I prefer complete off the bike rest after doing a hard ride. I also don't believe in riding 7 days a week for the same reason, your muscles need to rebuild and working them will delay this. But try doing it both ways and see what works best for you. For me 1-2 days rest is optimum to put me in the best shape, I don't usually take more than a day but I have done this enough times to know that my riding after that period is much better than 1 day off or recovery riding. Going over 2 days starts to degrade my performance.