Hi guys and girls,
Posted this on my blog yesterday and would be interested to hear what strategies you use whatever your goals.
Look forward to your thoughts,
Jon
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In Part 1 we discussed how life is a set of waves. Learning how and when to ride the waves and learning to spot which ones are worth riding, is the key to fulfilment, happiness and developing the physical appearance and capabilities of the Bionic Man.
In training, the key to this is carefully planned deload weeks.
So what is deloading and why does everyone serious trainee need it?
Deloading is a period of time which has the following objectives:
Realisation of work effort
Deloading allows the body time to rebuild stronger than it was before. Remember, fitness gains of any kind never occur during training but in the recovery period that follows.
This applies on a day-to-day basis when muscle fibres and fat burning occurs once the session has finished but also on a larger scale. The fact is that even if you get your 6-8 hours of deep sleep on a daily basis, mental and physical fatigue accumulates.
A proper deload of 7 days or more, allows the body to recovery from this accumulated fatigue, but also to draw together all the training that has gone on in the last few weeks and allow you to ‘rebound’ stronger, faster, leaner and/or more muscular than ever before (depending on the training goals).
In the same way that financial investment rarely pays off straight away, work done in training can only be ‘realised’ when we give the body sufficient time to do so.
Injury prevention
Muscles can recover quite quickly from tough training sessions.
Joints, however, aren’t always quite so quick to resume normal service. The older you get the more this problem can rear it’s ugly head in the form of aches and pains or worse, injuries which prevent you from doing what you want to do.
A sustained period of low intensity training or sometimes complete rest can be the only way to keep joints healthy and allow any niggles to properly repair themselves.
Avoiding overtraining
Preventing injuries and overtraining aren’t the same thing although they are usually very closely linked and one will follow closely behind the other.
Overtraining can occur even when joint by joint and muscle by muscle, you still feel okay. Rather than a specific injury becoming obvious you gradually or suddenly build this level of systemic fatigue which just will not go away.
You’ve gone beyond your body’s ability to recover and the harder you try to force yourself through training, the worse it gets until you reach a point where your training or performance levels border on embarrassing.
Proper deloading allows you to let your body recover from a neurological, muscular and joint perspective so that training doesn’t become an impossible chore due to overtraining.
Maintain drive
No matter how much you love training, whatever competition or sport you are involve in, or even if you just love training, you will have those periods, both long and short, when the thought of a training session is like a kick in the groin.
Taking a short time out from the gym will reignite your desire to get back in the kill it again!
In Part 1 I reminded you of the old saying “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone’. This applies to training as well!
The rest of this article assumes that you are someone who trains hard and has the physical and mental ability to put yourself on the floor in workouts through the extremely high work rate.
Joe Average who goes to the gym to do a bit of ‘this and that’ does not experience this even if he thinks he does. As a result he is able to go to the gym for 90 minutes every day and keep up the same level of intensity. This guy (or girl) does not need deload weeks, he needs someone to give him a slap round the face and show him what training should really feel like if he wants results.
First of all, none of this advice is cast in stone. A degree of trial and error over a period of months or even years will be required to discover what works for you.
Some people are able to deload every 5 or 6 weeks whereas others benefit more from deloading every 3 or 4 weeks. There is no right or wrong answer other than the one thrown up by experimentation on your part.
What isn’t up for discussion is that deloading from training must be done fully. In other words, don’t reduce the volume of weights lifted for example but replace those ‘lost’ sets with an extra 50% on your interval training.
There are many different ways to deload but here are my favourites, how they work and when I would be most likely to use them.
Volume Waves
I first learnt of this method from Eric Cressey in his book ‘Maximum Strength’
This method of deloading simply involves reducing the volume of training you are doing and can be applied to both lifting weights and ‘cardio’ training.
This isn’t just done for one week every so often, but follows a pre-planned schedule set out over 4-12 weeks.
Volume reduction is best achieved by simply reducing the number of reps performed in waves as discussed in Part 1.
High training volume can suppress endocrine (hormone) function thus reduce levels of growth hormone. Clearly this will restrict muscle growth, so high volume weeks should not be performed on a consistent basis.
A simple solution is to program high volume weeks followed by low volume recovery weeks when a rebound effect will occur bringing great gains in strength and muscle gain.
This table shows the classification of each training week and an example exercise from the training program.
