Regardless of how long you have been cycling, and your fitness level, EVERYONE needs to incorporate recovery rides and rest days into their schedule. There also are a few misconceptions about these two topics, so let’s start off by clearing things up. So, recovery rides vs rest days- what is the difference?
Recovery rides are generally 30-60 minute, low-intensity rides, to be done a day after an intense ride. A rest day simply means resting throughout the day. Anecdotal evidence suggests recovery rides foster better performance for cyclists, but there is little scientific evidence to back this claim.
Now, most of us would think that it’s better to rest at home after an intense ride the day before, but, more often than not going for a recovery ride will make you feel better.
This is because recovery rides help you flush out the toxins created inside your body after an intense cycling trip.
Rest days have their place in all this too- and there also are multiple alternatives to recovery rides that you can try out.
There are a few nuances to understand however, so I suggest you read the next section carefully:
What Happens To Your Body After An Intense Bike Ride?
We’ve all felt muscle soreness after an intense bike ride (or any other type of workout really). Understanding what happens to our bodies is the key to knowing how to improve performance and also, what type of recovery to undertake.
See, your body regularly creates lactate, which is then absorbed and dissipated. However, when you do strenuous exercise, your body creates lactate more rapidly than your body can absorb, which leads to excess build-up of lactic acid in the muscles.
Now, if you leave it be, the excess lactate dissipates on it’s own and the muscle soreness goes away in a day or two.
However, if you are training for a marathon, or just for generally improving your fitness, you might not want to wait for a day or two between every ride. That’s where recovery rides are helpful.
See, the whole purpose of a recovery ride, is to gently improve blood flow through your muscles, in order to flush out the excess lactate from your muscles. This is what helps you recover faster than if you were sitting around the house instead.
How To Do A Recovery Ride
Now, when it comes to recovery rides, there are two very important things to keep in mind:
#1 Cycle on easier gears (low gears). This ensures that your legs spin much more than normal, which then increases blood circulation which in turn dissipates the excess lactate build-up in your muscles.
#2 Also, pick routes that are as flat as possible. If you can’t avoid climbs, go through them as slowly as possible, on the easier gears. Do not exert yourself or it defeats the purpose of a recovery ride.
I love going for recovery rides around Lutyens, Delhi, spending a leisurely Sunday morning, with a coffee stop bang in the middle of the route.
How many recovery rides a week should you go for?
Generally speaking, it is a good idea to have 2 recovery rides, if you are cycling 5-6 days a week. Have a recovery ride after every 2 training rides, to allow your body to recover.
This is just a general rule of thumb though. If you have been really pushing hard in training, alternating between training and recovery rides is also quite valid. It all depends on how you feel the next day after training. If your muscles are sore and you don’t feel as fit, going on a tough training ride again won’t do much good.
Broadly speaking, then number of recovery rides you will need is a function of your lactate threshold, and how many times you cross it during training (which is what causes muscle soreness). As you get fitter over time, your lactate threshold will increase, which means you will be able to do tougher training sessions easily, and you will need lesser time to recover.
Another important question is how long should recovery rides be?
A recovery ride can be anywhere between 30-60 minutes long, although you can prolong it by taking a break in the park, stopping at a coffee shop, etc. In fact, I strongly recommend you do so.
When it comes to cycling intensity, recovery rides are the easiest. Like I mentioned
Are recovery rides stressful?
Recovery rides are not supposed to be stressful at all. A cyclist in recovery ride should ride in Zone 1, which is generally referred to a very easy pace where you can maintain a conversation without shortness of breath.
Also – recovery nutrition is very important. Having proteins and carbohydrates soon after training actually helps the body recover faster. A banana smoothie, either standalone or mixed with a scoop of whey protein is my go to recovery drink.
What Should Cyclists Do On Rest Days?
Based on my personal experience, I recommend doing some light activity around the house. This might include cooking, doing chores, etc. I also suggest doing some light stretching for 5-10 minutes everyday, including rest days.
Based on your cycling style, you might find some muscles being tighter in one limb than the other. This is fairly common among cyclists- for instance, my right quad muscle is much tighter than my left one, which started causing knee pain, until I rectified it by stretching before workouts. Active stretching ultimately affects your recovery and performance, which is why doing just a bit of it helps tremendously.
Also- just ensure that you get enough sleep, and get good nutrition- healthy balance of proteins, carbs and fat- but that’s about it really. Apart from this, how you want to spend the rest day is up to you entirely.
How many cycling rest days a week should you plan?
For most cyclists, having 2 clear rest days is optimal. If you have been building up in your training, having a week or two with just one rest day is also okay, if your body feels fine with it. During the peak training season, cyclists sometimes don’t take rest days at all during the week- but that is not sustainable in the long term.
While we have been talking a lot about recovery rides and rest days, an equally important part of this topic is knowing how to ride during training. Good recovery is 50% guaranteed if you are riding correctly in training.
How To Do A Training Ride?
