The WattPlan Podcast · Episode 51 · 9 min
What does two weeks off the bike really do?
Next episodes: How quickly do you lose cycling fitness? · What is winter training actually for? · How do you read your Fitness chart?
Read the transcript
James. This is the WattPlan Podcast and I'm James. Family, a busy autumn of sponsorship deals at work, other clients, WattPlan in the gaps, and far too many papers. This one's personal. I finished my season second in my age group at the Sherwood Pines gravel race, then took the traditional two weeks off. I'm thirteen days in and I don't feel rested, I feel wired. So what does two weeks off the bike really do? Lyra's our AI research voice, and every study is in the show notes.
Lyra. Physically, very little. A fortnight off costs you a few percent of your VO2max at most, and the big losses only start past about a month. But that's the easy half. Stopping completely also changes how you feel, and the research on that is surprisingly consistent. Wired, flat, a bit on edge in the second week is a pattern the studies describe.
James. Tell me if I'm being daft, then. Resting heart rate's up a few beats, HRV's down a few points, I'm buzzing, and normal work stress is piling up in a way it usually doesn't.
Lyra. None of that sounds daft. Start with the head, because it's the part people don't expect. Weinstein, Koehmstedt and Kop reviewed nineteen experimental studies in General Hospital Psychiatry in 2017, where researchers took exercise away from healthy people who'd been doing it. Taking it away consistently raised depressive and anxiety symptoms. Most of the breaks were about a week, and the effects were stronger once they passed two weeks. Severe problems were rare. [1]
James. Two weeks. That's exactly where I am. Honestly, the other night I got closer to a panic attack than I've been in five years. And I hadn't joined that up with the break at all.
Lyra. I'm glad you said it, because a lot of riders will recognise it. The studies can't tell you why it happened to you, and I won't pretend they can. What they do say is that the ride is often doing a job besides fitness, and when you take it away the stress it used to absorb has to go somewhere. If anything like that is new, strong, or carries on once you're riding again, that's a conversation for your GP, not a training plan.
James. Fair. And I think there's a sneaky bit of me worrying about losing fitness, too. Even though I know it's tiny.
Lyra. That one we can answer with numbers, and we did in episode four. Most of the early loss is blood volume, and it comes back quickly. Your muscle holds on far longer. The worry is real, the loss mostly isn't.
James. Right, the heart rate stuff. Should my watch be scaring me?
Lyra. Not on its own. For resting heart rate over a few weeks the studies are honestly mixed, some found it rose and several found no change. For heart rate variability there's a neat study. Pereira and colleagues tested eighteen high level endurance runners, men and women, before and after four weeks with no training, in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness in 2016. Resting heart rate variability very likely fell, alongside a slower three kilometre time trial. So some of what your watch shows is simply the training coming out of the numbers. [3]
James. And some of it's my life, now that I haven't got the ride to burn it off.
Lyra. Probably, and the watch can't tell you which is which. That's the honest limit of a wearable during a break.
James. So here's my pushback. Pros take two weeks off every year. Everyone does it. Are you telling me that's wrong?
Lyra. No. If you want the full stop, two weeks costs so little fitness that you should take it. But it's worth knowing the cycling studies on the transition after a season didn't stop their riders at all. Almquist and colleagues took sixteen elite male cyclists and cut their training by about sixty percent for three weeks, in Frontiers in Physiology in 2020. Half of them added some thirty second sprints to one easy ride a week. Their sprint power went up while the others went down, their aerobic fitness held, and nobody's burnout score moved. [4]
James. So a lighter month rather than a dead stop.
Lyra. That's the alternative. A Norwegian group found something similar over an eight week transition, where one hard session every week or so kept well trained cyclists ahead of riders doing easy rides only. Our view at WattPlan is that if riding is part of how you look after the rest of your life, a lighter transition may suit you better than nothing at all.
James. What's surprised me is the time I've got back. More family time, which shows you what we give up to be a bit faster. And now I'm excited to start again, but I don't know how I fit it all back in.
Lyra. That's the most useful thing a break shows you. So decide your hours before your sessions. Start from the time you can actually protect this winter, not the hours you were riding in the summer, and build from there. The space the bike left will have filled up, and that's fine.
James. And my Fitness line. It's gone off a cliff.
Lyra. It will have. Fitness in WattPlan is a forty two day average of your Load, so a run of days with no riding pulls it down far further than your body has gone. When you start a new plan it begins from the Fitness you have now, and the opening weeks are built for the rider you are after the break, not the one you were in September.
James. Honestly, the Coach has kept me sane. I've been chatting to it in the app, and more than once it's talked me down and reminded me any loss can be rebuilt. What I've missed is the daily update, because I'm not on a plan.
