Take a Load Off
You push yourself hard in the gym. You train consistently for weeks on end. You’re doing great, then one day you’re not. You feel beat up. You walk in the gym and don’t feel like training. Weights that you’d normally be able to blast into outer space feel crushing. The worst part is, it’s not just today. It’s been this way all week. What do you do? You might think that the solution to the problem is to just plow through it. No pain, no gain, blah blah blah. However, you might be wrong. This is most likely the perfect time to take a deload week.
What’s a deload? Glad you asked. It’s a drop in either intensity (how heavy you’re lifting) or volume (sets and reps) or both. I know, I know. “So I’m supposed to do less? Are you insane?” Well, my very hard-working friend, yes, I am asking you to do less. Though you might want to keep training as usual, here is something to remember: training means overloading your body so it’ll adapt. This means giving it more than it can handle. When it’s subjected to this kind of treatment repeatedly, fatigue begins to build up in all of the systems (nervous, muscular, endocrine, etc.) Eventually, the damage will add up to the point where joints/tendons start hurting, you feel frayed/have no motivation, your appetite changes drastically, and your sleep gets disrupted. Deloads are meant to give your body an extended break to repair itself. They’re important because they help you to stay fresh enough to keep training and adapting.
So, now that I’ve convinced you that you need to deload every now and then, you’re probably wondering how you know when and how often to do it. There’s going to be some individual variability to this one, but the most common schedule is every four to eight weeks. Personally, I deload about every six weeks. It took plenty of trial and error to figure this one out, but I tried a couple of programs that lasted eight weeks of pushing truly hard and I always felt stale by week seven and awful by week eight. The quality of the workouts also dropped significantly in those two weeks. You’re much better served taking a deload and putting in good work the next week than sticking it out and doing two weeks of junk training.
As mentioned above, you have a few options when it comes to how you want to deload: reduce intensity, reduce volume, do both, or focus on something other than what you normally do.
Reduce intensity. This one is pretty straight forward. If you’ve been doing three sets of five reps at 85% of your 1RM, then you might want to try doing three sets of five reps at 60%. The drawback is that if you’re the type that likes moving heavy weight, then you’ll find this boring. You have two choices: suck it up and deal with it or try the next approach. One thing that you could do to help keep boredom at bay is really focus on moving the bar as fast as possible while still under control.
Reduce volume. This is my personal favorite. If you’ve been pushing hard, trying to get bigger and stronger, then you’ve been lifting heavy weight for many reps in your workouts. Instead of lifting lighter weights, do fewer reps. One of my personal favorite strategies is to work up to a single rep at 90% of 1RM on the big lifts (squat, bench press, deadlift, press,) and then call it a day. No assistance work, no accessories. Just go for a single at 90% and go home. You get to move heavy weight and, since it’s only for one rep, it’ll be a nice, clean, powerful rep, but you won’t feel drained afterward. Your body will have plenty of time to recover and it won’t have much to recover from. The heavy weight will send the signal that all that muscle and strength is needed, but it won’t be worn down.
Since you know how to reduce volume and intensity, it should be obvious what reducing both looks like. Use lighter weight for lower reps than normal. This is great if you’re feeling truly beat up. Its main drawback is that some people may find it boring. Then again, are you in the gym to make progress or not? Sometimes that means doing things you find boring once in a while.
Do something different. The last way is a bit unconventional. You’d go into the gym and work out in a style you wouldn’t normally do. If you’ve been lifting really heavy for the last several weeks, you could try a bodybuilding style workout that uses nothing but machines. Or you could try a HIIT style workout where you do a bunch of conditioning. Why not work on that mobility stuff you’ve been saying you’ll get to for the last five years? Yoga? Spin class? Zumba? There are nearly endless options here. One of the biggest advantages of a week of that is, well, it’s a lot of fun. You get to try new things and still deload. It can add a little spice to your training that might be desperately needed.
Whatever route you chose to go down, it’s important to remember that the point of taking a deload to never have to deload. Yes, you might think that by taking it easy for a week you’re slowing down your gains. You know what slows down your gains even more? Injury or burnout. You can’t just endlessly tear yourself down. Sooner or later, the fatigue wins and you’re in a training grave. Stay ahead of the fatigue and purposely back off every several weeks. Your joints, nervous system, and endocrine system will thank you for it, even if your ego doesn’t.
