Originally Posted by
rubiksoval
I've found that real life just doesn't work in nice blocks. I'll ride, ride more, take a break, ride a lot, ride a little, go easy, etc.
Whatever life and my legs dictate. The problem with scheduling blocks occurs when you're halfway through the second week and feeling destroyed. Going to keep pushing through for another week and a half until the "scheduled" break? Same thing the other way. Get to the end of week 3 and feel awesome with great weather and lots of time available next week. Going to take your scheduled break, then?
Your body doesn't really know 3 weeks on, 1 week off. Your body only knows the recent stimulus it's undergone. Whether or not you're properly recovering from that and can push on or back off comes with a bit of experimenting and experience.
I agree. I rarely have a full "rest week" (even if by rest week you mean decreased intensity/volume as opposed to completely taking off) unless I'm sick or on vacation (and even some of our vacations include some riding). There are a few A-priority events that I taper for, I guess you could maybe consider those rest weeks although I tend to keep intensity up and just drop volume for tapers.
I take rest days as needed, and sometimes real life gets in the way of training and I have to take more days off in a given week than I'd prefer. But since I tend to follow a polarized training approach, I don't overreach to the point of needing a full week to recover. I can see how it would be necessary with some of the more traditional training plans, where you're doing 3/4/5 days of tough intensity in a row for weeks on end during the build phase; but as a master's athlete that training approach doesn't make much sense for me. Quality intensity work requires more recovery before you're ready to repeat it as I get older, so rather than a big block of intensity followed by a big block of recovery, I use smaller blocks with more easy days interspersed. So with a polarized training approach, the recovery is less structured than traditional training (at least for me).
That's not to say there's no periodization with my training approach, as the specific types of intensity work will vary depending on where I am in the training season, and some weeks may be harder than others.