It might be the way I’m wired, but I find it hard to not train with to failure or at least a rep or two away. Although, when I did 5/3/1 and Deep Water, programs that involve pulling back on the intensity for the sake of volume accumulation(and chasing strength numbers), I was a good boy and followed the numbers as their intended to be ran and it worked well. I suppose you could say that my preference is to just train all out and then pull back back on the amount of work and frequency of training with a taper, cruise and additional rest days then get back to it!
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Isn’t regulation if recovery another way of deloading ? if not what is it for ?
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This is a great point, life invariably will cause us all to miss or sow down at some point in the year. So even without programming one you end up getting one anyway.
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I mean that if you are training 5-6x per week on a PPL split, you probably don’t need a deload.
But if you were training 5-6x per week on a full body everyday split, I’m doubtful anyone could actually recover from this, so a deload would be required.
I hope that makes sense.
I like the way that Jordan Peters has his auto-regulation set up.
In order of highest > lowest recovery needs (4 training sessions per week):
- Full body (4 stimuli of each muscle every week)
- Upper/Lower or Push/Pull (2x stimuli of each muscle every week)
- PPL (1.25 stimuli of each muscle every week)
- Bro Split (1 stimuli of each muscle every week)
In his TBJP book, he has you start at 4, then move to 3, then 2, then 1.
1 is near unrecoverable for most, so a deload is quite reasonable at the end. You WILL see a performance drop if you don’t take the time to let your system recover.
Hoping I explained this well, I’ve always found it difficult to effectively explain my thoughts on recovery.
A previous coach I had, had me adjust sets per session on a weekly basis.
Week 1-2: 2 sets per exercise
Week 3-4: 3 sets per exercise
Week 5-6: 4 sets per exercise
Week 7-8: 5 sets per exercise
These were all done to failure
My performance was dropping on weeks 6, 7 and 8.
There was a full week deload at the end because it was intentionally designed to overload my recoverability.
An auto-regulating system would be more like TBJP where if performance is dropping on Push/Pull or Full Body every day, drop down to a lower tier. No days off are required.
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Coach has me deload every 8 weeks and they work. I feel better going back.
I used to not get anything from deload weeks, not because I didn’t need one, but because I decided deloads was a great time to do ridiculous conditioning workouts, which go against the point of the deload lol.
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I do them whenever I start feeling beat to shit. Deload for me is just changing up the movement pattern, swapping variations. Also, just staying off compounds entirely for however long I feel like it’s needed in some cases. I’ll also take a few days off every now and then just to reset. I think deloads are beneficial and up for personal interpretation
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I want to see the sequel Matrix Deloaded where Neo only saves the day 50% of the time.
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My sleep took a complete 180 when I started BPC 157 about 3 months ago. I took it for my gut, but the sleep benefits was a nice bonus.
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I ran it for a biceps tear… no sleep benefits unfortunately
I think a deloads “magic” is completely dependant on the program. If you’re the kind of guy that goes 4-6x/week month after month really pushing the envelope with no regulation or time off then a full week of complete rest or 50% volume/intensity can feel magic. I’ve noticed myself and heard lots of stories from other people that notice these are the weeks where all their gains seem to “catch up”, introducing new size gain. Then when they go back they are actually stronger, feel better, and look better. Sleep improves, you feel more nimble, motivation returns. One understated benefit that rarely gets mentioned is it gives you some time to zoom out to objectively look at your last training block/blocks. What worked, what didn’t, what you enjoyed, what you didn’t. It’s too easy to get stuck in a rut with it all and never solidify the lessons as we maybe should.
With that said, I don’t think they are essential for most. Life has a funny little way of handing you deloads anyway. A little holiday, an illness, a bit of joint irritation or minor injury, any kind of event. I just let those things be my guide. In the same way that a program doesn’t need to be under the umbrella of the “7 day week”, nor does a deload. Maybe a single extra rest day, maybe 3-5 days off occassionaly does the trick for you.
