What happened? Suddenly can't lift as much

[tescgo]

I went to the gym last night and i'm on the 8th week of my program. Each week so far i've managed to increase the reps on at least one of my sets so I felt like I was steadily increasing.

Last night though I was falling well short of what I lifting last week. Last week I could do 3 sets of 10 triceps pushdowns but this week I could only manage 3 sets of 7. This happened with my shoulders and bicceps too, what is going on?

Does this happen to everyone?

[H1t_V3r4c]

You've missed reps once in 2 months? That's not bad at all. Write it off as a bad day.

[MikeKK]

Agree, you probably had one of these week days, maybe not enough sleep, tired etc. Another possible explanation could be that maybe your immunity system was somewhere between normal state and illness? It affects the performance too. You shouldn't worry about it unless it happens often like 2-3 times in a row or if you're not making any progression within a month

[lllDBOlll]

This is completely normal. You're 8 weeks into a program, you will be getting ready for a deload week.

[mjf100215]

If it persists with no reason, consider a chiropractor.

[musikguy72]

Tricep pushdowns? biceps? More important is how is your squat, bench, and deadlift?

[andy012391]

it happens bud, sometime when you walk into the gym you may have had a harder day then usuall like at work, or your sleep sucked, or you ate way to much before going, or you didn't eat good that day, anything can make a diffrence and make you lose a rep or two but a rep or two aint hurtin your gains bud, just a bad day it happens

[tescgo]

Tricep pushdowns? biceps? More important is how is your squat, bench, and deadlift?

I dont do deadlifts cause im worried ill put ky back out. The other two are good as ever, though i do db press rather than bb press.

I totally forgot about deloading so ill take next week off and just do some cardio.

Do you know if i should continue to eat 3100 calories during deload week or return to maintainence calories?

[GinjaNinja85]

I dont do deadlifts cause im worried ill put ky back out. The other two are good as ever, though i do db press rather than bb press.

I totally forgot about deloading so ill take next week off and just do some cardio.

Do you know if i should continue to eat 3100 calories during deload week or return to maintainence calories?

If your going to deload it's probably wiser to do an active deload and do the same program with lighter weights which are a bit challenging but don't bring you close to failure. I'd do that for a week and continue bulking.

[tescgo]

If your going to deload it's probably wiser to do an active deload and do the same program with lighter weights which are a bit challenging but don't bring you close to failure. I'd do that for a week and continue bulking.

I'll give that a go then, just knock ing 2kg off each set.

Is taking an entire week off bad because your body gets lazy?

[StrygwyrBS]

Don't sweat it, but pay attention to your body and performance

I log EVERYTHING I do at the gym each day even with small details at times.

There's a million reasons why you could have not performed as well, exhaustion, lack of sleep, dehydration, insufficient calories or carbs, illness (early signs of one coming), over-training (we all need breaks), insufficient time to repair muscles, muscle strain from last week, doing the same thing each weak instead of planning your cycles, lacking mental drive. The list is endless...

One of the things you mentioned in there is that it's week 8. If you've done the 10 rep max for 8 weeks it's highly probable that you need to challenge your muscles with a different rep range (yet same level of intensity). I don't stick with a specific rep range for more than 4 weeks.

If that isn't the case then just ignore above paragraph.

Just log what you do. In the long run when you look at all the data you've collected about yourself it may show a pattern. Learning about the way your body works is THE most important thing when it comes to weight lifting (imo).

[StrygwyrBS]

I dont do deadlifts cause im worried ill put ky back out. The other two are good as ever, though i do db press rather than bb press.

I totally forgot about deloading so ill take next week off and just do some cardio.

Do you know if i should continue to eat 3100 calories during deload week or return to maintainence calories?

Concerning your calories. If your goal is to gain muscle/strength then you should do maintenance eating which is the amount of calories your body needs in a day plus whatever you use during cardio. Don't go under (and if it were me i'd try to overshoot it by about 100 calories if not more) because depending on your body it may try to eat those muscles! (( Must avoid that. Good luck.

[GinjaNinja85]

I'll give that a go then, just knock ing 2kg off each set.

Is taking an entire week off bad because your body gets lazy?

I'd knock more off. Do 80% of your usual weight. So if you do 100kg for your squat, do 80kg. Or if you do 80kg bench, do 65kg. I wouldn't worry too much about accessory work like bicep curls and tricep pushdowns. They don't cause overtraining. Adjust your core compound lifts.

Taking an entire week off is bad because your muscles won't get stimulated and you'll most likely lose strength. Unless your advanced and you've heavily 'overreached', it's never worth taking time off.