If you have been working out hard for an extended period of time, you might find yourself wondering if you need to take a week of rest. Maybe you feel ‘off’, your lifts are plateauing, or you can’t sleep. All of these could be signs that you need a deload week. We’ve compiled 6 key things to check to see if you need to take a recovery week.
What is a deload?
A deload period or restorative microcycle is a period of time (usually a week) inserted into a training period to force recovery. It is typically implemented after consecutive weeks of building intensity and/or volume in training.
Training during a deload week continues. However, the volume and/or intensity is decreased significantly to try to increase recovery. The goal of a deload week is to reduce the stress on the body and allow for it to adapt to the stresses placed on it over the previous weeks.
Deload periods are typically scheduled for the end of a training block, where the focus of the training will change. Or after an intense training period, or competition. Deload weeks can help prevent overtraining.
A restorative week may also be used as a part of a tapering or peaking strategy leading into a major competition or testing day.
Will you be weaker after a deload?
Most people are concerned they will be weaker if they take time off from training. However, it must be emphasized that the body’s adaptations occur when recovering, not while training!
Taking deload or recovery weeks will allow the body time to recover and adapt.
Study after study has shown that research subjects that train and then take either a full week off training or a week at reduced volume/intensity come back stronger than they were before (ref1 and ref2).
This phenomenon is shown below. We train, and that causes fatigue. As we go through our training block our fatigue increases. Then we take a recovery/deload week. Our body then adapts to the stress that has been on it and super-compensates. As a result, we are stronger (or bigger, or a combination of both) than we were before.
And as long as we begin applying a stimulus relatively soon after the super-compensation occurs, our new baseline is higher than it was before. If we incrementally increase the weights we lift or the miles we run consistently over a number of years we become significantly fitter than we were before.
#1 Sign to Take a Deload – Your Training Plan Calls for One
We should all be following a set plan for our training. And any training program worth its salt will have designated recovery weeks built-in.
It doesn’t matter if the training plan is one you made, you got it online for free or from a world-famous strength coach. It should have built-in recovery weeks. AND you should follow these recommendations.
Remember, your body adapts (read: gets stronger) when it is recovering – not when it is training. This is the basic premise of the general adaptation syndrome and the theory of super-compensation.
Regardless of how you are feeling, you should follow your program’s recommendations for recovery weeks. This means taking the recovery week, even if you still feel like a million bucks.
Recovery weeks are built into a periodized training program so that you can continue to build and see improvements over the long term. That’s why good, periodized plans ensure you’re training enough, doing the right exercises at the right time, lifting at the right intensities AND taking scheduled breaks.
#2 Sign to Take a Deload – You’ve Hit a Plateau
We’ve all been there before. You’ve been on a training program for a few weeks and everything is going great. The weight on the bar is going up each week. And then, it doesn’t. And you hit a plateau.
This could be a sign of a few things.
First, you might have reached your training adaptation for the training stimulus. After all, the body responds to the stress placed on it, but this isn’t continuous. At some point, you need to change the training stimulus to continue to adapt.
As previously mentioned, a deload week is typically inserted when changing training programs. If you’ve reached the maximum adaptation from your current training program, then you should change your program. And this means you should also take a recovery week.
Secondly, this could be due to accumulated muscular fatigue or central nervous system (CNS) fatigue.
You may have reached a threshold of fatigue, where the body will no longer adapt. This will be especially apparent in high-intensity lifts (high % of 1RM) where nervous system involvement is high. CNS fatigue coupled with accumulated muscular fatigue will lead to plateaued (or decreased) max effort lifts.
This is typically considered the distress phase of our reaction to stress – as shown below in Hans Selye’s General Adaptation to Stress curve.
At this point, our body has become too stressed to recover and is detrained. This is when overtraining can occur if you continue to add stress (train) and not recover.
My rule of thumb is: if you’ve been training consistently for 3 weeks or more and haven’t been able to increase the weight on the bar (or reps at a set weight) for 2 weeks, you should take a recovery week.
You may want to consider a massage gun if you’re looking for a tool to help you recover from your training. I wrote a summary on their effectiveness here and I highly recommend the Tao Tronics Massage Gun from Amazon.
