Let's talk deloading

kwtilbury

OK, so I've never formally incorporated deloading into my programming, but I think I need to give it a shot. A few questions for you experienced de-loaders:

Do you scale back just your main lifts, or accessory lifts, too?
How much (%) of your normal working weight do you use? Do you keep the set/rep scheme the same?
How often do you deload?

Thanks!

SideSteel

There are plenty of ways to do it. I think the main thing to keep in mind is that the purpose of the deload is to preserve training adaptations while greatly reducing fatigue.

Plenty of ways to structure that.

You could reduce the number of sets but leave the weight on the bar. You could make a load reduction and a volume reduction, you could just reduce load and leave sets/reps the same.

Regarding accessories I'd base that on how beat up you are, and how much accessory volume you do in comparison to main lifts. During deload weeks I tend to also deload more stressful accessories like chin ups/overhead presses/etc.

Some people deload on an as-needed basis but I tend to think people aren't great at figuring this out and so usually they don't end up deloading as often as they should.

Every 4 to 6 weeks tends to be a reasonable frequency for most people on a progressively demanding resistance training program.

Willbenchforcupcakes

@SideSteel pretty much nailed it.

When I'm running bench focused training I tend not to need deloads that frequently, but when the training is more balanced, after about every 8 weeks I definitely do.

SideSteel

Willbenchforcupcakes wrote: »

@SideSteel pretty much nailed it.

When I'm running bench focused training I tend not to need deloads that frequently, but when the training is more balanced, after about every 8 weeks I definitely do.

That makes sense to me. Bench tends to be the least fatiguing so I can see some people being able to delay deloading there.