Daily training and overtraining
 

Hi.
I heard and read in many sources that it is not recommended in resistance training to train daily,
but rather it is better for every muscle group to be trained every other day, or less - so that the
muscle will have sufficient time for recovery.
Yet in cycling, I never heard anyone advices against daily training - shouldn't the same principles of
work and recovery apply equally for cycling ?
I guess recreational cyclists don't usually train intensively every day, but when considering
Pros on Stage Races - these guys are racing every day for weeks.
While recreational cyclist are obviously not comparable in many aspects to the pros,
they still share the same basic physiology, and the same principles should have applied to them
as well, shouldn't they ? (even when considering all the special substances used...)

you're confusing intensity with volume.

I think you are thinking of weight lifting & body building. In those endeavors, one gains strength by pushing the muscle set to exhaustion. That muscle group should then be given a day to recover. Especially since you generally lift to muscle exhaustion each and every time.

Now cycling is largely aerobic. So in order to build up aerobic potential, one has to do it daily. Now if you were to go out and do very intensive intervals, you would certainly want to wait a day before going out and doing them again. But in cycling, you need to balance building up aerobic fitness with building up the sprint. So cyclists often only do really intense intervals once or twice per week. Between those workouts are longer and less intense workouts.

Intervals are anaerobic like weightlifting... you can't really do them every day. Otherwise if you stay aerobic you can do it every day but it is good to take a "rest" or "recovery" day every so often. Rule of thumb: the more intense, the less often, and the more recovery needed.

Yes, and there is a VERY fine line between overreaching and overtraining. I learned the above lesson the hard way. This is even more of an issue as you get older.