Deloads—never come back stronger

[coeur]

Brief history: Been lifting for 4 years, only 2 of Them on established programs. I can probably count the number of times I’ve taken it easy or taken a week off completely on one hand, and I’ve never come back stronger or feeling any better.

I’m sensing that it’s time to take another easy week; my joints are ****ed every which way, and I’ve been getting a lot of minor (and one relatively major) injuries. I’ve been making progress on most of my lifts (bench has been particularly incredible) but a few are starting to stall. In the past I’ve either cut reps in half, taken 2 days off (on Fierce 5 as prescribed) or had a complete week off. I’ve never felt like these breaks have benefitted my performance or recovery, and I continued to stall exactly the same. I’m wondering if I just have too much accumulated fatigue from going balls to the wall month after month after month for a week-long recovery period to benefit me. With every fiber of my being I want to keep pushing my body to the edge, but I know it’s not sustainable. Could I be into something about too much accumulated fatigue?

[FaIIen]

Is your performance dropping?

If you're getting injured, I'd consider getting your form checked. Technically inefficient lifters can tolerate less intensity and volume - and will be prone to overuse injuries.

It could be just a matter of recovery as well. How's your diet and sleep?

[coeur]

My workouts are taking much longer than usual... I mean like like an hour longer. I feel the need to rest more between sets, but that could just be me being careful. I’m just coming back from a bad back injury during which I couldn’t do anything involving lower back much at all, so I had to replace DLs with hex deads/back squat with fronts/rows with chest supported rows. Not huge sacrifices, but I was in physical therapy for a month and a half.

I’ve been working pretty hard on correcting my form on various lifts for the past 3 months and I’ve improved a whole lot. My deadlift went from atrocious to almost perfect each rep, squats from good morning to actual squat (tho I still have some issues shooting my hips up too soon), uncontrolled lat pulldown to controlled, etc. But I’ve had to reset my weights to do so and form usually breaks down when I add weight again. The standard 10% reset has never helped me either.

I get 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep per night, every night. Diet is a tricky one... I haven’t gained more than a pound in a long time, even though I’ve increased the amount I eat by 250 calories over a year (with 1.5 g of protein per lb consistently and more than .5 grams of fat per lb). It’s weird. The scale never moves, but I keep looking better and better. If I’m accidentally recomping, my maintenance calories are going up pretty fast... and I’m only 5’2” 140lbs, no TDEE formula out there estimates anything anywhere near 2950! Do I just need to keep adding calories to get the recovery benefits?

[coeur]

Bump

Deloaded 2/4 days so far. Kept weights the same, cut volume in half. Lower body fat felt pretty chill, but upper body left me nearly as pumped and beat up (thin line) as usual. I avoided going to failure on all lifts and all sets, but I definitely still felt like I got a good workout in. Is this any indication that I’m doing something wrong again?

[KenshinH]

Managing deloads is another aspect of training that you get better at with experience and self-awareness. What I mean is that you have to pay attention to how your body responds to the many different ways of deloading and make adjustments to your training.

For example, my bench stalls or regresses if I don't bench at least twice a week, one of those being heavy-ish, say 90%+. So on my deload, I'll still bench twice a week with one session going up to 90% for a single or double. I deload then by cutting volume instead of weight.

But my approach for deadlifts is entirely different. I can skip deadlifting heavy for a week and it doesn't affect my deadlifts. Correspondingly, I deload my deadlifts by doing triples at 80-85%, which is enough to get a workout in without any real stress. If I'm feeling good in a particular deload workout, I may go up to a 90% deadlift single but stop there.

My point is that your deload doesn't have to be the same for every lift. If you know how your body responds, you can eventually reason out how to make an effective deload - one that keeps you "in tune" but still allows for good recovery from the stress of lifting heavy.


One last thing -

What are you planning to do after the deload?

Are you going to jump right back into the numbers that you were lifting right before?

If you've been going hard-and-heavy for months without a deload week, I would recommend that you think about deload and then going back in with a small reset on the numbers. The ramp up will help the body get adjusted to going heavy again.

[CapitanNemo]

Me too, i never como back stronger after a off week but I back fresh and with more energy and in 3 week i am recovered my form and in the 4 week i am progresing until 8 week, then other deload. Take the deload week like a necesary step back for 3 steps forwards