The Rest Day That Paid Off

I thought that having a rowing machine in the shed would mean I’d use it every day. That was the plan in my head: step out the back door, sit on the erg, job done.

What’s actually happened with this new training regime is almost the opposite.

Since I started feeding my WHOOP scores into Coach ChatGPT, there have been more recovery days than I expected. Yesterday was a perfect example. I woke up fully intending to do a decent session in the shed, or maybe even go to the gym. But my recovery score, according to Whoop, was 37%, and the advice from Coach ChatGPT was simple: take a recovery day.

It felt wrong.

In my head, I wanted to train. But this is the deal I’ve made with myself: if I’m going to use data and a coach, I have to actually listen. So I did. I gave myself the day off. My total strain for the day was only 4.4. Not much happened physically.

Then came this morning.

Recovery was 97%, the highest it’s been in a long time. Suddenly yesterday’s “non-session” made a lot more sense.

With that green light, today’s plan was a decent workout on the rower in the shed: three 8-minute intervals with 2 minutes rest between them, each one slightly faster than the last. Warm-up first, cooldown after. It felt like a well-judged session, enough to make me work, not enough to bury me.

I’ll admit, I’ve been wondering if I’ve made this whole thing too complicated. Copying WHOOP numbers into ChatGPT. Using the new app on the rower to program intervals, target pace, target stroke rate. It’s a few more moving parts than just “sit down and hammer it.”

But I think this is just what happens with any new process. At first it feels clunky and over-engineered. Then you learn it, repeat it, and it becomes habit. Muscle memory. Copy, paste, adjust, row.

Today was a good workout and a good lesson: sometimes the smart move is not to train, so that when you do train, you can actually go to work.

This is The Sub-7 Experiment, and I’m still figuring it out.