Recovery Philosophy

Coaching from Lionel Space, Phoenix AZ

The ride: My strongest advice is to always err on the side of too much recovery as opposed to too much intensity. When hard riding leaves your legs feeling stiff and weak the next day, it's because you've actually done damage to the muscles; that's why they hurt. If you were to do more damage to weakened muscles, you are likely to weaken those muscles even more and cause more pain the next day. Many people that begin exercise fall into this dilemma and find that after 2 weeks their bodies have turned to mush and quit. The key is to let the body heal itself, usually to a stronger state than before the process began. Thus recovery days are where muscles and strength are actually built and are imperative to developing your potential.

A recovery ride is like giving yourself a massage. The gentle use of the muscles allows blood to feed the muscles with fresh supplies while removing the toxins that are causing the pain. The movement loosens up the muscles, breaking up the feeling of tightness. Thus the effort needs to be adequate to get a good blood flow, but not so extreme as to damage the muscles further. And it's possible to get too much of a good thing, so a four or five hour ride will likely start to produce negative impact on recovery.

My typical ride is only an hour long, typically at about 18 or 19 mph, right from the start of the ride. At this speed, my breathing is not close to being taxed, yet I can still feel that the legs are putting pressure on the pedals. I prefer a flat course so that I can easily control the amount of effort required.

I use a low fixed gear of 49 x 22. There are lots of advantages to riding fixed. The primary effect is that it will help you develop a smooth pedal stroke and a nice spin.

Fixed gear bikes are also fun, giving you a feeling of being directly connected to the machine. If you encounter a down hill while using a low gear, you will quickly teach yourself how to pedal smoothly, lest you be ejected from the bike from excessive bouncing. If you encounter an up hill, you will find a strong pedaling technique that can provide power throughout much of the 360 degrees that is available. Plus it's a lot cheaper: I go through about 2 chains a year at $10 each (KMC Z510HX silver) and only use my expensive (and faster wearing) road chain for races; cogs and chainrings last about 10 years.

Technique: When doing intensity efforts, it's not easy to concentrate on technique at the same time you are asking for 100% effort, so the recovery rides are the perfect time to work on this aspect. I have very specific ideas as to what the best pedaling technique is and I've often been complimented on my smooth technique. A power train is only as strong as it's weakest link. For cycling that power starts from the lower back, through the hips, through the knees, through the ankles, and finally to the ball of the foot. Me conclusion is that the ankle is the weakest link of this train and it can determine how much power the larger muscles above can actually transmit to the final destination on the pedal. Try this test: stand with both feet on a 2 x 4 piece of wood, flat side down, where the ankles are at 90 degrees and the heels off the floor. Have someone push down on your shoulders where you resist, hoping to keep that 90 degrees steady. You'll probably notice some deflection and it will take great effort to resist that deflection. Then change your ankle position such that you raise yourself as high as you can on the balls of your feet and it's nearly a straight line from your knees to the balls of your feet. When that person tries to push down on your shoulders, you'll need no effort to completely resist an change in your stature. Thus reducing the angle of the ankle can allow the large muscles to be more effective on transmitting the downward force into the pedals. The mental technique I employ to accomplish this is to think of shearing the cleats off of the shoes, pointing the toes down, and driving the balls of the feet past the pedals. This is even more effective for out of the saddle efforts.

As the foot reaches the bottom of the stroke, it is still important to apply power to the pedals. Our feet evolved to give us power in running. Thus the feet should be very strong at pushing back, which would propel our bodies forward. Therefore the most efficient use of the available muscles is to push back on the pedals with the ball of the foot and toes pointed downwards. I liken it to a duck swim, where they push their feet back through the water. This is much different than the conventional practice of "sliding mud off the shoes" and uses the muscles quite differently and uses a very acute ankle angle.