For an absolute beginner, not more than 1 hour. You can slowly keep adding 20-25 mins after every 3 rides, and build up from there, until you reach a threshold you’re comfortable with.
Having said that, the length of your training rides depends on your goals, and your fitness levels really. Most cyclists want to improve their speed and shorter, high intensity training intervals help with that significantly more than long rides.
In fact, long rides are good mostly for getting used to the experience of cycling for long periods. Your backside will hurt, as well as other muscles- that’s normal.
Also long rides require more recovery than shorter, high intensity rides. That may end up impeding your overall training, so plan carefully.
Shorter rides- less caloric expenditure- can recover faster. Can re-hydrate easily too. Just a 3 hour ride burns approx 1800 calories for me- and my normal intake is 2100 calories! That’s approx 600 calories an hour that you’re burning away.
Also shorter rides add training stress incrementally, you keep bumping up the intensity just a little bit with each session as you get better. You’re able to do it because the sessions are short.
However, long rides tend to be much more stressful on the body. A lot of cyclists tend to do a long ride over the weekend followed by no activity for the rest of the 6 days. While this is sufficient initially, once your body gets used to this level of activity, your fitness will plateau.
Also- additional work being done after a point of time will just add to fatigue and NOT build up muscle endurance, or strengthen the muscle fibers, which increase speed. The goal, as this article explains it, is to improve your lactate threshold performance.
As you workout, lactate levels shoot up in your body. Excess lactic acid causes muscle soreness, which all of us have experienced at some point or another. Now, your lactate threshold simply means the level of performance you can sustain without fatiguing. Once lactate threshold is reached, the body starts producing more lactate than it can absorb.
The fitter you get, the higher your lactate threshold.
Alternatives To Recovery Rides For Cyclists
I spoke to around 10-15 cyclists that cycle more than 3x a week. I also looked around on the internet for best practices and found the following to be among the top alternatives you can do instead of recovery rides:
#1 Stretching
#2 Cold baths
#3 Massage
#4 Foam Roller
#5 Sleep
#6 Compression clothing
Let’s look at these recovery options one by one:
#1 Stretching. Look, I personally believe in stretching EVERY single day- even if just for 10 minutes. It improves blood flow across your body, and you will feel much more limber afterwards. I usually go cycling really early, 4-4.30 am start times and I find that some light stretching beforehand AND after I return, really helps.
Since the goal of a recovery ride even is to circulate blood through the muscles, the same is achieved by stretching- the only question is, which method is better?
There is no clear answer to this, because very few studies have been done in this area, as I mentioned earlier in this post.
Based on my personal experience though- recovery rides are much more effective, however, you ought to incorporate some stretching into your day.
#2 Cold Baths
Let me just tell you first off that, the science on this, especially on benefits to cyclists, is inconclusive.
Based on anecdotal evidence though, a number of cyclists swear by it, so this is just one of those things that, unless you try for yourself, you’ll never know.
The supposed benefits of cold showers after a hard ride, are:
- Constricts blood vessels, flushing out excess lactate and toxins from the muscles
- Reduces heart rate (beats per minute) for the rest of the day which makes you (literally) less stressed
#3 Massage
As would be self-evident to you by this point in the article, massages are tremendously helpful in improving blood flow across your muscles, which is really the goal of your recovery.
If you have access to someone who can give you full body massages regularly- you should definitely incorporate massages into your recovery routine. I mean, let’s be honest, who wouldn’t?
#4 Foam Roller
Again a great option to give yourself a quick massage. Just remember to avoid running the foam roller over small joints like ankles, knees, etc to avoid injury.
If you’re looking for one, I think this one on Amazon seems like a great option
#5 Sleep
Sleep forms a component of passive recovery, and is extremely important. In fact, we do damage to our body on a daily basis, and sleep is what allows the body to, quite literally, repair itself.
Get your 6/7/8 hours sleep (however much you sleep on average) to recover fully. I recommend having a set routine for all days.
#6 Compression clothing
Compression tights or calf guards are generally worn by cyclists during rides. These help improve blood circulation during rides which helps overall performance. Another key thing is that they reduce muscle vibration during rides, which reduces the fatigue and wear and tear of muscles.
For recovery as well, wearing pair of compression socks for an 1-2 hours after your ride can be highly beneficial.
How To Speed up Cycling Recovery?
Keeping a track on your cycling recovery times is going to be absolutely vital for you as a cyclist- because that means you can improve that much quicker.
Really, the speed of your recovery from a ride boils down to just one key metric:
Your lactate threshold.
As far as you keep on increasing this, you’ll find your performance keeps improving, and you require less time to recover. Every time you push yourself just a bit harder, you’ll improve your cardio health as well as your muscle strength.
The only question remaining after that is – how quickly can you repeat your training sessions?
For that, simply focus on active and passive recovery- see which options work for you and do those. Also focus on your recovery nutrition. Getting a good balance of proteins, carbs , fats etc is key.
That’s all there is to it really.