How often, duration, what type? I'm currently in the 5th day of my first formal deload. Just walked Saturday and Sunday, light gym cardio on Monday, walk Tuesday, did some weights this morning at 50% of usual weight for 50% of usual sets. Walk tomorrow and Friday. I must say that I feel really well rested and far less sore than I have felt in a long time. I'm also doing a calorie deficit of about 500 calories per day while I'm in this deload, and eating 100% clean. Kind of a total reset before the beating begins again. Your thoughts?
What made you decide to start a deload? What are your plans for this deload? And what do you plan to do after the deload phase? I still haven't figured out whether a deload phase has any benefit (or not).
The reason was more lingering pain than usual, especially in the joints. My plans are to do what I've been doing for another two days which I outlined in the original post. Once completed my plan is to begin again where I left off and see what happens.
If you're training frequently with meaningful intensity, a periodic deload makes sense. I've been giving this matter some thought over the last few weeks. As you may recall, since 2012, when I first started reducing my overall volume, I went from working out 3x/wk to 2x/wk to 3x/2wks to 1x/wk. Presently, I'm back to twice a week. Now that I've been back to twice a week for some months, I plan to skip a workout every 3, or maybe 4, weeks. That will be my "deload," since it will be a whole week between workouts when I skip one. At some point, I may decide to go back to 3 times every 2 weeks. But not just yet. However, taking every set to true failure, along with a forced rep on a few of the sets, begins to take its toll as we get older. And so, I'd rather adjust the frequency than the intensity.
I see. A lingering pain, or an injury, is indeed a good reason to back off for a while. And give your body some time to heal and recover. I don't do intentional deloads. However, it does happen every now and then that I'm away on short holidays which automatically interrupt my training schedule for about a week. After returning to the gym I notice that I have to start by using weights which are about 10% lighter than before. And work my way back up again from there.
That's what I intend to do. I'm toying with starting with a Wendler 5/3/1 program to ramp it back up.
I would not use such a program after returning from an injury. I would start with a much lower weight (e.g. -30%) and use higher reps per set to slowly get the muscles which was injured used to doing work. I would avoid using weights which are close to the limit for a while. Only after a few weeks, after I've convinced myself that the injury has indeed properly healed, would I start to expose the muscles to a weight which is close to the maximum limit.
I find it surprising that you would find yourself weaker after only a week away from the gym. That happens to me if I'm ever away for about 2 weeks or so, but I can't recall ever being weaker after only a week away from the gym, unless I also slept poorly the night before.
So, going forward, do you plan to "deload" only on an as-needed basis, or will you work it into your overall program to periodically back off? I can see the merit in both approaches if you normally go hard in the gym.
Couple of things. One, I'm not returning from and injury, just some overall soreness and slight fatigued. Two, the way I understand 5/3/1, and correct me if I'm wrong, week one is doing the big movements, overhead press, bench, squat and dead-lift with 65%, 70%, and 75% of one rep max for sets, and only doing one big movement on any exercise day complimented by selected other isolation exercises of choice. That doesn't sound like all that much to me, especially week one. I will also not be doing deadlifts at all. I dunno, just seems like a good place to start.