You may or may not have heard of the term deload in the fitness industry. Whether you have or not, by the end of this article you will know what one is, how to implement one, how to know if you actually need one and how often you need one.
So, what is a deload?
A deload is a period of time during your training cycle where you purposefully reduce the amount of volume, weight or intensity in your sessions.
Woah woah woah, stop the gains? Well, not quite. It’s the opposite. I will always remember what a friend at the gym once told me about deloading. “A successful deload reveals the strength you have built up in a training cycle”. It made perfect sense, as when you are training, you are always in a fatigued state. The deload allows you to come out of this fatigued state and showcase the gains you have made.
That isn’t the only benefit though, as you can see below.
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Your sympathetic nervous system gets a well-deserved break
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Your connective tissues, joints and muscles get a break
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You can analyse how the training cycle went/ is going and make adjustments accordingly
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As I mentioned, it allows your body to showcase the strength gains you have made
So how do you implement one?
There are 3 main ways.
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Reducing the amount of weight you lift – As simple as that really. A good guideline is to use around 50% of the weight you usually would for the exercise you are performing. You don’t need to perform more reps either to compensate for the lighter weight. The whole point is to take it a little bit easier.
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Reducing your volume – Use the same weight you lift in previous sessions, but instead of doing your usual 3-4 sets per exercise, perform only 1 or 2. Likewise, if you perform 10-15 reps with this weight, try only doing 6-8.
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Change your exercises – Not as popular as the other 2, but it can have its benefits. Muscles do get used to movement patterns, so a switch of exercises can be beneficial to give movement patterns a short rest.
When should you deload?
If you are feeling sorer than usual – Injuries and the odd stiffness and pain are part of the game. However, if you find yourself always hurting or aching, something could be wrong. If you aren’t already, make sure you are stretching and foam rolling daily to give your body the best chance it has at revering from your workouts.
You aren’t getting stronger or you are getting weaker – This is a classic sign of overtraining and that your central nervous system is taking a beating. It's easier to spot and also more likely to happen on lower rep work, but this doesn’t mean it can’t happen at higher rep work either.
After a competition – You have just giving it your all at a competition, your body isn’t ready to go straight into a new training programme yet.
How often do you need to deload?
It can be person dependent, and your training volume, intensity and how long you have been training for also need to be accounted for. A good rule of thumb is that you should deload anywhere from week 6 of a training cycle up until week 12. If you feel like you don’t need a deload at week 12, either your recovery is up there with some of the best in the world, or you’re not training hard enough.
My guess is that if you are reading this then you aren’t elite athlete status, so start planning deloads into your training cycles and reap the rewards.
