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Episode 70: Inbetweenisode - Do you need a deload week?
982 Plays5 months ago
Welcome to Episode 70 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this inbetweenisode, Laurel answers the question, “Do you need a deload week?” In strength training, a deload week is a planned, periodic reduction in training intensity and/or volume. Spoiler: you probably don't need to plan deload weeks into your training, but listen more to find out!
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Episode 32: Load & Volume: When is Enough Enough? When is it Too Much?
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Transcript
Introduction and Philosophy
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up to date and cutting edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
Surprise Episode Announcement
00:00:43
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast. This is your host, Laurel Beaverstorff. And today's episode is probably somewhat of a surprise to you, a happy surprise, I hope. Sarah
What are Deload Weeks?
00:00:53
Speaker
and I decided just a couple of weeks ago that we wanted to keep a good thing going between seasons and record some short, what we're calling in-between-a-sodes for you. Get it? In-between-a-sodes? In this in-betweezin, ha, that is the in between seasons. We find ourselves in right now. We just came off an amazing season four. We're starting season five mid-July. We are gonna throw a few short solos at you in the interim to address some smaller topics that arise frequently around the areas we cover on our show.
00:01:31
Speaker
And so for our very first in-between episode today, we're going to discuss a topic that has come up frequently in emails and in the Facebook group of the bone density course.
Purpose and Implementation of Deload Weeks
00:01:42
Speaker
And I believe something that some people listening right now might be wondering about, which is, I wonder if they need a deload week. In today's episode, we'll define what a deload week is in the context specifically of strength training, the purpose a deload week serves, what it can look like, and who needs it. Hopefully by the end of this episode, you'll have a better idea of whether or not you need a deload week. Spoiler alert, you probably don't, but that's just my opinion. And let's actually hear more about deload weeks so that you can decide whether or not to deload for yourself.
00:02:22
Speaker
Okay, so starting with what is a deload week? A deload week is a planned periodic reduction in training intensity or volume. If the concepts of intensity and volume as they relate to strength training are new to you, you're not sure what these terms mean, be sure to listen to episode 32 of the MovementLogic podcast linked in the show notes. It's titled Load and Volume. When is enough enough? When is it too much? So, deload weeks typically happen for the period of a training microcycle, which is one week. It's important to note that they are planned periodic reductions, and they usually occur after increments of 4, 8, or 12 weeks of training, meaning you'll be doing a program, progressively overloading exercises,
00:03:11
Speaker
for four weeks and then you might, after that fourth week, take a deload week or eight weeks and then you'll take a deload week or 12 weeks. The idea is during the deload week to give your body a bit of a break from training so that it can rest. To do this, typically what happens is intensity and volume get reduced. You continue training, but perhaps you perform fewer sets of the exercises in your program, or you reduce load for the exercises, or you reduce what's called RPE, Rating of Perceived Exertion, when ending the sets. You perhaps end the sets with more reps in reserve, RIR, so that your exertion is just lower.
When Deload Weeks Might Be Necessary
00:03:54
Speaker
For more information on these concepts of RPE, definitely listen to episode 39 of the MovementLogic podcast. RPE 1RM, 3 sets of 10, oh my. The idea is that during a deload week with this reduction in volume, intensity, or effort, you allow your body to recover from what was presumably a very high training intensity from the previous week. In other words, after maxing out your lifts, for example, the previous week, you take that deload week and you take it easier.
00:04:27
Speaker
This way, you don't run the risk of doing so much that your body cannot recover and positively adapt to the training stressors you are exposing it to. Because typically when we surpass what is called the maximum recoverable dose of training, the maximum we can tolerate and still recover from and adapt positively to, shit starts to break down and not work so well and not feel so great. Okay, my cat just came up on the desk here. You might hear him purring a little bit. D-load weeks are therefore a common practice among elite and competitive athletes who are often pushing themselves toward lifting heavier and heavier weights for the purpose of competition. Therefore, their programs are often organized in such a way where they will over the course of
00:05:14
Speaker
increments of four to eight to 12 weeks gradually progress toward periods in which they're going to try and max out or hit PRs on certain lifts that they're trying to be competitive within. But the question is, does everyone need to incorporate these deload weeks into their training? I don't think so. And here's
Natural Deloads vs. Structured Deloads
00:05:34
Speaker
why. One of the main reasons I think most people don't need scheduled deload weeks, myself included, is that life often provides them for us. Think about it. We all encounter periods where we can't train as hard or at all. We take vacations, family obligations arise, we've got all these work deadlines, or even we get sick. These can all serve as natural deloads. Life be life-in, right?
00:05:58
Speaker
These interruptions, while sometimes frustrating, can actually serve the same purpose as a planned deload week, giving your body time to rest and recover without having to schedule it into your training plan. Where pre-planned deload weeks can sometimes throw a wrench in this life be life and thing is that say you are planning to take a deload four weeks from whatever date you get sick for a week. So now you're sick for a week. This is going to naturally disrupt your training program to the point where when you do four weeks later hit upon that deload week, it's questionable whether or not you're really going to be on track to take it. It kind of reminds me of the saying, life is what happens when you're making plans.
