Bling zzz wrote:
Gypsy, if you think the recovery cycle is always 48 hrs, you have not done your research.
#1 It really depends on the type of breakdown before you can judge how long the recovery and supercompensation will be.
#2 It has become quite common practice to allow 72 hrs recovery for hard breakdown workouts - especially for more elite runners.
I've been doing this for years.
Hey
I don't think the recovery cycle is always 48 hours, as there are 'sometimes' situations that require more. An upcoming competition is the most common situation probably, although slight over-training may require it as well to keep the balance in place.
From my own experience you work hard in the gym, hard enough to create muscle soreness, and it is two days time when the soreness has gone. When you work a hard jumping session on the track, the next day there is an obvious reduction in spring, which returns the day after. I would have to train for 2 hours on the track jumping, hurdling and sprinting three times a week, there was no way i could do those in consecutive days, yet there was no need to take a day off, apart from those sometimes situations. It would look something like this
m - run 30, weights 60, gymnastics 30, tech 30
t - track 150s, tech 90
w - as monday in structure
t - track 300s tech 90
f - as monday in stucture
s - track sprints tech 90
s - rest or golf or long run (rare)
This increases to 3 hours per session and then adds morning sessions, which whilst mainly technical, still take 90mins to complete. With all of that volume, the only way to get through it is to overlap the training. Fortunately the muscle soreness from a heavy lifting day doesn't interfere in any real way with the sharper stuff on the track the following day. And nothing done on the track seems to interfere with what is done on gym days.
The only regular time i would have 3 days rest between same type hard sessions is over the weekend, so one in three recovery periods are 3 days anyway. The other is for competitions, but the need for 2 full days rest only occurred for me before a decathlon. As it was, it went 48 hour cycles for every different component of training, except over the weekend when 72 hours was gained. (actually we had 3.5 days recovery over the weekend from sat am to tues pm for track related activities).
From where i stand, to use 72 hour recoveries as a regular thing indicates either over-training or under-training is occurring. If the 72 hours are necessary to allow for recovery, then its over-training and if they are not, we find under-training. 48 hours is how long it takes from normal hard training, i thought this was common knowledge.