After completing the bottom portion of the stroke, the feet already have the toes pointed downwards and are set up perfectly for a good addition of up stroke power. Those that have incorrectly used the mud sliding technique will keep their ankle bent and try to pull a force upwards through the top of the shoe, which is a very weak technique. Instead, totally relax the ankle and let the big muscles pull the leg upwards while feeling pressure through the ball of the foot where it contacts the pedal. This eliminates the weak link of the ankle again. A mental exercise that helps produce this action is to imagine that your bottom bracket is four inches higher than it actually is. You'll end up adding a lot more up stroke effort and should immediately feel your calves and hamstrings working more.

Due to the geometry, it is very difficult to gain much power beyond the upstroke and over the top. The biomechanics don't line up well to accomplish much there and I do not put any concentration to that aspect.

Position: In general, I look to have the engine come from the hips down, keeping the torso and arms relaxed (they do come more into play for out of the saddle efforts, but not as much as most people might think). One area that seems to be largely misunderstood is the lower back and the strength that can come from it. A mantra that has come from the tri-athletes is "flat back", which has been proven to be more aerodynamic. However there is a huge negative consequence to this and if you examine most of the top road time trial cyclist, you often see quite a curve in the lower back which continues through to the shoulders. If you've added the power available from the upstroke, you can quickly see why this will drastically improve your power, enough to overcome any aerodynamic disadvantages. Here's the experiment: ride you bike at a medium speed with no hands, with your body very much erect. In this position, your lower back will be very vertical. Feel how much strength you have in your pedal stroke during the up stroke; it should feel like a lot. Then change that hip angle as drastically as you can as you lower your hands to the bars, keeping the back flat and then nearly horizontal. You'll discover that you've lost nearly 100% of any ability to use up stroke power. The solution is to maintain the lower back as vertical as possible while you curve your spine to get your shoulders down to a streamlined position, which will maintain the up stroke power. Many riders may not initially have the flexibility to accomplish this and it can take a season or two to finally achieve the optimal position, which will only come with practice.
 

Another posture related aspect is to pay attention to your knees. Some riders let their knees fall out, where the more efficient path is a straight line from hips, to knee, to feet. Knees that stick out will often force the heels in, creating clearance problems with the cranks and a skewed cleat alignment. Practice riding with your knees in (I brush the inside of my legs against the top tube) to create a more aerodynamic and powerful leg action that less likely to cause knee problems. Once the knees are aligned, you may want to consider zero float cleats to create a firmer connection to the pedals.

Periodicity: I rarely take a day completely off the bike. Now in my sixties, I find that it would take me 2 days to get back to where I was if I took that day off. I avoid at all costs taking more than one day off in a row, as the time to get that fitness back is exponential. The body will adapt to the demands we place on it, and this also works in reverse, where it will quickly deteriorate if no demand is made of it. Put your foot is a cast for 4 weeks and it will likely take over 6 months to get use of it again, let alone getting adequate strength in it. If complications preclude your ideal ride, jump on a trainer for at least 15 to 20 minutes to signal to the body that it still needs to maintain cycling abilities and not fall quickly into couch potato mode. If I have to travel out of town without my bike, I'll take my shoes, pedals, and some wrenches and modify the motel stationary bikes to keep my legs going.

Older riders need more recovery days. As a 20 year old, I could use Mondays and Fridays as recovery days, with Wednesday as a long mile, but bit faster type of recovery day; doing races on the weekend, time trials on Tuesday and motor pacing on Thursday. When I hit my forties, that no longer worked and an average of 4 recovery days per week were needed to keep on balance. Now in my sixties, usually 5 days of the week are recovery days, with typically a race on a weekend and a mid-week sprint workout. The good news is that abilities do not need to dramatically decline if proper recovery is provided to the body.

On this same note, since older bodies take longer to heal, they also can not have the same dramatic seasonal peaks and valleys throughout the season. It just takes too long to get the performance back due to all the days spent in recovery. So the valleys (lack of peak fitness) should not be allowed to get too low. I have very little change throughout the year and thus my early season performance is exceptional to other racers that have dipped too low.

Conclusion: So you can see that a recovery ride is a training ride with very specific goals. Taking a day off the bike is not a recovery ride. A group ride where you avoid the temptations to show off or a recreational ride where you concentrate on the scenery or socializing can substitute for a recovery ride, but may not yield all the benefits of a structured training recovery ride.

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