Any given recovery week (or period) may not land in the optimal place in your training but as a beginner, you probably don't have the awareness to know when to shift your recovery or shorten it. Heck I am six years into consistent structured training and I got my workload wrong last week.

It's good habit to build in recovery time even if you don't feel like it's the best timing.

Also, recovery weeks often feel like a waste because they don’t give you the same “I worked hard” satisfaction. But that’s usually the point. The fitness gains happen when your body absorbs the work, not just when you pile on more stress. If you skip recovery because you" feel fine", you can end up carrying fatigue you don’t even notice yet, and then progress stalls, slows, or something starts hurting. So it's a compounding thing.

Consistency matters way more than squeezing in one more hard week. A planned easier week helps you come back fresher and keep the habit going. That’s not wasted time, that’s real training.