Approaching the Deload Week

You can only #beastmode your way through so many days, weeks, or months of training. What most people fail to realize is that a lot of posts made by the strong, jacked, and ripped people of instagram tend to only show their good side. It should be no surprise that many social media posts are going to show people in a positive light. Realize that high level athletes are not exempt from bad training days. This is where the topic of deloading comes in. So what exactly is a deload? A deload is essentially backing off from training in order to further recovery. It is often an overlooked aspect of training. It turns out some rest every now and then is pretty good for you.





    As mentioned previously, the deload is used simply as a break from training. It has both physical and psychological benefits. We need to recover because, simply put, exercise is stress. Allowing proper recovery can decrease risk of injury and stimulate muscle growth. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, lifting weights does not lead to gains. Recovery is what causes growth and physiological improvement. What is done outside of the gym in terms of consuming adequate calories, sleeping, and stress drives recovery from exercise. The term we will use for the recovery adaptation from a deload week is known as supercompensation. Essentially, as we increase stress (from exercise) our body responds by adapting with improvement.

Supercompensation

For those of us that have been “in the grind” for some considerable time (weeks, months, years) we realize that it leaves some mental wear. Eventually either you aren’t seeing the results you hoped to be or are just sick of training all the time. It happens to the best of us and there is no shame

in taking a much needed break. It is unreasonable to assume you can come into the gym everyday for months and go hard. There are many external stressors in life that prevent that from happening. Often times after taking it easy for a week with a deload I find myself anxious to tackle big weights again.

How we do it

    There are many ways to structure a deload, although conceptually there tend to be two methods to approaching the deload. Keeping the intensity low and volume low, keeping intensity higher and the volume low. Sometimes people just take an entire week off (not recommended due to detraining unless you really need a break). I do not recommend the latter, but I have known situations where it has been useful for some people.

Lower intensity and low Volume

    Other than taking an entire week off, this is probably a less effective method. Your weights would be dropped to only 50-70% of 1RM and done for generally 25-50% less volume. So for example, if you were doing 5x5 at 80% your last week before a deload, this weight would now drop to doing 3x5 at 60%. The benefit is the stress is relatively low, but that is also a drawback. The goal of a deload should be to provide a greater time for recovery while reducing the effects of detraining. Meaning, you do not want to necessarily get weaker from a deload. You just want to allow your body to recover. This is also the issue with taking an entire week off. Strength can be better maintained with higher intensities, even with lower volumes.

Higher intensity and Lower Volume

    The approach in cutting the volume is similar. Although the intensity is kept at a higher range. So rather than dropping to 50-60%, you keep the intensity at 70-85%. From this point, you can then reduce total volume by 50-75%. So for example, if you were doing a 5x5 squat at 80% prior to deload, with this method you might just do a 3x2 at 75% or just work up to 1-2 singles at 80%. A drawback with this method is that the volume reduction might be too much and could lead to some soreness when getting back into training. Although, this can be mitigated by keeping the volume a bit higher for the accessory work but doing it at a lower intensity (lower RPE - rating of perceived exertion). 

As you can tell, there are many ways to implement a deload method and which method you choose and how you plan to structure it largely depends on personal preference and just trying different methods. Most of the bodybuilding or accessory work can remain consistent with just lower intensities or 1-2 sets and exercises can be removed, this way volume is still reduced for accessory work and not just the primary movements. 

As far as implementation, lifters typically implement a deload at the end of a 4 week, 6 week, 8 week, or 12 week cycle. Being more experienced means you will be dealing with heavier weights and might need to deload more often. This means a deload every 4-6 weeks is more appropriate for intermediate and advanced lifters. While a deload of 8-12 weeks could be better for a novice lifter. Planning a deload could help you from hitting a wall in training and not making progress. This is why it is beneficial to preemptively implement a deload week. Although it could also be implemented whenever the lifter feels they need one. The drawback to the latter method is that it is much more difficult to accurately predict a training cycle or to peak for a competition.

    A few things to point out is that the volume during the deload should be slightly lower for the lower body lifts such as the squat and deadlift compared to upper body lifts such as pressing and pulling movements. Generally speaking, since you are using more muscles and more weight with deadlifts and squats they are much harder to recover from than something like a bench press or barbell row. You are likely also using more weight and stressing more joints for the lower body exercises. Therefore you can afford to do slightly more volume in the upper body lifts.

In the end, it comes down to a lot of personal preference and what you find to work for you. A mistake I made when implementing the deload week early in my lifting was detraining from using too light of a weight. I noticed through experimenting that working with higher percentages (80-85%) I was able to maintain strength much better and get some much needed rest. The deload method that allows you to feel recovered while maintaining strength is the method that is most optimal for you. It takes some time to play with structuring a deload week. Once you are able to construct one effectively you can fully reap the benefits of taking a week to recover from hard training.