Deload Weeks: What Are They and Do You Need One?
For many people, training is most fun when you are pushing yourself. The huffing-and-puffing, the “dead” feeling after an intense workout, these are what often give people that feeling of reward. However, it isn’t very sustainable to go full intensity every workout. Sometimes, it’s wise to take the foot off the gas and have a week of easier workouts. This is where a deload week would come in handy.
In this article, we’ll break down what a deload week is and how to know if you should take one.
Related: How little can you train while maintaining you strength and endurance?
What is a deload week?
As previously said, a deload week is essentially a week where you take your foot off the gas and lower the intensity of your training. Often times you end up decreasing the volume and frequency of your training as well, however, decreasing the intensity of your workouts is what really does the magic.
For example, let’s say you are normally training 5 days per week and decide to take a deload week. You normally do 4 sets of 12 reps for every exercise that you do. In a deload week, you’d probably train 3-4 times instead of 5. Also, you’d do all the same exercises you normally do, but you’d do 2-3 sets of ~6-8 reps instead.
The purpose of a deload week is to facilitate a full recovery. You see, the fatigue your body experiences from training accumulates after each successive workout. At a point, the fatigue from training accumulates to a point where it makes sense to take a deload week in order to “reset” your body back to baseline.
Let’s illustrate this idea of accumulated fatigue further. Imagine you measure fatigue using an imaginary unit that we call a “fatigue point” for the sake of this example. After one intense workout, you accumulate 2 fatigue points. By the time your next workout comes along, you’ve recovered to the point of only having 1 fatigue point. However, after this next workout, you’ve accumulated 2 more fatigue points and are now sitting at 3 fatigue points. This trend will continue until the point where you’d need a week to “reset” yourself back to 0 fatigue points.
Of course, there’s no such thing as a fatigue point, but hopefully that makes it a little clearer.
A question you might be thinking is “why not just take the week off of working out all together?” If you are overly fatigued from training, just going cold-turkey and taking a week off will bring you closer to baseline. However, it isn’t as effective.
Studies show that active recovery is more effective at eliciting recovery and adaptations from previous trainings than passive recovery, for both endurance and strength training [1,2]. Active recovery is defined as a decreased intensity, volume, and/or frequency; passive recovery is defined as a cease of exercise all together.
In addition to this, you can more easily jump back to your normal intensities after a deload week. If went cold-turkey/no exercise for a week, you may want to perform a lighter session before jumping back to your normal intensities to mitigate risk of injury.
How do you know if you need to take a deload week?
Before we talk about whether or not you need to take a deload, I find it’s most productive to see if you are checking the boxes in other areas of your recovery. Are you getting 7-9 hours of sleep each night? Are you eating enough protein?
Related: 6 Practical Tips to Eliminate Soreness
If you are taking care of areas such as these, then it might be productive to consider a deload week. Here are a few signs you might want to consider a deload week, in no particular order of importance:
1. You are feeling more tired, fatigued, or brain-fogged than normal
2. You are more stressed throughout the day without a clear reason why
3. Your usual workouts start to feel more difficult than normal
4. Your progress in your trainings significantly slows.
Deload weeks are important to actually schedule in for individuals who train or compete at high to elite levels. For those who train recreationally, you can go ahead and incorporate them just based on how you feel. Deload weeks also tend to be more important for people who work out more frequently. For instance, someone who trains 6 days per week is more likely to need more deload weeks than someone who trains 3 days per week.
One thing you can do (which is what I personally do) is let life dictate your deload weeks. Let’s say you have a big deadline coming up in work, or a family member decided to come visit out of nowhere. In scenarios such as these, you might not be able to and train the same way that you normally do. Even if you did not plan to and/or do not need one quite yet, this might make a convenient time to deload your body and reset back to baseline. Going on vacation can also make a convenient time to deload that fits into this strategy.
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