Week 1 – High volume – Front squats – 5 x 4 reps (20 reps)
Week 2 – Medium volume – Front squats – 4 x 3 reps (12 reps)
Week 3 – Very high volume – Front squats – 6 x 4 reps (24 reps)
Week 4 – Low volume – Front squats – 3 x 3 reps (9 reps)
The weights lifted remain the same or even slightly greater week by week so the intensity remains roughly the same but the volume clearly drops. This maintains strength gains without accumulation of fatigue.
In Week 5 we start the process again with higher weights when you will notice significant gains.
Volume waves can be applied in slightly different ways so consider the following and experiment to see what works, always with the main goal in mind:
- Reduce the volume on the main lifts like squats, deadlifts, bench presses etc but maintain on supplemental work which doesn’t tax the nervous system so much to bring up weak areas. Exercises like overhead lunges and rotator cuff work can be maintained at roughly the same volume. I have talked in other articles about taking time out to step back in order to step forward much faster. Spending more time on assistance exercises for a week at a time, can do just that!
- You may even eliminate the low rep, circa 1RM work and simply perform repetition sets of say 3x15-20 with low weights on the low volume week. This can aid recovery by increasing blood flow to the muscles. This can work well but if you are chasing strength gains, maintaining momentum with the big lifts is crucial so keeping the weights lifted high but reducing reps is usually the best way forward.
If however the objective is muscle growth you may see a surge in results by stepping off the gas in terms of weight lifted and bringing in nutrients through increased blood flow.
New Exercise Deloading
This method involves taking every fourth week to learn and practice new exercises or progressions of exercises already perfected and can be easily-integrated to work with Volume Waves.
In Week 4, when you have more time on your hands due to reducing the volume of sets and reps being performed, you can start each session with technique practice of more advanced exercises.
This method is particularly good for beginners who have not yet advanced to the ‘bang for your buck’ exercises, provided they are training hard enough to warrant a ‘deload’ week.
This is often not the case as beginners lack the ability to maintain correct form for long enough to create sufficient fatigue to need extended periods of recovery. They may actually be the exception to the rule and require consistently high volume in order to program new movements and improve the quality of connective tissue which can be in a poor state in detrained or untrained individuals.
Competition or testing weeks
Any athlete, whether professional, amateur or novice, understands that training hard up to the day of an event, is performance suicide and, whether intentional or not, performs something of deload week prior to the event.
This event can be either an organised competition such as a half-marathon, triathlon, powerlifting meet or simply a 1 rep max test.
This type of deload is more commonly known as tapering and can take various forms.
Generally, the longer the duration of the event, the longer the tapering period should be.
For instance, marathon runners may be required to taper from 3 or 4 weeks prior to the event, whereas someone looking to break their
PR in the squat may only take one deload week as discussed previously.
Let’s say you are looking to break your back squat record.
Weeks 1-3 will be focussed on increasing strength in the lift and specialising training to achieve that.
Week 4 is the deload week in which you will continue to lift but reduce the weights to enable greater focus on technique perfection.
Week 5 is test week when you should experience the ‘training rebound’ effect to bring about a new record in the lift on test day.
However, our amateur marathon runner may require a longer, more gradual deload or ‘taper’.
In this case, training volume might look like this:
Week 0 – Final test event
Week 1 – Low volume – 20 miles
Week 2 – Medium volume – 30-35 miles
Week 3 – High volume – 40-45 miles
Week 4 – High volume – 40-45 miles
Week 5 – Medium volume – 35 miles
Week 6 – Medium volume – 30 miles
Week 7 – Low volume – 15 miles
Week 8 – Minimal volume – 5 miles + RACE DAY
Remember, this is a solid template to work from.
Clearly some runners will run much more than this in a week, others cannot find time for this level but still want to do their best in competition.
Some will not tolerate 2 high volume weeks in a row so adjustments may be required and injuries or niggles will also be an important consideration.
The only way to answer this question is to use this as a guide then experiment over the months and years of competition.
As always listen to and monitor your body and the effects that the current training regime is having, both positive and negative.
This article will give you a great starting point to planning training programs and when to back off, ‘deload’ and come back firing on all cylinders.
I’m all for intense training and pushing limits but there needs to be a balance to enable these limits to truly be realised!
The first stages in all this are to firstly decide on firm training or competition goals with set dates, then reverse engineer them back to the starting date for the program.
Remember, be ready and willing to make adjustments but don’t lose faith in a program if no results are seen after a few days or a week. Give your body time to ride the wave, recover then ride the next one all the way to whatever goal you have set.
The first part of the article on 'Waves' can be found at my blog (Worlds Toughest Workouts)
How To Use Training Deloading Systems
Linear Mode