Lyra. That's a fair note, and you've put it on the list. The daily notes only come while you've got a plan running, so a rider on a break doesn't get them.
James. Right, by rider then. If you're new to this and you've just finished your first proper season?
Lyra. If you're new to this, take the break without guilt, and expect your first rides back to feel harder than they should. That's the blood volume coming back, not lost talent. And if you feel a bit low or restless in the second week, you're in good company.
James. If you train with power or heart rate?
Lyra. If you train with power, don't read much into a small rise in resting heart rate or a dip in HRV during the break. Watch whether they settle once you're riding again. And if two weeks feels too long, cut your training hard instead of stopping, and keep a few short sprints in one ride a week.
James. And if you race, like I've just been doing?
Lyra. If you race, the transition studies are the ones to copy. A lighter few weeks with one hard effort in them kept elite riders' performance, and one group came out ahead the next season. The full stop is fine. A lighter few weeks is rest too.
James. What can't the research tell me?
Lyra. Quite a bit. The mood studies took exercise away from healthy people, mostly for a week, and none of them were cyclists at the end of a season. The heart rate variability evidence is one study of eighteen runners. The two cycling transition trials had sixteen and thirteen men. And nobody has compared a two week stop with a lighter transition in amateur riders, so which suits you is a judgement about your life as much as your legs.
James. So the fortnight costs me almost nothing in the legs, but it can cost me more in the head, and next year I might just ride less rather than not at all. And I sort out my hours before I sort out my sessions.
Lyra. And the feeling of being desperate to get back on the bike is worth noticing. It tells you what the riding does for you, beyond the watts.
Lyra. The full article and every study we mentioned are on the WattPlan blog, linked in the show notes. And if you've enjoyed this, follow the WattPlan Podcast wherever you're listening, so you don't miss the next one.
James. And if you want a plan built around the time you've actually got, get WattPlan on the App Store or Google Play. Thanks for listening.
Voices produced with ElevenLabs. James's voice is a clone of his own, Lyra is an AI voice, and James reviews every episode.
An off-season break in cycling costs little fitness in two weeks, but stopping completely has other effects. A 2017 review in General Hospital Psychiatry found that taking exercise away from healthy people consistently raised depressive and anxiety symptoms, more so after two weeks, while cycling transition studies kept riders' performance by cutting training rather than stopping it.
Why do riders take two weeks off at the end of the season?
Plenty of riders end the season with a fortnight with the bike in the shed before winter training starts. Our post on how quickly you lose cycling fitness covers the cost in detail. Trained men lost about 6% of their VO2max after two to four weeks off, mostly because their blood volume fell, and the muscle side held on far longer.
What that post didn't cover is the rest of what happens. James Vickers, who founded WattPlan, raced the Sherwood Pines Trophy, the British Gravel Trophy round on 11 October 2026, four laps of a 15 km forest course, 58.4 km in all, and finished second in his age category. He had already lost the best part of a week to illness late in the season, then took his fortnight off straight after the race. Thirteen days in, he felt wired rather than rested, his resting heart rate had risen a few beats, his heart rate variability had dropped a few points, and work stress that riding usually burns off was building. One evening he came closer to a panic attack than he had in five years. He talked it through with the Coach in the app more than once, and what he missed most was the app's daily update, which only comes while you have a plan running. It is one rider's account, not evidence, but each part of it has research behind it.
Is it normal to feel anxious when you stop training?
It is common, and the research is consistent on it. Weinstein, Koehmstedt and Kop reviewed 19 experimental studies in which researchers withdrew exercise from people who had been doing it, 689 participants in all, 385 of them in a withdrawal group. Withdrawal consistently raised depressive symptoms and anxiety. The breaks ran from 1 to 42 days, with a median of 7, and the effects were stronger once withdrawal passed two weeks. Severe problems that needed clinical treatment were rare.
So a rider who feels flat, restless or on edge in the second week of a break is in the pattern the studies describe. If the feeling is new, strong or doesn't lift once you are riding again, that is one for your GP rather than a training plan.
What happens to resting heart rate and HRV during a break?
Resting heart rate can rise, but over a few weeks the studies disagree. The 2023 systematic review by Barbieri and colleagues in Frontiers in Physiology pooled 41 studies of detraining in endurance-trained people and found that stopping lowers VO2max through smaller blood and plasma volumes, shrinks the heart's left ventricle and raises heart rate and blood pressure. The clearest resting figure in it comes from a year without training, 13% higher, about 7 beats a minute, while several shorter studies, from 10 days to 6 weeks, found no change. Heart rate variability, the beat-to-beat variation that wearables track, can move too. Pereira and colleagues tested 18 high-level endurance runners, 8 men and 10 women, before and after four weeks with no training, and resting heart rate variability very likely fell, alongside a slower 3,000 m time trial.
