First off, hope you all had a very merry Christmas and a drink filled blur that was very happy new year! This is my first post back as I’ve been in Thailand for 3 weeks, soaking up the sun, exploring the vast richness of Thai culture and getting smashed on vodka buckets by the beach. My time off there got me thinking about a very critical factor in any training block for any athlete. The deload week.
What is a deload week?
A deload, or a lay off week, is where during the training cycle we plan for a systematic load drop in order to allow the body to recover for the next training block. The reason for this is very simple. During training we beat our body up hard and we have to in order for our wonderfully, complex organism to adapt. Our machine that is our body can at times be very lazy, very, very lazy. Therefore it is remarkable at energy preservation and limiting its resources to where they are needed most, the brain for example can take up 20% of our RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate). This inbuilt survival mechanism of preservation is great for when we are consuming small calorific numbers, all while evading that saber tooth tiger that insists on making us his cheat meal. Not so good for when we are training for performance in a modern gym, where the only survival mechanism we need is the ability to hit that stop button on the treadmill before it all goes horribly wrong.
The point I’m getting to here is that our body will only adapt when its scared. Hence why these workouts near enough kill people, not literally of course, in order to elicit that adaptation to make us stronger, faster, more explosive etc.
Great, what does this have to do with a deload?
Take this analogy for a split second. Your energy system is like a cup full of water and every time you train, you drink from that cup. If you don’t replenish that energy system, you will eventually run dry. What we do when we rest, eat and drink is essentially top that cup back up. With other recovery methods, such as ice baths, stretching, foam rolling, sports massage and so on we can help fill that cup even faster. Your body is quite simply amazing but if you empty that cup, by constant, relentless hard training that adverse effect can happen, which will lead to ‘over training’ or as I prefer to call it, under resting. This will sabotage your gains indefinitely, losing strength, speed, power, motivation the list goes on. The deload week then essentially helps you to realign your system, get everything back in check and help prevent you from burning out.
Wait, hold on a second! This means no gains?! I got to workout bro!
A deload week does not mean just bin the gym off and smash Doritios while watching Netflix all week. Although time off is good, your body doesn’t need it in most part of the training cycle. All your body needs is a drop in the intensity (% of lifts) or volume (sets/reps) or both. Sometimes its good to completely change what your doing, variation, and work up something completely new all together. One week at the end of a 4 week block will suffice for most athletes but don’t govern it just by time, listen to your body and when it tells you to back off, do yourself a favour.
Awesome! Does this mean I book 3 weeks to Thailand?
No. Not in the slightest. I mean go for it if that’s what you want to do but believe me, my body is paying for it now! Stay strong, lift big!