecovery so that you understand
why the timelines of trainingsessions throughout the week
need to occur.
Hopefully, I was able to do thatfor all of you to understand in
a simple way.
This sets the stage for nearly amonth of episodes coming up
where we look at how timelinesof adaptations to occur for
(20:24):
things like increasing FTP orVO2 max and the role of recovery
plays throughout.
Be sure to come back each weekfor those and don't forget to
share it with a friend or atraining partner.
Thanks again for listening, andwe'll see you back here again
next week.
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist Podcast.
(20:45):
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even more actionabletraining advice, head over to
trainwright.com backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast that'll help you take
your training to the next level.
That's all for now.
(21:06):
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
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