My telltale is my sleep starts to suffer. All I do then is one light upper day, one light lower day. Go in and do the movements at around 50%. Doesn’t affect the program at all and it ends up being pretty close to a full week anyway. Some people take the whole week (which is fine) but that actually ends up being 9-10 days in most setups that skip weekends.
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I really like this thought. When you are trying to go full out week in week out, after a while it can be hard to see any real progress. Taking a pause to evaluate and learn is an excellent way to both deload and keep progressing.
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The templates that I run have them every 5-6 weeks, but they’re not called deloads. They’re pivot weeks, where one block of training switches to the next, with slightly different intensity and rep schemes. During the pivot week where you transition, you still do your heavy top set at whatever it’s supposed to be, just a lot less back-off and assistance volume. So I guess it acts like a deload. Because I still get my heavy lift in there, I don’t feel like I lose anything during the week.
If I was doing my own program, I’d probably never deload, but that’s probably not the correct thing to do. Also, these are mostly strength focused programs; I don’t know how it would change for those seeking primarily hypertrophy.
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That’s a good point. Is there less need to deload if you train for hypertrophy? Be interesting to see what someone which years of bodybuilding training experience like @RT_Nomad has to say.
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Theres this illogical fear , if someone pulls back for a week they will loose weeks of progress.
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Or fall off entirely somehow. Like, what if you take a week off and then ten years later are all “I used to lift”?
That was always my fear as a runner.
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I will say that i think the value of a deload is questionable for someone young and that is a complete novice.
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I can see how that psychologically could be a hard sell for some.
At least with a structured pre planned Deload you would hope it would minimize the concern . Since there is still a work aspect involved.
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Also, just because it hasn’t been mentioned. Introductory weeks.
For those that change programs every few months, I don’t think it’s smart to go straight from hard training right into a new routine that likely has a bunch of different movements in it. An introductory week where you take your foot off the pedal to measure yourself into the new program, get your form down on the fresh movements, and figuring out your likely working weights etc before accelerating again is basically a deload, but also likely neccessary. Works as a double whammy to let that fatigue drop so you can actually be fresh going into new training so you actually approach it as it should be approached.
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I saw Eric Spoto and John Meadows say that they plan 5-6 workouts per week. The first 3 are the serious, non-negiotable Push/Pull/Legs, main workouts. The last 2-3 are “pump days” or “light days” and these are optional. If you feel good and have the time, do them. If not, do some or none of them.
Spoto even said that most of the time he didn’t get all the days in.
And you still put in effort and work hard on the Light or Pump days, you just don’t crush yourself under barbells and huge weights.
I guess maybe that’s more “Autoregulation” than “Deload,” but I was surprised to hear it and thought it was cool that a hypertrophy guy and a strength guy both got down that way.
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The closest thing to deloads that I can recall was a Weider Principle known as Instinctive Training. I never was much for having an instinct as to what was best for growth from moment to moment. I just stuck to the plan.
Let me get my experience powerlifting competitively out of the way. For whatever reason I was very noticeably weaker the week after a meet than any other time. So, if I had a powerlifting meet, the following week became a deload week because I knew that I was going to be weak. The deadlift was the most noticeable.
For hypertrophy we didn’t ever consider a deload period. That wasn’t a recognized strategy. But, as learned how to prepare my physique to look its best on the contest day, a week out of the show, all my training was just for a pump, and with light weights trying to feel the contraction. The week before needed to cause no inflammation of muscle or tissue covering the muscle. (A number of things went into play to minimize inflammation.) And I know that nutritionally, that the final week before a contest is pretty far off the mark from a rebuilding (recovery) period expected from a deload.
So, if I had it to do again, I would place a deload week the week prior to my contest countdown (12 weeks out). So if my (main focused) contest were 13 weeks away, I would run a deload week, and then start AAS and serious muscle building (reclaiming pawned muscle tissue) 12 weeks out from the show. Note: I always did at least one warmup contest prior to the focused contest of that year. I would not try to peak for the minor contest(s), just entered where I was in the cut.
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