#3 Sign to Take a Deload – Life Stress is High
Stress is stress. Our bodies can’t separate psychological stress from physical stress. It all looks the same.
So, you should take a recovery week if your life outside of training has become significantly more stressful.
The body will adapt to stress as long as it increases incrementally and there is an opportunity to recover. However, maladaptation occurs when the stress level is too high (whether it is from work, relationships, finances or training) for the body to recover from.
Therefore, you should consider when you will be highly stressed when you are planning your training. As a graduate school student, I know that exam periods and data collection weeks are stressful.
So, during those weeks I schedule a deload. This means that I don’t need to train as often or at as high intensity. I know that I won’t have the mental strength or the desire to try to push a heavy back squat after 3 straight 10-hour days of studying. Instead, training takes a bit of a back seat and I can focus on my school commitments.
I encourage you to think about when you will be stressed out and plan for those time periods to be recovery weeks.
#4 Sign to Take a Deload – You Aren’t Sleeping Well
One of the key ways that I know I need to take a recovery week is by monitoring my sleep.
I wish I had a Whoop band to more accurately assess my sleep, but I have a Suunto 3 Fitness that does an alright job.
I have a pretty good understanding of my sleep quality by using this technology plus my own subjective feelings.
Usually, when I’m over-reaching in training and needing a deload it takes me a long time to fall asleep at night. My mind is usually racing, and sometimes my heart rate is elevated too. This means that I toss and turn for up to an hour or more after I get into bed.
I’m pretty consistent with when I get into bed. So if I wake up and my Suunto watch says that I fell asleep an hour or more after when I got into bed I know I’m in trouble.
In addition, I tend to wake up still groggy if I’m in need of a deload week. When I’m feeling good, my alarm goes off and I’m up and ready to go. When I’ve stretched myself too thin, I struggle to get up and then am ready for a nap a couple of hours later.
I take all of this as a sign to back off training for a week and focus on my recovery. After a week I’m back to normal and ready to attack training again.
#5 Sign to Take a Deload – Your Heart Rate is Elevated
Your heart rate is a glimpse into your nervous system.
As you know, your autonomic nervous system has two sub-systems: parasympathetic and sympathetic.
The parasympathetic nervous system is your “rest and digest” system. The sympathetic system is your “fight or flight” system.
When you are stressed out, your body is a bit more sympathetically driven compared to parasympathetically driven. And vice versa when you are relaxed.
As mentioned previously, training is a stress on the body. When that stress is too high or applied too often the body responds by being more sympathetically driven. This also manifests as an increase in production of the hormone cortisol. (Though cortisol is a topic for another post).
You may notice you have an increased heart rate if you have been training at high volume and/or intensity without adequate rest and recovery. This can be observed at rest or during exercise (or both).
If you notice this, it’s your body’s way of saying “we’re a bit stressed out right now.” And if you continue down that path without a rest you are setting yourself up to get sick, injured or burned out.
Therefore, if you notice your heart rate elevated at rest (via a smartwatch) or during exercise, you probably should take a rest week over the next little bit. This is a great reason to monitor your heart rate when working out.
#6 Sign to Take a Deload – You Just Competed
Did you just compete? If yes, take a break!
This one is pretty simple. Competing is a very stressful event – regardless of if it was your first or 100th competition.
Chances are you trained very hard leading up to the event. You probably cared a lot about your performance. Maybe you even invited friends and family to come and watch.
If that is the case, take some time off.
Change up your training too. If you’re a weightlifter, toss in some strongman workouts. If you do Crossfit, try out some classic bodybuilding for a couple of weeks.
The bottom line is: you need to decompress and make sure when you get back to your real training you’re excited about it. There’s a reason why professional athletes take time off during their off-season each year.
Closing Thoughts on Deload Weeks
I think some people resist taking deload/recovery weeks because they feel that training needs to be full tilt all the time. But in reality, good training is a matter of manipulating stress and recovery in order to maximize training effects and bring us closer to our genetic potential.
If it’s all gas, all the time you are setting yourself up to sickness, injury or burn out. None of these things are conducive to long-term gains.
After all, training is a lifelong process. So take time to recover, so that 20 years from now you’re still able to train – and so that you still love it.