31/01/2022
How, when & why to have a de-load
a de-load is an essential part of any well put together strength programme and critical to long-term success is most sports.
It's a simple concept really, you push yourself for an amount of time and then you reduce the load/stress/intensity for a period of time to allow yourself to recover and then progress to the next section of your training.
Unfortunately many people won't actually take time to recover unless they're forced into it by a programme/coach or by becoming burnt out or maybe even injured.
The reasons I most commonly see are a pervasive fear of losing progress by taking literally any time to train at less than maximum capacity or a feeling that while recovery is important for most people...I'm different and can manage it.
I hate to break it you but you're actually losing progress by not recovering and that it's very unlikely your physiology is radically different from basically every human on the planet.
With all of that preamble out of the way let's talk specifics.
Who needs to deload?
Literally everyone at some point regardless of goal-set. However this post is mostly focused on those who are aiming at strength & hypertrophy and for people with those goals it's really essential.
If you're ever feeling very highly fatigued then take some time to rest and recover. Ideally it will be an aspect of your training covered by a programme but when it isn't listen to your body and track your fatigue like you would sets/reps/weight. If fatigue is trending high take some time to de-load.
When & how long?
For strength & hypertrophy focused individuals a de-load every 4-6 weeks for about 7-10 days working at 40-60% of total volume & intensity at or below 80% of 1RM (one rep max) is good.
There is a degree of variation here, if you're in a very heavy phase of training working at 90%+ of your 1RM you'll need a de-load more often. Your joints, nervous system and muscles will all need time to recover.
If you're in a high volume hypertrophy phase where you aren't ever pushing very heavy weights and doing compound lifts for less than 3-5 reps you can take more time between de-loads. Maybe up to 8 weeks, however you should be tracking fatigue and performance, once you see any steady increase in fatigue and any steady stagnation or decrease in performance then take a de-load.
Why is it so important?
The ways that the human body actually adapts to any stimuli can be
thought of in relation to an SRA curve, SRA standing for stimulus, recovery, adaptation.
When we train, in the short term our performance decreases, the extent to which this is true is dependent on the stimuli. If it's a maximal effort like a max deadlift or a 100m sprint the decrease in performance is very fast. If it's a walk the decrease in performance is very very slow.
Typically the more challenging or close to maximal the stimuli the longer the recovery period required in order to have a positive adaption leading to better performance.
For something like strength or hypertrophy training these curves are moderate, you want to take maybe a couple of days to rest each week in order to maximise adaptation. However because you can steadily accumulate fatigue during these periods you need some time every 4(ish) week in order to allow your physiology to fully recover so you don't start having a downward trend in performance due to insufficient recovery.
All of this is basically saying, if you don't recover your training is screwed and you'll be left wondering why you've plateaued so hard despite training hard and pushing yourself. The real answer is that you aren't meeting you recovery needs.
Don't let your ego get in the way, recover well & you'll progress way better and more consistently.
This is a longer more technical post but it's a message that's very important for people to hear especially as we come to the end of the month.
You've hit January hard, well done. Now take a deep breath and give yourself a week at a lower intensity and push again next month.
Do you have any processes you follow to manage to fatigue or know when to actually de-load?
If you have any questions about this topic or need a hand with your programming get in touch.
