How to test for recovery ability?

Hey everyone,
On the Training Cycles page (and others) it says to determine recorvery ability, but I cannot seem to find any information on how to do that... I could, of course, just guess, but that would be rather unscientific to say the least. So, how am I supposed to test for that?

Thanks for any help here

Hey Christian,

actually mixing subjective indicators with common sense, even though it seems "unscientific", ti worked very well for me. Basically you set a best guess schedule and pay close attention to how you feel at at the end of the 3rd week and at the end of the 4th week (deload week).

If you are full of energy at the end of the 3rd week and you don't really want to deload, then you can handle a schedule with more volume.

If you are kind of tired and looking forward to deload and, at the end of the deload week, you are pumped at the idea of starting the new cycle, then you are close to your sweet spot.

If at the end of the 3rd week you are really beaten up and you don't even have the energy to go through the deload week properly, then you need to cut back the volume.

The result is not written in stone, for example right now I'm doing two F7 and two H1 workouts per week plus all the stretch series without a problem, but when I started I could barely handle only one foundation workout split over 3 days. So every once in a while you need to re-asses, but not too often, because having consistency and not moving stuff around too much is important as well.

More "scientific" methods include resting heart rate (pretty reliable and I always keep an eye on it, my fitness tracker does it for me) and HRV (I know it is pretty popular, but I tried it and didn't find it valuable enough to justify the aggravation, at least for me).

@Giovanni Garcea

Thank you very much, that is very helpful, indeed I think, it would greatly help new-comers if this were in the official documents.

That sounds about right; personally I always gauge on the 2nd half of the 5th week--- Wed-onwards after returning from a deload. On the Mon-Tues I should be energetic-- doing everything on enthusiasm and energy and not a lot of polish-- but by Wednesday I should be settling into control, strength and ease. If week 1 (5) is difficult I don't have a chance of getting my week 2(6)s; something has gone wrong.

Just FYI I'm a beginner but not a raw one, durable, reasonable work capacity, have experimented with 3+ F7 schedules, and am now finding that the 3-day/week schedule is allowing for the fastest and most consistent progress. It is not always just MOAR VOLUME; it is about hitting the right balance.

I will also add that your recovery ability is largely dependent on sleep and nutrition. So if you do not feel like you are recovering well per the above guidelines, don't rush to cutting volume. Are you sleeping enough? If not, fix that and recovery will increase. Are you eating well and enough? If not, then fixing that will also help. 

@Jon Douglas
Thanks for you input. By personality, I'm generally in the MOAR VOLUME camp and therefore making a conscious effort to do less than 110% that's why I had to ask this

@Mark Carter
It's always good to be reminded of those very important points, thank you