Ramp rate and recovery weeks: how fast is too fast?
Fitness grows from load and recovery, not from load alone. Two things help with dosing: the ramp rate, i.e. how fast fitness rises, and the recovery week that gives your body time to adapt.
What the ramp rate measures
Ramp rate is the change in your fitness (CTL) compared with seven days ago. A value of +4 means your fitness rose by 4 points over the past week. How CTL is built is explained in the guide to TSS, CTL, ATL and TSB.
Staying above roughly 5 to 8 points per week for long counts as fast. It is possible for a short time, for example after a break or at a training camp. Over weeks, though, fatigue builds up and overload becomes more likely. Anyone training with a high ramp for long needs more recovery.
Why recovery weeks are needed
Training sets the stimulus, adaptation happens during recovery. A recovery week lowers load clearly, often to about 60 % of a normal week. Fatigue (ATL) falls faster than fitness (CTL), form rises, and your body can settle at the new level.
A common pattern is three build weeks followed by a recovery week. Older athletes, poor sleepers and people under a lot of stress often need one sooner.
How a weekly plan decides
A good plan explains its decisions. These are the rules ZonePit uses to plan a week:
- Starting point: the average weekly load of your last weeks. With no history it is estimated from your time budget, and the plan says so.
- Build week: an increase over the starting point, by 8 % (build base) or 5 % (raise FTP, prepare for an event) depending on your goal; with the goal to maintain it stays at 0 %.
- Recovery week: due after three build weeks, at 60 % of the load.
- Early recovery: if form drops below −25 or your wellbeing over the last days is poor (2 out of 5 or lower).
- Short sleep: if you sleep under 6 hours on average, a build week's target load is cut by 10 %.
- Time budget: the week fits the time you have per day. Nothing above what the budget can carry is planned.
Am I on plan? Compliance
Compliance compares the load you completed with the load planned for a week. 80 to 120 % counts as on track, 50 to 80 % or 120 to 150 % as deviating, anything below or above as far off. A week still in progress is only an interim status. Deviations are not a failure but a reason to fit the plan to your life.
In ZonePit
ZonePit shows the ramp rate (orange above 8), projects fitness, fatigue and form from your plan and shows compliance per week. The weekly plan is generated by the rules above and explains every decision. The app changes your plan only with your confirmation.
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Sources
- Hunter Allen, Andrew Coggan: Training and Racing with a Power Meter (load model, ramp rate, recovery weeks).
- Intervals.icu: plan compliance as the model for the rating.
ZonePit is a training and wellness app, not a medical device.