Active recovery

Jamey
Jamey Posts: 2,152
edited January 2009 in Commuting chat
Schoolerise me.

Like, for instance... Is active recovery meant to be better than resting up, or is it just that people like it because it means you can still go out on the bike?

And how do you know where the line is between active recovery and normal riding... Do you have to be really spinning or can it just be "taking it a bit easier than normal"?
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Comments

  • whyamihere
    whyamihere Posts: 7,714
    Where active recovery is better than just resting is that it gets the blood flowig through the muscles really well, helping to clear out any remaining lactic acid (what makes your legs feel stiff and ache). Sessions should be short (no more than an hour), and you really do have to be putting hardly anything into the pedals. If you're pushing it at all, you may get more lactic acid in the muscles rather than less. It is possible to use the commute for active recovery, you'll just have to allow a lot more time because you'll be going comparatively slow.
  • biondino
    biondino Posts: 5,990
    I thought muscle stiffness and soreness was (also?) caused by microscopic tears in muscle fibre which come naturally during exercise and are indeed necessary in terms of building up muscle?
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  • Jamey
    Jamey Posts: 2,152
    whyamihere wrote:
    It is possible to use the commute for active recovery, you'll just have to allow a lot more time because you'll be going comparatively slow.

    I see... So if my commute is normally about 55 minutes and today it took me 1h05m then that's not really slow enough for active recovery, is it? I'm going to need to go slower still, but then that will put me over the one hour threshold you mentioned.
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  • Rich158
    Rich158 Posts: 2,348
    For active recovery to be beneficial you need to get your heart rate down to zone 2 ie no more than 65-70% of your maximum heart rate. I find a heart rate monitor an invaluable tool when I'm doing a recovery ride as it's very difficult to judge how hard you're working by feel alone.
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  • whyamihere
    whyamihere Posts: 7,714
    Jamey wrote:
    whyamihere wrote:
    It is possible to use the commute for active recovery, you'll just have to allow a lot more time because you'll be going comparatively slow.

    I see... So if my commute is normally about 55 minutes and today it took me 1h05m then that's not really slow enough for active recovery, is it? I'm going to need to go slower still, but then that will put me over the one hour threshold you mentioned.
    You can go a small way over the hour, that's basically just to make sure you don't do too much.
    It depends how your route is really. If it's flat, then you can probably spin at a pretty decent speed anyway and not take a huge amount longer. If it's like my commute, a lot more rolling, I'd have to add on at least 30 minutes (my commute's an hour) to get any recovery benefit.

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