Elite coaching, powered by your biometrics.
Recovery (50% FTP) · 45 min
45 minutes at 50% FTP. The active-recovery template that produces motion without stress.
Positioning
The Recovery Spin is the smallest dose the system dispatches. It is not a workout; it is a metabolic intervention. The 50% target is below the Athlete’s first ventilatory threshold; cardiac stress is minimal, but motion stimulates blood flow and accelerates lactate clearance. Veloarchitect dispatches the Recovery Spin after Failure Horizon collapse, post-race, or as the day-after a supra-threshold block.
The Recovery Spin is the cheapest tool in the system and the most-often skipped. The Athlete who treats a Recovery Spin as “wasted time” and rides at 70% FTP instead produces a different physiological stimulus (more aerobic work, less clearance) and undoes the recovery intent. The system reads the Execution Precision drift on a Recovery Spin — a 0.62 reading means the Athlete did not ride the template as prescribed.
Protocols: Protocol 4 — Recovery Spin
Structure
45min @ 50% FTP, cadence 85–95rpm
45-minute Recovery Spin @ 50% FTP
Worked Example
Tuesday morning: Whoop recovery drops 18% overnight; Readiness Ratio 0.78; Failure Horizon collapses from 96h to 38h. Adaptive Workout rewrites Wednesday’s planned Threshold Sustain to a Recovery Spin. Athlete executes the template; Execution Precision 0.94 (clean Z1). Thursday: Readiness Ratio rebounds to 0.89; Mechanical Efficiency held flat at 1.57 W/bpm (no degradation from the skipped Threshold block). Friday: Adaptive Workout resumes supra-threshold work at the original weekly schedule.
Common assumption inverted
The Recovery Spin is not “punishment for a bad day” and not “skip the workout.” The Athlete who skips the Recovery Spin to do a hard ride instead will produce additional cardiac stress the system did not intend; the Failure Horizon projection tightens further. The Recovery Spin is the system’s preferred intervention; the Athlete who overrides it is rejecting the read.
All Templates
See all eleven downloadable templates or the proprietary metrics glossary for the signals the Adaptive Workout reads.
The Architect is an independent analysis tool and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Zwift, Inc. or Rouvy or Whoop. Zwift, Whoop and Rouvy are trademarks of their respective owners. Support for .zwo and .fit files is provided for data interoperability and personal performance analysis only.
© 2026 VeloArchitect. All rights reserved.
Powered by Biometrics from WHOOP