Deloads are something people struggle with.
When to take them?
How long should they last?
Slash intensity, volume, or both?
Plan them or take as needed?
As with many things, the answer to all these questions is the annoying but true phrase – it depends.
Sometimes deloads work like magic, sometimes they don’t. So people come back rested and refreshed, but detrained. Workloads too light, volume too low and unfortunately the result is a fully recovered weaker lifter.
That sucks.
One of the biggest changes I’ve made in the programming I write for my clients over the last 2 year or so is how I deload them.
The long and short of it is – I don’t. At least not in the traditional sense. Meet prep is the exception.
What I have been doing a lot of in the last 2 years with a lot of success is FREQUENCY DELOADING. And I don’t change much else. Intensity stays high. Per session / per lift volume is very close, but weekly training volume goes down.
The big change is the length of time between workouts. It literally could not be simpler. We’re just taking more time off, and often shortening the workouts.
It’s amazing how well it works in most cases.
Below are the two primary instances in which I like to use this with my clients.
First is the conversion from 3-day per week Full Body to a 3-Day per week Upper / Lower Split. This works really well for guys who HAVE to stay on a 3-day per week plan due to scheduling. Often times life limits us to Mon-Wed-Fri training, and shorter more frequent sessions are not an option, so we keep a 3-day per week plan. We can always drop to 2-days per week for a while, BUT some trainees would prefer just to simply be in the gym more often than 2x/week. And we can accommodate that, but with shorter workouts.
So let’s say that a guy is training like this – 3-day per week (sets/reps just for illustration)
Monday
- Heavy Squat 5 x 5
- Heavy Bench 5 x 5
- Medium Pulls (SLDL) 3-4 x 5
Wednesday
- Light Squat 3 x 5
- Heavy Press 5 x 5
- Light Pulls (Chins or BB Rows) 3 x 8-10
Friday
- Medium Squat or Squat Variant 4 x 5
- Medium Bench Press or Bench Variant 4 x 5
- Heavy Pulls (Deadlifts 5 x 5)
From here, what I might switch him to is something like this:
Monday
- Heavy Squat 5 x 5
- Light/Medium Pull (SLDL) 3-4 x 5
Wednesday
- Heavy Bench 5 x 5
- Light/Medium Press 3-4 x 5
Friday
- Light/Medium Squat 3-4 x 5
- Heavy Deadlift 5 x 5
Monday
- Heavy Press 5 x 5
- Light/Medium Bench Press 3-4 x 5
Wednesday
- Heavy Squat 5 x 5
- Light/Medium Deadlift (SLDL) 3-4 x 5
Friday
- Heavy Bench 5 x 5
- Light/Medium Press 3-4 x 5
etc, etc.
So you basically have 4 workouts that you roll across a 3-day week that creates a scenario where we have week one as Lower – Upper – Lower and week 2 as Upper – Lower – Upper.
Little if anything about the per exercise volume or intensity needs to change. I may keep them on a schedule like this for anywhere from 4-12 weeks and then often times I like to go back to the higher frequency schedule.
The second scenario is really even more simple. It basically just takes ANY traditional 4-day split (Texas Method, Heavy-Light, Split Routine, etc) and rolls it across a 3-day week.
So let’s say our lifter has been having success on the 4-day Texas Method, but is feeling a little sluggish and beat up. I might have him do this for 2-4 weeks:
Original Plan
- Monday – Bench Intensity / Press Volume
- Tuesday – Squat Intensity / Deadlift Volume
- Thursday – Press Intensity / Bench Volume
- Friday – Deadlift Intensity / Squat Volume
So now he simply does this:
- Monday – Bench Intensity / Press Volume
- Wednesday – Squat Intensity / Deadlift Volume
- Friday – Press Intensity / Bench Volume
- Monday – Deadlift Intensity / Squat Volume
- Wednesday – Start over 4-day rotation
As of this writing, my Baker Barbell Club Online crew is starting to hate life just a little bit, as they are in the 11th week of a pretty high volume high frequency Heavy-Light-Medium 12-week program. But in a couple of weeks you’ll be hearing the shouts of joy as their programming morphs from a 3-day full body routine, into a 3-day upper/lower split. Not a whole lot will change, but a little more days off between heavy lower body lifting and heavy upper body lifting will be a welcome change and I’m positive the results will manifest in lots and lots of new PRs.
