Hi! I’m a couple weeks into an Ironman build, starting at 10 hours a week building to about 20 in 9 months and I’m noticing there are no pure rest days designed in the training plan. I can adjust/adapt to that approach, and regulate my efforts accordingly, plus I think if I really feel like I need one I could just take a rest day on my own, but just wondering if there’s a way to tell the AI that you want 1 full day of rest programmed in per week or something like that?
Hi @ethilo our new ‘Daily Availability’ feature will enable you to declare your rest day. This should be coming out in the next week or so.
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In Garmin’s Daily Suggested Workout, at one point, it placed the rest day after particularly tough workouts or when it thought you needed it because of your unusual intensity after a workout or when it sees you are getting overly strained rather than it being glued to a pre-defined day of the week. I think now it forces you to choose an exact day of the week. I personally think I’d prefer the AI to pick a good rest day based on my physiology rather than my calendar. Wondering if it’s possible to have some sort of “please incorporate a rest day in a frequency of approximately once every 5-7 days.”
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That’s a great idea 
I would argue though that the best way to recover is to do an easy aerobic session instead of full rest day. However, many people like to have Mondays as rest days because of their weekend heavy training load and it mentally refreshes them to keep grinding through a busy work week. And give them a chance to engage in other important things…
Personally my recovery days almost always include a walk and yes I record it. I rarely take a full day off from training because movement is my mental health space, and getting outside moving at low-stress ways helps with recovery.
Recovery from a hard session could possibly look like a walk, an easy ride or just jumping in the pool for 1000m, or some mobility work.
How would you program the AI to automatically give you the best preferred recovery mode? I think certain individual human flexibility and autonomy can be helpful here but I am keen on hearing your perspective…
Best, MJ
I’m not quite sure how Daily Suggested Workout did it, but I plugged in a half marathon race 3 months out and followed the DSW for the race last year. The program projected out 7 days ahead of what it wanted me to do then would adapt and change those days based on my execution and response to the training load. I noticed that if I ended up doing a session harder than the program suggested, it would swap days around the next day and plug in a rest day. I’m guessing it was watching the overnight HRV and looking for an acute dip following a tough workout. I liked that because I don’t have consistent weekends to build my training around, therefore I’d rather see it adapt to my internal queues.
I agree, on rest days I’m noticing that after a zone 1 spin on the trainer it feels like I’m actively healing my body moreso than sitting on the couch like a slug all day. I might program a suggested rest day as “rest and recovery day” with carte blanche for the person to pick what they think is best for them. Have it be something like: For this rest day, complete an optional recovery workout in the modality of your choice, aim for a session no greater than 50% of your most recent zone 2 session average TL. Listen to your body and if you need a complete day off from training do that instead. " or something like that.
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Great advice 
thanks
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