How you can use unloading phases to build muscle and strength faster

Key information:

1. An unloading phase is a temporary reduction in weekly training load to give your body and mind a break from hard training.
2. To unload correctly, you should use the same weights as during your hard training phase, but perform 30 to 50% fewer sets per week and 2 to 4 repetitions less per set.
3. If you have just started training, then you should unload every 8 to 10 weeks. If you've been training for more than three years, then you should unload every 4 to 6 weeks.

In many ways, building your body is a lot like building anything else - the more you put in, the more you'll get...at least up to a certain point.

You need to train hard to build the body you want, but you can't just rely on your afterburners.

Challenge your body week after week with no breaks or unloading periods, and your journey will be slowed by the following obstacles:

• Regular plateaus
• Overuse injuries
• Lack of motivation
• Half-hearted training sessions

This is the reason that top level athletes of all disciplines from field hockey players to cyclists to powerlifters incorporate regularly scheduled periods of rest and recovery into their training.

In fact, the best athletes place tremendous emphasis on this because the consequences of overlooking it are so severe (chronic poor performance, career-ending injuries and more).

When it comes to building muscle and strength, unloading periods are one of the best recovery tools at your disposal.

You've probably heard about unloading phases before, but you're probably not sure why they're used, how to do them correctly and how often you should use them.

Look around the internet for answers and you will find many conflicting opinions:

• Some will say that de-stressing periods are a waste of time, while others will say that you should just give yourself a week off instead.
• Some will say that you should unload by reducing your weekly sets and weights, while others will say that you should just reduce the number of sets you do each week.
• Some will say that you should unload whenever you feel it's necessary, while others will say that you should plan your unloading periods in advance. Who is right?

The short answer is that if you follow a well-planned training program, unloading periods are an effective way to prevent injuries, plateaus and burnout.

To do this, these off-load phases must be planned and executed correctly, otherwise they will either not help to adequately promote your recovery or may even be a complete waste of time.

In this article, we will therefore take a closer look at this,

• What an off-load phase is
• Why so many people don't benefit from off-load periods
• How often you should discharge
• When you should discharge and when you should give yourself a break
• What a proper discharge phase should look like
• And more...

Let's start with the first point.

What is a discharge phase?

An off-load phase is a temporary reduction in weekly training stress to give your body and mind a break from hard training.

By stress, I mean the general mental and physical strain and exhaustion caused by heavy training, as well as the microscopic damage to your muscles and joints.

By alleviating these stressors, you can reduce overuse of joints and ligaments and reduce the risk of injury or burnout. Unloading also reduces the demands placed on your muscles, but this is not as important as the former. There are a number of adjustments you can make to reduce training stress:

• Reducing intensity (weight moved)
• Reducing the volume (number of sets or repetitions performed)

For example, if your training program consists of 5 training sessions of 70 to 80 heavy repetitions (75 to 85% of your 1RM weight), an unload phase could reduce the intensity to 50 to 60% of your 1RM weight or the volume to 35 to 40 heavy repetitions per training session.

Typically, unloading phases are scheduled after a phase of progressively more intense training.

For example, it is common in strength training programs to increase training intensity and/or volume week after week to promote gains in strength and muscle mass, and then after three or four weeks of these progressive increases, schedule a one-week unloading phase to allow your body to prepare for the next round.

Unload periods typically last a week, although some exercisers use longer or shorter unload periods depending on their training plans and goals.

If you are training particularly hard or have been training for a long time without unloading, then a full week may be appropriate. On the other hand, if you're not training that hard or have only recently unloaded, then a few days may be enough to do the job.

Another way to give your body a break is to take a complete break from resistance training. This works, of course, but if you take too many days off, your technique and desire to get back into heavy training can suffer.

I generally recommend an unloading phase rather than a complete break from training, but sometimes it can make more sense to take a complete break from training with weights.

For example, if you're traveling and have limited access to training equipment, it's often better to take a full break and enjoy your free time rather than stressing about finding a time and place to train.

Summary: A de-stress phase is a temporary reduction in training stress to give your body and mind a break from heavy training. Such a phase usually lasts a week and is scheduled in advance.

Why do exercisers unload?

The basic theory of detraining is based on research into how our bodies deal with physical stress

Scientists are still arguing about what is the best way to describe this process, but there is a trend (1):

1. Add a stressor (exercise)
2. Remove the stressor (rest and recovery)
3. Adapt to cope better with the next stressor

In other words, you stress the body in a certain way, allow it to recover from the stress and it will become better at coping with that stressor in the future.

The third step - adaptation - is technically known as supercompensation and allows you to build muscle, increase your strength, increase your speed, improve your skills and coordination, etc.

Like maintaining good sleep hygiene and energy balance, unloading is a tool that falls into category #2 above - rest and recovery - and its purpose is to help with step #3 - supercompensation.

This cycle repeats itself in the short term and long term - both between training sessions and over weeks and months of training.

For example, after a training session, your muscles are exhausted and slightly damaged and if you provide them with enough calories, protein, sleep and rest, they will recover and regenerate and be ready for another training session a few days later.

If this is the case, then why do we need to unload at all? Wouldn't the body's ability to repair itself keep up with the stress and damage caused by training?

