Intensity & Recovery

Common misconception: You have to give everything you’ve got in every single gym session. If you’re not hitting new PR’s and crazy weights, you’re not progressing. Why even bother lifting if you’re not gonna go hard?

Unfortunately, this sentiment is in the minds of many beginners and misguided lifters. Biologically, the human body (despite us having the greatest stamina in the animal kingdom) cannot sustain such a level of intensity for long periods of time. Sometimes we need to hold back. What we’re talking about here isn’t just one or two rest days. We’re talking about a dedicated week of deloading.

Deloading, as the word implies, means to lower the intensity of your workouts (take a load off). This comes in many shapes and forms: lowering your working weights, lowering rep counts, lowering the number of sets. Traditionally, the deload phase is a week (could be two). If you think of your gym routine as a cycle of 4 weeks, then every fourth week should be a deload. This whole week, you will not be striving to hit your maxes. None of the workouts should cause strain or maximum effort. Your goal is to simply give your muscles a chance to relax.

Think of it like work. You can sit at the office and work your butt off for weeks, but how refreshing does it feel to take a week off and put your brainpower towards pursuing other hobbies? It’s not like you’re completely shutting off your thoughts, you’re still solving problems and learning. You’ve changed the intensity of your thoughts, and this helps clear your head and prepare you to go back to work. This same concept applies to the gym. Give your muscles a week off, but don’t let them slack off completely. A vacation keeps us from burning out.

Use this week to hit various other workouts. Use the dumbbells, cables, and even the yoga mats. You want to change up your usual routine. Just remember you don’t want to work out to the point of exhaustion.

By deloading efficiently, our muscles can be more effective, and we avoid the negatives of overtraining. After any workout, our muscles are torn up and broken down. They need time to recover and rebuild, and so we have rest days. The key to getting bigger is constantly breaking down our muscles and rebuilding them stronger, yes? But after weeks of consistently training, giving your muscles only a day of rest isn’t enough. Your muscles never get a chance to completely recover, and you’ll plateau. Or you’ll get frustrated with your progress. Worse case scenario: you hurt yourself attempting heavy weights while your muscles aren’t ready to go.

Schedule deloading into your workout. At a minimum, you want to deload for a week every three or four weeks.