00:06:43
Speaker
Another point to consider is how hard most people are actually training to begin with. D-load weeks are typically necessary when your training intensity and volume are so high. It's questionable whether or not it's going to be able to recover from those intensities week to week. So you've really got to pull back because you really push the envelope on a particular week or you've been ramping up to a peak intensity but let's be honest most people aren't training that hard in fact many aren't even reaching the minimum effective dose right so that's the other end of the spectrum from the maximal
00:07:20
Speaker
recoverable dose they're not even hetting the minimal effective dose to drive changes to different capacities or to improve specific attributes because of the inconsistency of their training or perhaps their training isn't organized in such a way to allow them to do that or they may not have the tools or the know-how to consistently drive those changes. So in this case, adding on the complexity of a deload week really probably just doesn't make sense for these folks.
00:07:51
Speaker
and Here's the deal, most non-elite and non-competitive lifters don't have this level of organization or intensity or consistency in their training that warrants a structured deload week. Instead, they'd often benefit more from more consistent training with those occasional breaks that life throws at them when life naturally intervenes with surprises. There are also downsides to unnecessary deload weeks. Taking unnecessary deload weeks when you don't actually need one can interrupt your mojo, can interrupt the groove that you're in, the momentum that you're building. It can even stifle your gains. Say you're making steady progress on your program.
00:08:34
Speaker
every week you're seeing incremental improvements, why would you voluntarily take a step back to break that groove? Unnecessary deload weeks can just throw you off track and stop a good thing going. For non-competitive lifters, this added complexity is not only unnecessary and cumbersome, it can actually stifle gains.
Auto-Regulation in Training
00:08:58
Speaker
So instead of deload weeks, probably a better approach to training might simply be to use auto regulation tools, RPE and RIR.
00:09:08
Speaker
Auto-regulation is all about adjusting your training based on how your body feels on any given day. So instead of sticking rigidly to a pre-determined plan, you listen to your body and react and respond to it by making adjustments in the moment. For example, if you're feeling particularly fatigued or sore on any given day based on how you slept the night before or the exercise that you did the day before, you can simply dial back the intensity or the volume of that day's workout. Conversely, if you're feeling great, you can take advantage of that and push a little harder. On days when you maybe didn't sleep as well or you're coming back after being sick for a week, you then understand that a 7 out of 10 on that day is potentially going to be fewer reps or lighter weight than a 7 out of 10 on a day when you're feeling great. This daily approach to auto-regulation allows for more flexibility and responsiveness
00:10:00
Speaker
on a weekly basis without the need of pre-planning deload weeks. It's simpler and prevents over-planning by encouraging you to make smart training decisions based on real-time feedback you're getting from your body. And this brings me to my next topic, which is that the reality of most training programs, I hope, in other words, very few programs and certainly not the effective ones, ask you to go all out and burn it down on every single set of every exercise and every workout. Effective programs have built in variations in intensity and volume throughout the week or month. For example, in our bone density course, we ensure a natural ebb and flow in training intensity, different exercises or different muscle groups peak
00:10:46
Speaker
at different times and then we either change the exercise or we back off of that exercise significantly to allow there to be a peak in another muscle group, in another exercise. We're not peaking all the muscle groups and all the exercises at the same time. We often have built into our program a lot of variations so that every month we're actually changing exercises. So we're working in training blocks that do progress linear toward heavier loads but they're not all progressing at the same rate. And again, we're changing it up so that we get that fresh stimulus month to month, which has been shown to be a good thing for bone building. It's this variation that can provide just enough variety to prevent overdoing it. So when changing exercises or changing training intensities, recovery is sort of built in to the program.
00:11:36
Speaker
we don't devote entire weeks to deloading because they're not necessary. Here's the deal, it's actually quite simple. As long as you are making progress in your strength, you probably don't need to take a deload week. As long as your body is recovering, you're ah not injured, you're not experiencing the types of onsets of pain and injury that come from doing too much too soon, it's working. Keep going on any given day. If you feel like you need to back off, use RPE, use auto regulation and back off. And maybe reframe those weeks where you don't get to train, right? Those weeks when your kid gets sick or you get sick or you're gone vacation and you don't have access to the equipment you need or you just are so busy sightseeing and and traveling and visiting family that you don't have time to train.
00:12:24
Speaker
Reframe those weeks is like potentially an opportunity for you to get a little bit more rest and to recover.
Conclusion on Deload Weeks
00:12:29
Speaker
Knowing that when you get back to training, when you're back in your environment or back feeling healthy, you're probably going to experience the benefits of that recovery period. You're going to have a little bit more strength and a little bit more energy to train with. All right. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of background on what deload weeks are, what purpose they serve, who probably needs them and who probably doesn't. And hopefully it also gives you a little bit of insight into just the nature of training, which is that.
00:12:56
Speaker
life be life in and there are going to be periods of your life where you don't get to choose and your training will become disrupted and to just go with the flow knowing that you can take that week or two that you might need to to deal with the things that arise in your life and that on the flip side of that you're also getting a little extra rest and recovery which is something that not only won't necessarily hurt your progress long term but it might even help your progress. Thank you so much for tuning in to this Inbetween a Sode on the Movement Logic podcast. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or review. We got some great new reviews after the Adam Meekins episode, the last episode of season four. Thank you so much for those of you
Bone Density Course Promotion
00:13:42
Speaker
who chimed in. We really appreciate it. If you are not yet on our wait list for Bone Density Course 2024, we are launching that in October. And the wait list is the only place where you'll hear about the only discount available on enrollment. so
00:13:55
Speaker
Make sure to sign up in the link in our show notes for that. Alright, that's all I have for you today. I hope you have a great week and stay tuned for more In-between episodes. Alright, see you next week.