Riders tend to read a drop in heart rate variability as a sign of stress or poor recovery, so during a break it is easy to see a few points' change as something going wrong. Some of it is the training coming out of the numbers, and some may be the rest of your life, now without the ride that used to absorb it. The device can't tell you which.
The numbers from the studies
| Study | Who | Break or transition | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weinstein and colleagues, 2017 | 19 studies, 689 people, 385 withdrawn | 1 to 42 days, median 7 | Depressive and anxiety symptoms rose, more after 2 weeks |
| Pereira and colleagues, 2016 | 18 high-level runners | 4 weeks, no training | Resting heart rate variability very likely down, 3,000 m slower |
| Almquist and colleagues, 2020 | 16 elite male cyclists | 3 weeks, training load cut by about 60% | One weekly session with 30 s sprints, sprint power up 4% against down 4%, burnout scores unchanged |
| Rønnestad and colleagues, 2014 | 13 well-trained male cyclists | 8 weeks, mostly easy riding | One hard session every 7 to 10 days, power at 4 mmol lactate up 10.6% more than the easy-only group |
Should you stop completely or keep riding a bit?
The cycling studies didn't stop their riders. Almquist and colleagues took 16 elite male cyclists, with an average VO2max of 72 ml/kg/min, and cut their training load by about 60% for the three weeks after the season. Half added 30-second sprints to one easy ride a week. The sprint group's 30-second power rose 4% while the easy-only group's fell 4%, and only the easy-only group's 20-minute all-out power fell significantly, by 3%, although the difference between the groups wasn't significant. VO2max held in both groups, and neither group's burnout score changed.
Rønnestad, Askestad and Hansen ran an eight-week transition with 13 well-trained male cyclists. Seven added one high-intensity session every 7 to 10 days to their easy riding and six rode easy only. Over the transition the high-intensity group's power at a blood lactate of 4 mmol improved 10.6% more than the easy-only group's, and their 40-minute all-out power 12.4% more. Barbieri's review reaches the same view, that a partial reduction in training limits the losses better than a full stop.
Our view at WattPlan is that two weeks fully off costs so little fitness that any rider who wants it should take it, but a rider who relies on riding to manage the rest of their life may do better with a lighter transition, two or three short rides a week with a few hard efforts in one of them, than with a complete stop.
How do you fit training back in after a break?
Decide your hours before you decide your sessions. A fortnight is long enough for family time and work to fill the space the bike left, which is a fair reminder of what the training costs, so start from the hours you can protect this winter rather than the ones you rode in June.
Expect the data to look worse than you feel. WattPlan's Fitness is a 42-day weighted average of your daily Load, so a fortnight of zeros takes more than a quarter off it while your VO2max has lost far less. A new WattPlan plan starts from your current Fitness, which you confirm in the plan wizard, and sets its opening hours from it, so the first weeks back are built for the rider you are after the break.
What to do with your break
- If you want a full stop, keep it to about two weeks, which the detraining studies put at a small cost.
- If you rely on riding for your head as much as your legs, try a lighter transition instead. Cut your usual training by more than half and put a few 30-second sprints into one easy ride a week, as the 2020 cyclists did.
- Don't read too much into a small rise in resting heart rate or a dip in heart rate variability during the break, and check whether they settle once you are back on the bike.
- Set your winter hours first, then build the plan around them from your current Fitness.
- If anxiety or low mood is new, strong or lasts after you have started riding again, talk to your GP.
What we don't know yet
The mood studies took exercise away from healthy people, mostly for about a week, and none of them studied cyclists at the end of a season. The heart rate variability evidence here is one study of 18 runners over four weeks. The two cycling transition trials had 16 and 13 men, and the 2020 trial's difference in 20-minute power between groups wasn't significant. Nobody has compared a two-week full stop with a reduced-training transition in amateur riders, so which one suits you is still a judgement about your own life as much as your physiology.
Sources
- Mental health consequences of exercise withdrawal: A systematic review, General Hospital Psychiatry
- Cardiorespiratory and metabolic consequences of detraining in endurance athletes, Frontiers in Physiology
- The impact of detraining on cardiac autonomic function and specific endurance and muscle power performances of high-level endurance runners, Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness
- Effects of Including Sprints in One Weekly Low-Intensity Training Session During the Transition Period of Elite Cyclists, Frontiers in Physiology
- HIT maintains performance during the transition period and improves next season performance in well-trained cyclists, European Journal of Applied Physiology
- Sherwood Pines Autumn Trophy, British Gravel Trophy