The answer is - not really.

Different parts of the body heal faster than others. Your central nervous system recovers from a heavy training session within hours and your muscles are repaired within a few days.

However, some tissue types of the body such as tendons, ligaments, joints and bones take longer to heal (2).

If you regularly move heavy weights, these tissues suffer tiny microfractures and tears and if you don't allow them to heal sufficiently, this damage can lead to strains, tears and injuries over time (3, 4).

By unloading regularly, you give your body the chance to release different types of localized stress that accumulate over weeks of hard training. You can think of it as an insurance policy against injury and overtraining.

Another reason that exercisers unload is that it allows them to do more productive workouts.

If you train for weeks and months without a break, you won't be able to maximize your performance in the long run. Eventually you will reach a point where you are only recovering enough to repeat the same workouts over and over again, also known as plateauing.

This is why unloading is one of the best ways to prevent or even break plateaus in your muscle and strength gains. The extra rest and recovery will allow you to start training blocks fresh and powerful and be able to move more weight and complete a higher training volume.

Simply put, you'll be better off with a month or two of hard training followed by an off-load period and another month or two of hard training than four months of hard continuous training.

Summary: The primary reason that exercisers unload is to improve their recovery, reduce their risk of injury and improve their motivation and ability to train hard.

Why will many exercisers not benefit from unloading training sessions?

The amount of rest and recovery the body needs depends on the level of stress you put it under.

Something significant like several weeks or months of hard training with progressive overload should be followed by additional rest and recovery such as an unload.

Something much lighter like a half-hearted, barely sweaty workout, which we see in many exercisers, does not require special periods of additional recovery. That's why some well-known people in the fitness industry talk disparagingly about unloading - in fact, many people don't train hard enough to need it.

They just show up at the gym, go through the motions, don't log their workouts and therefore don't strive to surpass their performance from previous workouts, and they don't properly control their diet to support their fitness goals.

Unloading has nothing to offer these guys and gals.

The key to improving body composition and performance over time is to regularly push your body a little further beyond its limits and then back off a little.

If you're not following a well-planned training program that revolves around progressive overload, or if you're not pushing yourself hard enough in the gym to make progress, then you have no reason to unload.

However, if you are following such a program and working hard to improve your performance, then you can benefit from unloading and should incorporate unloading periods into your training program.

In fact, I would say that a training program that does not include or require unloading periods is probably suboptimal at best and ineffective at worst.

Summary: You will not benefit from unloading periods unless you follow a sensibly designed, challenging training program that forces you to get stronger over time. However, if you do follow such a program, then you will benefit from unloading periods.

How often should you unload?

There is no universal, one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as some bodies can tolerate more than others.

In addition, the ideal frequency of unloading will depend on the following factors:

1. How strong you are. Stronger exercisers tend to need more frequent unloads to recover from their heavier workouts.
2. How long you have been training. Beginners need fewer unloads because they are not yet strong enough to push their bodies to the degree that more experienced exercisers can push their bodies.

1. How resilient your joints, tendons and ligaments are. Pain in the joints, tendons and ligaments is a reliable indicator that you need a de-stressing phase.

However, there are a few effective rules of thumb:

• If you're new to training with weights, schedule a de-loading week every 8 to 10 weeks of heavy and intense training. If you are in a calorie deficit, you should reduce these periods to 6 to 8 weeks (and yes, you should continue to train heavy even during a calorie deficit).
• If you have been training with weights for 1 to 3 years, you should plan a de-loading week after 6 to 8 weeks of heavy, intense training with weights. Reduce this to every 4 to 6 weeks if you are in a calorie deficit.
• If you have been training with weights for 3 to 6 years, you should plan a de-loading week after 4 to 6 weeks of heavy, intensive training with weights. Use the same unloading frequency if you are in a calorie deficit.
• I would not recommend doing more than 12 weeks of hard training without unloading at least once. In my experience, there is little progress to be made by training longer than this without a break, otherwise the risk of significant disadvantages increases.
• If you never feel the need to unload, then your training program is probably too light.

If you are new to de-loading, I would recommend that you plan a de-loading week in advance and stick to it no matter how you feel. This will ensure that you don't inadvertently increase your risk of injury or overtraining by stubbornly refusing to come off the gas.

Once you've learned more about how your body responds to training, you can take it a little easier with your off-load timing. You'll start to recognize when you need an off-load phase - your progress stalls, your body aches, your motivation to train wanes, your workouts feel much harder than they should, etc. - and you can respond accordingly.

For example, my current training program involves a lot of heavy training with weights and my sleep leaves a lot to be desired for various reasons, which is why I feel the need for an unloading phase every 4 to 5 weeks. Once this happens, I train hard for another week and then unload.

Summary: I recommend unloading every 4 to 10 weeks depending on how long you've been training and how you train. As a general rule, people with more training experience who train intensively need more frequent unloading phases than people who train for less time or train more within their comfort zone.

In the second part of this article, I will go into more detail about what a correctly executed unloading phase should look like and answer a few more questions about unloading.

Source: https://legionathletics.com/deload-week/

By Michael Matthews