As fitness fanatics, you’re taught to give it your all and lift as hard as you can, as
much as you can.
But one often ignored factor in fitness is… recovery.
Yes, most of you probably understand the importance of recovery in the sense of proper nutrition
and making sure you get enough sleep.
Yet for some reason, you still eventually end up hitting plateaus, or worse yet, see
your results going the opposite direction.
And that’s when a more rounded perspective of recovery comes into play, such as deloading.
Deloading is simply reducing your training lboad to allow your body to recover.
Fact is, if all you do is lift heavy all the time, you’re not giving the body ample recovery
to properly adapt to your training stimulus.
Do it long enough and you begin to overtrain.
And it’s not just about not giving your muscle tissue enough time to recover.
It also other symptoms of overtraining, such as mental stress, your nervous system, and
ligament, tendon, and joint stress, which can take longer to recover.
Now, there aren’t any direct deloading studies.
However, we can draw a hypothesis from others.
One study on untrained men found that both a group that trained continuously throughout
12 weeks had similar gains to a group that took a 3-week break in between.
Same goes with a 6-month study on athletes, finding no differences between subjects training
continuously versus taking 3-week breaks every 6 weeks.
On top of that, they even saw a huge uptick in their results when coming back from rest.
If we somehow optimize rest and reduce it to one week instead of three, hypothetically
we can see even greater gains by taking advantage of this boost.
So how do you deload exactly?
The general approach is to reduce all of your lift intensities by 40-60% for one week.
If you’re benching something like 225 pounds, you cut it down to 80 to 120 pounds while
keeping the same sets and reps.
You can even try cutting the volume.
Instead of 3 sets of 10 reps, do 3 sets of 5 reps instead.
It’s not just a full rest week, although it can be.
OR, you can choose to do something different entirely, such as yoga or light cardio.
Avoid high intensity cardio such as HIIT, since it can be just as taxing to the body
as your typical routine.
And if you feel like you need more than a week, then by all means deload longer.
As far as how often you should deload, it will depend on your program.
For programs where fatigue sets in quickly and often, you might need to deload maybe
once every 4 weeks.
For slower, methodical programs, you can stretch out deloads as far 12 weeks.
For beginners, it’s probably best practice to plan your deload ahead of time.
Fact is, if you’re trying to play it by ear and listen to your body, you might not
have a complete understanding of how true overtraining might feel like.
So, play it safe until you get a better understanding.
By and large, deloading can come in different shapes and sizes, but it all boils down to
reducing workload to improve recovery.
And the final question is, do YOU need to do it?
Instead of saying the obvious of, “it depends,” it really comes down to the effectiveness
of your program.
A suboptimal program will not provide a strong enough stimulus; thus, extra recovery is not
needed.
Beginners might also get away with longer times before deloading because their body
is primed for muscle growth via newbie gains.
As you become more advanced, deloading matters more and more.
Same goes with age.
As you get older, you need more recovery.
Once you start understanding signs of overtraining, you will better know when to deload.
And how you decide to do it will ultimately be up to you.
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