How to return after major surgery?

[WindWarrior]

I’ve found this approach to work well for myself:

Illness and FTP

I started doing intervals with heart rate, before buying a power meter. After 2 or 4 weeks off, I simply do endurance by HR, and some short tempo intervals with a HR cap. And toss in some 5-10 second sprints. It takes a week or two for your blood to carry more oxygen and related endurance adaptations. During that time your FTP can increase quite a bit. The last time I took 4 weeks off, my estimate for ftp dropped to 200W (going by power-to-HR). Within 2 weeks it jumped up to something like 230W…

Its not TR way (as TR doesn’t really consider HR), but, a) it simply works, b) there is no stress worrying about tracking ftp changes (down and up), c) results in productive workouts, and d) results in a fairly quick return to fitness as seen by power-to-HR.

My usual timeline to a return to fitness is twice time off, as mentioned here Detraining 8 weeks in Olympic champion rower and by Jeff Linder of NorCal Cycling YouTube channel High HR after 2 Weeks Off - #3 by WindWarrior And FWIW I’m older and not elite. But that “4 weeks off = 8 weeks to fully return to fitness” rule of thumb has repeatedly held true for 2 weeks off and 4 weeks off.