How to tweak the plan when taking week off the bike? (and avoid returning to an overwhelming XSS deficit)

Training
1

Hi Xert Community,

I will be going on vacation on March 18-25 (Saturday-Saturday). I will have access to a gym with an exercise bike (not a trainer) and plan to do a couple 1 hour rides at tempo heart rate just to maintain…

I am on the Moderate-2 ramp rate. My plan as of now is to build an XSS surplus until the trip as I will have plenty of time to recover… but I still do not want to come home to an anxiety inducing 400+ XSS deficit.

Would you suggest for me to change the ramp rate to maintenance to avoid this? Previously, I had a chest cold and took 2 days off the bike, setting it to maintenance for those two days, and when I set it back to moderate-2, it immediately gave me a 225ish XSS deficit which was not appreciated lol. How can I get back from my trip and kind of start back up from there as opposed to make up for lost time?

Thanks!

2

Hi @DannyLevin ! We did write a blog post about returning to training after a break which you might find helpful/interesting: Returning to Training after a Break – Xert

You’re going to have a deficit when you first start back (that’s just the way that progressive overload works), but you’ll quickly chip away at it over the first couple of days and everything will be back to normal within the next week :+1: You can reduce the IR to ‘off-season’ to minimize the deficit. Switch it back to your usual setting within a week or so of training :slight_smile:

Oh, and have a good Vacation! Breaks are great for the body & mind :smiley:

1 Like